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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Kali on September 18, 2010, 04:31:59 PM
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I know a few people have used the Snowflake Method (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php) 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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. :)
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Doesn't work for me, because my stories thrash around too much. I could definitely write a one-para synopsis of what I thought a plot would be in advance, but once I have three or four chapters of actual story down, little things will change which have knock-on consequences changing bigger things later on, and I never finish a book that looks enough like I think it might beforehand; really tightening a plot needs me to know so much about where it;s going that my only way of getting there is to write it.
Kudos to the snowflake guy for being very up front about different things working for different people and this only being what works for him, though. (Is it overly cynical of me to say that if this method really worked, I might expect to have heard of him as a novelist?)
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I'm a huge fan of the Snowflake Method and have used it, or a variation of it, for most of my stories. I've added some bits, like more worldbuilding sections, and sometimes I don't get as involved with minor character sheets and all. But I do a spreadsheet of scenes and such and get to a 3-4 page writeup of the plot. It helps me to have guideposts along the way, a way to at least vaguely know what direction I should be heading in. Building up a plot from a kernel of an idea, that original sentence description, into a fleshed-out plot is a great investment before I start any writing.
The one thing I don't do, though, is force myself to stick to the original outline or plot if something better comes up along the way. I give myself the freedom to adapt when characters or plot twists surprise me. So that mixture of setting a foundation and then discovering new things along the way works exceptionally well for me. Not for everyone, I know, but I always recommend this method.
In a potential answer to your question, neurovore, I've actually interacted with Randy Ingermanson some and read his books. They're great, but he published several science fiction series and novels through the Christian Booksellers Association, and speculative fiction genres, unfortunately, just don't sell too well in CBA. I haven't seen any new releases from him lately, but he has lots of great advice for writers which has helped me get where I am.
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Hrm. I may have to give this a try. Usually I come up with a metric truck-load of characters becasue they are,for me anyway, the easiest part to right. Then I just start writing the opening and develop the characters and plot as I go along. This is the same method I use for writing adventures and campaigns for the many role-playing games I've run over the years, unfortunatley it's not a great method for a book as I keep addign in new ideas, places, plots and characters and have to frequently go back and make changes...8P
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Kudos to the snowflake guy for being very up front about different things working for different people and this only being what works for him, though. (Is it overly cynical of me to say that if this method really worked, I might expect to have heard of him as a novelist?)
Yes, it is.
You might, on the other hand, say that his or her work would be diluted amongst all the other Koch snowflakes making up the slab avalanche.
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You might, on the other hand, say that his or her work would be diluted amongst all the other Koch snowflakes making up the slab avalanche.
But that way would lie the necessity of coming up with puns about fractals.
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But that way would lie the necessity of coming up with puns about fractals.
Nah, we'd just need one joke we could repeat over and over again.
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But that way would lie the necessity of coming up with puns about fractals.
"That way" was written on Columbus' maps and in his rutters, too. :) India he reacheth not.
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"That way" was written on Columbus' maps and in his rutters, too. :) India he reacheth not.
And it's still far too soon to tell whether the net consequences of that were for the general good or not.
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Workign through the Method on my most active story now. Gotten up to the point of writing up character stuff...and WOW will that take me a lot of time...ugh. I have between 4 and 7 main characters, though I may move 3 to quasi second-tier just to simplfy the development.
On the other hand so far I have cleaned things up quite a bit with my existing notes; so far, so good.
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I see nothing that says you *have* to make all the characters symmetrically developed?
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Not sure I'm following on the symetriclaly developed?
I've got the four main characetrs mostly written up but I will probably have to tweak them as I write up inter-related characters. I also added a few more details such as Physical Description, Psychology and Short History (prior to the start of the story). So the Template I am working form looks like this;
• The character's name
• A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline
• Character Description/Appearance
• Personality and Psychology
• The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
• The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
• The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
• The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
• Short History (prior to the start of the story)
• A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline
I play/played a Samurai Role-Playing Game called "Legend of the Five Rings" which has a beutiful system but more importantly a Character development tool which is a Modified version of "Twenty Questions" which helps flesh out a characetrs history even more (There is also an extended version with another 20 or so questions) . As aprt of playing this game and the Serenity RPG I discovered something called a 3x3x3 which is a quick list of three friends, 3 acquantinces and 2 enemies/rivals. As a GM I asked for them from players prior to game start to help in fleshing out the game world. As a player I used it to help me get a better grap of the characters personality.
I may try using both of those tools on at least the 4 main characetrs to flesh them out some more and maybe a stripped-down version for lesser characters. It would be a lot more work but I beleive it will add a lot of depth as well.
Hrm...now that i think about it I may try to come up with a 20 Quetsions for the Story and World itself as well...
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Not sure I'm following on the symetriclaly developed?
I was staying within the OP metaphor.
Big, giant symmetrical snowflakes only develop symmetrical if they are allowed to grow ...very... slowly. In weather, this generally means there is some sort of strong updraft or something. Reapplying the OP metaphor to writing, it means you have all the time in the world to write out ALL your secondary characters to Level 4 before your tertiary characters get to Level 1.
Of course real world fractals have other pressures and other forcing functions to make unsymmetrical results. Reapplying the metaphor, where you want to take the story and how you want to control the pacing will be just such forcing functions.
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Ah okay I see. Asymmetry suits me...8)
Good things is that even my lowest tier characters generally have some basic background, at least in my head, on who they are and where they want to go.
I need to ge me one of them cork-boards that some authors use to organize their web of relationships and plots. A computer is all well and good but I really get tired of sitting in front of the screen as that's all I do at work all day...8P
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It doesn't really seem all that different from what Jim recommends on his livejournal page. I actually copied and pasted some of his methodology breakdown into Template Sheets in Scrivener. I don't know if it will help my writing, but it was a great way to procrastinate.
SF
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This guy just seems to be hocking stuff that makes me weary of anything he has to say.