Pen’s Tip at Sword’s Edge

Well, it has been some time now hasn’t it.
You know my excuse. Well, if you read this blog, you know my excuse. My daughters are awesome. Absolutely awesome. But even the most perfect child takes up a huge amount of time. I’m lucky in that my job offers me plenty of parental leave. Since my [...]

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So the Snowflake Method indicates the writer should create a one page plot synopsis for each character. I think I’m going to pass on that. I have two reasons. First, it’s a lot of freaking work! Work which I don’t feel would help move this particular project forward. It might be useful to find each [...]

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So, the next step in the Snowflake Method is to take each sentence of the plot paragraph, and create a paragraph from that. I didn’t take that literally. The sentences from the plot paragraph are not reused or somehow stretched, rather the plot aspect reflected in the sentence is revealed in more detail. I don’t [...]

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So, I’ve got two more main characters to outline, and then it’s on to the one-page plot (which I have already kind of posted). The design of the one-pager isn’t exactly as I’ve presented, so there will still be some work involved. That’s cool. I can take it.
So, the last two characters are our Narcissus [...]

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I’m way behind on the Snowflake Project for a couple of reasons, neither of which concern you (hint: job and family). Given this, I should probably be forging ahead. However, for me, this is more about the process than the product, so I want to take some time to address Jonathan’s comment from the last [...]

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Jonathan made a great comment regarding my paragraph long summary. He had two points, really, one with which I agree and one with which I partially agree.
Adding the McGuffin is weak. It gives the story a 90 degree turn where one isn’t required. On re-reading the post, that was obvious. Also, the post does a [...]

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Back to the Snowflake Method and character outline time.
To be honest, I had an idea for a story and this is helping me fill in the gaps, as such this is taking me a lot longer than normal. Usually, the first things that I create, after the general plot inspiration hits, are the characters. In [...]

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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 [...]

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Randy Ingermanson made a good point in a comment to a previous post. The one sentence summary included a rather trite cliché (to the brink of war). Need to rethink that.
Also, he mentioned that one certainly could do a summary with the antagonist as the subject, such as in the Day of the Jackal. [...]

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The first part of the Snowflake Method is to write a one sentence summary of the novel. This is much harder than it seems. Have a look at what Jonathan has done.
My first try was: “A renegade parapsyche brings the world close to war in his quest for vengeance.”
 
The problem with that one is that the parapsyche is [...]

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