How to write a novel using the snowflake method (2013)
advancedfictionwriting.com
advancedfictionwriting.com
Besides mailing list signups, chat widgets, etc. it also blocks GDPR cookie notices.
I'd love to write a book, I have ideas, I just don't know if I'll ever have a good ending.
This must be the curse of most aspiring writers!?
Knowing the end state makes planning the events and character development easier, and can help you avoid pacing problems. You can create the structure working backwards from the end state.
When I write I usually think about what needs to happen to get everything to where it “needs to be” in a comprehensible way.
My impression is that it makes the former easier and the latter harder.
Having a planned-out plot-focused story can lead you to a very tight, satisfying climax. But it can often make the characters feel wooden or like they are acting out of character in order to do what the plot needs them to do.
When a writer focuses more on the fidelity of a character's inner psychology, they can write more believable, interesting characters. But they sometimes get stuck in the position of "The plot needs them to do X but their psychology makes it more likely they would do Y." Then the author has to decide whether they keep the plot on rails and sacrifice some character fidelity, or have the story meander more to keep the characters feeling rich and authentic.
At one end of that continuum, you have thrillers and action novels where characters are little more than a bullet list of personality archetypes, but a bunch of cool shit happens and the pacing is perfectly dialed in. At the other end, you have literary fiction where you feel like you're getting a window into the minds of actual people, but nothing really happens.
Part 1 of Dostoevsky's The Idiot is maybe the best example I know that works from both perspectives. It's full of interesting characters with different motives, and it escalates to a incredible firework involving all these characters and motives all acting at the same time.
The ending of The Great Gatsby is also like that. A big tragic thing happens, but not because of some evil dragon - it happens because the characters are what they are.
And then you have something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or On the Road, or Breakfast at Tiffany's. Where things happen because the characters are basically chaotic assholes, the kind of people to whom things happen and you want to read about these things.
Edit: ah, Jack Kerouac was at least one of them (although On the Road was already mentioned). Electric Kool Aid Acid Test is a wild ride, as well as pretty much anything by Hunter S. Thompson.
Yeah, that's absolutely the goal for most writers, but boy is it hard to craft a set of character psychologies that both feel believable while also leading to a plot that feels inevitable and monumental.
For older authors like Charles Dickens, who wrote and published many of their novels chapter by chapter in magazines, plans would presumably change based on audience response.
source - have written long-form fiction
I've tried to completely pants a story, and I've also tried planning stories out ahead of time in extremely rigorous detail, and I've ended up deciding to stay sort of in the middle. I generally have a pretty detailed idea of where I want a story to start and end, even down to some sense of how to get there, usually composed of some of the big events or set pieces or that happen in between, so I'm not pure pantsing, but then I just sort of find out as I go along how I get between each point, and really revel that process of finding out.
I think I've ended up writing things this way precisely because on the one hand writing a story based on a complete outline is extremely boring, it essentially becomes work, it just isn't Fun anymore, but on the other hand, I am an extremely set piece motivated writer — I am motivated to write things by specific scenes that I want to have happen or even specific vivid images — and so those scenes, spaced throughout my narrative, sort of act as the carrot on the end of the stick to get me to keep going to find out how I get there. If I go into writing a story without a sufficient string of high points and an ending, I'll tend to just sort of vaguely peter out after the last cool idea I did have in mind when I started and then lose interest eventually.
- Discovery / Outline
- Pantser / Plotter
- Gardner / Architect
Those labels apply to the extremes of either technique, and writers often fall somewhere more to one side or the other. Stephen King is a discovery writer. It's why his endings often fizzle. Brandon Sanderson is an outliner, which is why his novels tend to have a recognizable escalation to what fans have taken to calling "the Sanderlanche."
There's no right way to do it, and it really depends on what works for the writer.
It's also similar to songwriting in that sense. If you want to write a really good song, do you write lyrics first or music first? Generally speaking, if you pick one or the other, you'll find that one "serves" the other. Writing both at once, though... that's really hard.
Obviously it varies a lot, based on the type of project and your own personal methodology. Sometimes you might be able to say yes, sometimes you might have to say no. In some cases the question won’t even make sense. And in all cases you might suspect that the person asking the question is misunderstanding something fundamental about the working process.
Haha! I his case I don't think he has anything figured out. I think as he's writing it, he's discovering what the characters are doing and is in just as much shock as we are.
Or, as the case of Cujo, when he's reading it for the first time
Apparently, he did not know the character Saruman existed. He was just working the story, and had this gap which eventually turned into Saruman. Saruman seems rather "important", so it's interesting (to me) that it was not a core character from early on.
As a non-writer, even as a programmer, I find it kind of surprising that the authors surprise themselves. Writing code, it's rare that I've found "I needed Something" without knowing what it was, and then stumbled on to a solution. I usually have a pretty good idea of a mechanic I need for a particular situation.
I mean, I understand how a writer can create a character, and "let them go" and "see what happens", but I just think that's different from a more structural component of the story.
Of course, as a corollary, there was an author talking about how in one story, he managed to back the characters into a corner. He then proceeded to write some other parts of the story, and when he got back to the earlier characters, they were out. They had escaped. Whatever corner they were backed into, they were no longer there.
And he did not write how that happened. They just "got out". He used the interim story to, essentially, distract the readers about what was happening before.
Cheap trick, but I guess whatever works.
Patrick Jane's archenemy, Red John, needed an identity. It wasn't planned beforehand, so they chose one of the insignificant characters from the first chapters.
Other writers can't write that way. They produce outlines so detailed that the actual writing is embellishment. Sometimes these writers are the opposite of writers like King...they start with the ending they want, and create a story that leads there.
https://www.backwordsblog.com/single-post/2016/04/27/john-ir...
"People have commented – sometimes with irritation, sometimes nicely – on the amount of foreshadow that there is in my novel. Well, yeah, it’s not that hard to foreshadow what’s coming when you know what’s coming…I write endings first. I write last sentences – sometimes last paragraphs – first. I know where I am going. I write collision course stories."
By the way, Asimov is mentioned in TFA, that makes sense. With our Corín Tellado, he was one of the most prolific authors ever.
At the logical extreme, you could double at every step, and achieve a better structured story with exactly twice the writing required for the final step.
(Because 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + … + 2^n = 2^(n+1)-1)
And this makes sense with the fractal idea of the snowflake.
Also, will this not just end up with a story that is without a clear red thread, seems like quite a disjointed way of writing.
On the contrary, that's what this method is all about. You start with one clear through line, and you iterate multiple times, filling in more detail with each iteration. But, the through line remains.
Drawing the snowflake is the same. The initial attempt is low in detail, and you iterate on it, adding detail each time.
I kind of like Jim Butcher's take on the process, instead: https://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/461.html
You'll have to page through these, and an ad blocker is strongly recommended as that LiveJournal site is ad-fested (it didn't used to be that way... he wrote it in 2004 when it used to be friendlier).
Also, it manages to make me want more, even though the premise is as corny as can be. If I ever write a novel, I will definitely have a closer look at this method.