the snowflake project

The final stage in Step 3 is done (unless I need to add more later!) – Read the third secondary character’s summary from the characters page.

No decent fantasy novel is complete without a roguish trickster in the cast of characters. Torik provides that for this one.

I’m not sure at this point whether I should move to the next step (step 4, expanding my 1-paragraph summary of the novel into 5 paragraphs) or if I should spend some time on world-building. I need to break from The Snowflake Method at some point to world-build. Likely a few times. I’ll think on it – and let me know in the comments below whether you think now is a good time!

I’ve finished the brief character sketch for Achi, who I have decided will be my antagonist for the first part of Kos’s story. I had intended for Achi to be a friend to Kos all the way through his life, but that’s not the way it goes sometimes.

I find it incredible how much characters can teach you about your story when you develop them on their own, before you really start getting into the details of your plot. It’s looking like Achi’s story will figure heavily in the narrative as well. Which means that I’ll be writing from at least two points of view. I’m happy with that – focusing on one character is much more difficult than jumping around a bit.

Achi’s character sketch can be found on the Characters page. Enjoy!

I’ve completed step 3′s brief character sketch for Kos, my lead protagonist, over on the Characters page in the Story Bible section. Read it here.

As The Snowflake Method predicts, I now have to go back to the paragraph I wrote in step 2 and revise it slightly. That excites me. Not the prospect of having extra work to do, of course, but the fact that this process is really causing something resembling a story to take shape.

In addition – writing Kos’s story down in the form of a paragraph has told me about at least 2 other major characters I need to tackle, and I expect that those characters will project their own influence on the story at large.

Finding out what Kos’s motivation and goals are really helped me focus him as a character, as well as giving me an insight into what is really holding him back. This character sketch was actually fairly easy to write, which in my experience, means I have a good thing going.