the snowflake project

Anybody out there writing a dystopian epic (or short story or screenplay)? I had a neat idea today that could be useful in rounding out your government controlled isolationist nightmare.

Encrypted mailing addresses. The idea came to me randomly, as ideas do, as a possible solution to people not wanting to give strangers on ebay (or craigslist, etc.) their residential address. Because, you know, ax-murderers.

So I thought – suppose everyone had an encrypted version of their address they could give, which the post office or courier service had the key to. Stuff would get delivered, and addresses could be kept secret. And fewer axes would be murdered. Win-win!

Then I thought – what if this became the norm, and the government controlled the post? And conventional addresses became things of the past. You could have a pen-pal who lived two pods over and never even know that’s who you were talking to.

Anyhoo – maybe that’ll get some of your brain-goo chugging away. Anybody else have any cool dystopian elements or ideas? Put them in the comments!

I’ve added a brief description of Dwarves to the Races page. There are fundamental differences to each race that go much deeper than the typical differences between fantasy races. There are hints of elemental origins, totally different biology (iron blood, copper blood, carbon blood), and extreme cultural differences that I hope will play out strongly, if not in this book, then in followup books where the non-humans factor in the plot more heavily.

One of the cultural quirks of the Dwarves is certain to be controversial – doubtful to endear them to anyone, and sure to make them abhorrant to many. But systemic misogyny is a real thing that real societies practice. I may only hint at that factor in Dwarvish society, or I may really run with it. Regardless of how heavy-handed I am on the topic, knowing that Dwarves abuse their women, and knowing that THEY are not the chief evil in the world, will certainly keep things interesting for me as an author.

I decided early on that most cultures present in my novel would be monotheistic. Our own culture is largely monotheistic, and although reading about characters who worship sweeping pantheons of gods and goddesses is exciting and interesting, most of the readers would probably identify a little better with monotheist characters. Besides, why confuse matters with an enormous cast of deities when the story is not about the gods, but rather about the creatures of the world.

My cosmology is relatively sparse and simplistic: a force of good, a force of evil, and a different take on angels and demons. Read the beginnings of my thoughts on them on the new Religion page.

I hope you all have a very happy and warm Christmas Day!

I’ve started laying the foundation for a world building section. You can get to it from the navigation menu above.

After much Christmas-time busyness, I’ve finally managed to spit out the rest of the Skeleton Synopsis.

Find it here, or through the Story Bible.

I think I’ve got a fairly solid plot together. There is a lot of room for character development here – a lot of change taking place over the course of the story, and of course, a lot of mystery to unwrap about the empire, and the evil in the west.

From here, logic dictates that I move on to step 5, which is creating one page story summaries (like the Skeleton Synopsis) from the point of view of each character. And I will do that – but I also need to get on with some world-building. I’ll be launching a new section of the website soon just for world building – so those of you who take an interest in that sort of thing – keep your feedreaders primed (or check back often if that’s how you roll).

I’ve been thinking a lot about the wisdom of what I’m doing here – letting people behind the scenes of my novel before it’s published. I have one friend who will not come near this site because he doesn’t want the book spoiled for him. I had to ask myself – is anyone who reads this site going to bother reading the book when it’s finished? I was reassured by the knowledge that a good book is often read more than once, and a good story’s telling isn’t ruined by a look into the author’s process. That’s why DVD extras exist. You guys are just getting the extras (and my rambling commentary) before you watch the final cut. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Besides, I’m HOPING that the finished book gets a wider audience than the website. But I’m getting way ahead of myself. I have a world to build first. Wish me luck!

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!