the snowflake project

I’ve just fixed a discrepancy between Sky-Kicker’s summary and the 1-page synopsis. In one, Kos rescued Sky-Kicker, in the other, it was the other way around.

I’ve settled on having Sky-Kicker rescue Kos from starvation in the forest. I think later Kos might return the favor though.

Also, I’ve taken a break from world building to do step 5 of The Snowflake Method, writing up plot summaries from each character’s point of view. I’ll be posting the first one soon.

I’ve also started to commit myself to writing at least 250 words per day (not a lot, I know, but more than I’ve been doing so far) on this project. I have designed a spreadsheet that logs my progress and keeps me on track. If anyone wants the template to use for their own daily writing goals, let me know and I’ll post it.

I just made a few changes to the history of humanity in Kos’s world that fleshes out the reason they were created as well as the current state of affairs, what kind of society they have, and what kind of society Kos comes from.

You can find it all on the Races page.

Continuing on the world building path, I’ve just added what will most likely be the final paragraph of the cosmology section (unless I find it necessary to flesh out the metaphysics of the world). The lowest order of spiritual beings in the world is also the most important. The Fadd Tsora are the foundation of all magic in Kos’s world.

I’ve also created a new page in the World Building section for Races. So far I’ve only added humans to that page, but others are on their way. I decided on a whim to make humans a VERY young race – only centuries of awareness behind them. I’d love to have a discussion with all of you about the implications of that!

Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more world building.

Until today, I had all the characters’ info on one page on the site. I realized that that would get pretty unwieldy pretty quickly – so I decided to organize everything by character, giving each character his/her own page.

The Characters page is now a menu with links to each character’s dedicated page. When I get to Step 5 (the next character development step), I’ll be adding the additional material to each character’s page.

There will probably be similar changes in the future as I learn how best to organize the info. Suggestions are always welcome too.

**Change to “Story Bible” – added Step 2, the one-paragraph summary

Writing a one-paragraph plot summary is a lot more difficult than it sounds. I started with a VERY general overview of my plot. I actually knew more about the setting, the protagonist and the first plot catalyst than I knew about anything else.

What helped me through this process was the three act structure. Almost every movie you’ve ever seen was written in three acts. The idea is that conflict mounts by ending each act with a major disaster that the protagonist must suffer through. The last disaster, of course, is what sets up the climax where (usually) the protagonist (my protagonist’s name is Kos) triumphs.

You can simplify the three act structure by just thinking in terms of the disasters. What’s the first thing that goes wrong for Kos? Where does that leave him? After I answer those two questions, I have Kos in a new situation – which provides opportunity for something else to go wrong, and so on. It’s smart to have a good idea of your ending in mind when you start asking these questions, otherwise, the plot will most likely take a random direction and could go on forever.

Find my one-paragraph summary over on the Story Bible page. And please comment – I want to know what you think!