Pen’s Tip at Sword’s Edge

The second part of the Snowflake Method is to write a paragraph providing a high level summary of the novel’s plot. Randy Ingermanson suggests using the three act structure and have three “disasters” that move the plot forward.

This makes sense. Things need to go from bad to worse in order to maintain tension. Your characters shouldn’t sleep-walk through the story. Framing the narrative through the use of “disasters” is one way of insuring this. Also, consider that many writers have a cliff-hanger at the ending of every chapter–that’s pretty much disaster a chapter.

Okay, so I need three disasters that will be turning points in the novel. I think I’ll break the story into three acts, and consider what disaster or action moves from one act to the next. These may not be disasters, per se, but things should get progressively worse.

The first act is the team coming together. What precipitates this is the apparent death of an off-screen character known as the Bedouin. They believe the killer to be part of a super-secret operation called TANGIBLE STREAM. That in and of itself isn’t much of a disaster, but let’s say one of the team members is framed for the killing. That’s disaster number one.

The second act is the team learning that TANGIBLE STREAM is not the opposition, in fact, it may be their only ally. Unfortunately, more murders are taking place, as Chinese and Western psy-assets are being removed. The team get caught in the middle of a cycle of killings. That would be the second disaster.

Finally, the team learns the identity of the real villain, but still have to get to him. He’s being protected by an Eastern European government.  Now what’s the disaster here? I don’t want to go with the generic “they get caught by the badguy.” Maybe they get caught by the good guys. It’s a disaster because time is running out. The villain of the piece is trying to access to a psychic McGuffin, and he has his pieces in place.

The end of the piece is the foiling of the plot. The psychic McGuffin is safe. The fact that the Chinese have this psychic McGuffin means tension with the USA are high. While the villain didn’t succeed, he’s still safe in his Eastern European lair. So how to encapsulate that in a sentence.

Here’s my first go at bringing it all together.

A black ops team attempting to track down the killer of an operative known as the Bedouin find one of their own members accused of the murder. Linking up with a covert force only known as TANGIBLE STREAM, the team is caught in the crossfire as Western and Chinese intelligence agencies engage in a secret war. Just as the team closes in on the real motivator of the secret war, they are captured by a specialized CIA unit known as Narcissus. With the help of Narcissus and TANGIBLE STREAM, the team stops a commando raid to steal a Chinese psychic amplifier, ending the secret war but leaving a vengeful parapsyche on the loose.

Perhaps not the finest, but it’ll do for now. I’ll be coming back to this to clean it up when I get a chance. Feel free to pick it apart in the comments.

I have a thick skin. I can take it!