McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
The Snowflake Method
Kali:
I know a few people have used the Snowflake Method or are using it now. I'm poking around with it as a way of making sure my plot stays tighter this time than the last time (when I effectively had none).
I'm wondering, though, if anyone else used it for a first-person POV story. I'm having a lot of trouble with some of the steps because, for example, in Step 3 where one of the things is to write a paragraph summary of the character's storyline... In a 1st-person story, her storyline is THE storyline. Is this, then, the same paragraph as the one from Step 2 or should it be something fuller?
Anyone else have comments on this method, what's worked, what hasn't?
Starbeam:
It's not a method I've tried, and just looking into it I'm a bit resistant to it. However, for the different characters, I think there's a Writing Excuses podcast about secondary characters. Or it might've been in the last couple Q&A podcasts of the last season. But what I remember is something along the lines of giving the secondary characters their own interests and goals. Yes, a 1st POV is her story, but one thing to remember is that every character would think the story is their story.
Example from my story--two of my characters ended up in a relationship, and one of the two was killed, which gave the other character a lot to deal with. And she's one of the secondary characters that's bordering on tertiary/possibly unnecessary.
And to be redundant cause I'm not sure if I'm completely coherent, each of the other characters still has their own storyline for what they're doing when they're offscreen. Maybe a better example would be like what Murphy does when she's not around Harry--like in Fool Moon where she was at home and making her silver bullets.
Kali:
Yeah, the Snowflake Method has you do a similar page for all the major characters. I guess I should just skip Rachel and do everyone else.
I'll say this much for it; it's involved more thinking about my plot than I usually do. Usually, my plots go something like "Grace is being hunted and Thomas saves her." Not very big on detail. ;D This time, I've already had some realizations about things, some things I assumed would be true that just don't play well. Time will tell if this works in the long run, but I've found it useful so far.
CrazyGerbilLady:
Can't comment on the first person bit as I haven't written much in first person ... but I do use the snowflake method. It helps me to get organized and get going. Of course the plot and characters do change some as I do the actual writing, but at least I go into it having a direction. Having a map that changes is better than no map at all, for me. I've tried just winging it and found I don't finish anything that way LOL.
LizW65:
This sounds very similar to how I work--I start with a brief description of the basic story line and keep breaking it down from there until I have a page or so for each chapter. I know from experience that if I don't have a road map I'll never finish the project; maybe as I get more experienced I'll become more of a "seat of the pants" writer, but somehow I doubt it--I'm the kind of writer who has to write and re-write everything multiple times to sound spontaneous. :)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version