Tips for writing and crafting your story into being the best it can be. Everything from the very basic structure of a story through to understanding deep point of view, perhaps you can find something here that is useful for your journey as a writer!
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The snowflake method has it's name for a reason, you start small with a single sentence and from there, it expands and builds and expands and builds and before you know it, you have this amazing plot in nine steps, with the tenth one being the fun part... writing that book!
So let's talk about it. You'll see why I posted characters devlopment last week because knowing them well will come into play here.
Things you'll need: a word document like pages, microsoft word or google docs, spreadsheet software like excel, and a lot of patience. :)
Step one: Come up with a one sentence description of your novel, also known as the elevator pitch. Less is more here so try and keep it simple. It should combine the protagonist and what their goal is and what's standing in their way.
Step two: Expand this sentence to a paragraph of description. This should include: The set up, the three main conflicts and the final conflict to wrap up the story.
Step three: Make a one page summary of each main character. Include their internal/external goals, conflict, their motivations and their turning point. This will only work for writers who like to have their characters planned out. If you're like me, I plan them and they do what they want anyway, so I would skip this step.
Step four: Go back to the paragraph you wrote in step two and expand each sentence into a paragraph of it's own.
Step five: Back to the characters. Write about the story from each of their points of view. This is really valuable in terms of getting their voices. A good rule of thumb is to fill one page with your main characters and half a page for each secondary character.
Step six: Return to the one page synopsis you wrote and expand it into 3-5 pages.
Step seven: go back to your characters, give them rich histories and character charts (we will talk about character development soon).
Step eight: Map out each scene on a spreadsheet. This can be as simple or as detailed as you want but at the very least add which character's viewpoint the scene is from and what's happening in the scene. You can also add things like setting, timeframe, you can even take a guess as to how long this scene should be etc.
Step nine: Expand each scene from your spreadsheet into a paragraph to produce a long narrative (this is basically the draft of your synopsis) and this is a painstakingly long step that is completely optional but can teach you a lot in terms of where your conflicts lie in the story.
Step ten: write the book and kiss writer's block goodbye.
There's a little worksheet and the infographic below available for download on my website! Happy plotting!
