the snowflake project

Just a short post to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on.

I have gotten better at writing every day. As I mentioned earlier, I have a stack of index cards that I carry around, and I’ve committed to plotting a minimum of 5 scenes scenes every day using them. Most days I do 10 scenes.

I have no idea how many scenes this novel will have in it, but I have 200 cards. So when I fill those up, I’ll transfer the whole mess into the Scrivener corkboard and see if I need any more.

Parallel to building a scene list for the novel, I’ve been building a character profile for an unrelated project. I’m going to write a series of short stories featuring this character. This will give me a little break from Kos and the gang if and when I need it, and will give you all something to read that’s actually finished.

I used to think I knew how to write a short story, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m calling for suggestions from you – I’m looking for resources that will get my head in the short story game (free articles and/or tools are preferred). Specifically, I’m looking for tips on plotting a short story, and on keeping the unnecessary stuff out of the narrative.

So, apparently I’m going for lunch tomorrow with this dude I’ve only ever talked to in passing in the halls or kitchen.

He was talking about this really healthy place to eat and then all of a sudden he was like: “do you want to go?” so I said, “sure let me know” and he said “Do you want to go tomorrow? Do you want to BE A MAN and go tomorrow?” so I said “sure.”

So we’re going tomorrow. And I will finally be a man.

Speaking of being a man, I’ve taken to carrying a pen and a stack of index cards with me in my messenger bag (also known as a MAN PURSE, which is for MEN, just like lunch is). I use them to write down scenes for the novel. Yes I am still working away. Slowly slowly. But any progress at all is better than none.

Achi’s character chart is complete and live on the site.

Get straight to it here, or find it via Achi’s character page.

I’m getting a really good sense of Achi’s personality and what drives him. His path towards villainy is becoming clearer in my head.

The last thing I wanted was to make him into a cliche, so hopefully I can avoid that by keeping him sympathetic. The chart I’m using really helps with that by asking about your character’s fears and vulnerabilities without any prejudice. Villains have pathos too!

Part 2 of Step 6 of TSM is live – you can read it here.

If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, it’s probably a good idea to start with it instead.

I’m almost finished with Step 6. I think one more good day of writing should wrap it up. I wrote over 500 words over lunch today, and if I can do that again tomorrow, I think I’ll have it done.

Then it’s on to Step 7. I’m going to use the character chart outlined in The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy Vol. 1. I find it to be very complete.

Stay tuned for more LFS tomorrow!

I’m not quite finished writing Step 6 of TSM, but that doesn’t mean I can’t share it with you.

I’m going to be releasing it in stages so as not to overwhelm you with a huge wall of text (I’m approaching the end, and it’s measuring up to be about an hour and a half’s read). I’m putting it on different pages to make things a little easier for everyone. There’ll be links at the bottom of each page to get to the next one – if the link is broken, that means I haven’t published the next page yet.

You can find the Long Format Synopsis through the menu via the Story Bible. For those of you with less patience for menus – find it here.

Sorry for the long delay – but the one page summary from Kos’s point of view turned into something more along the lines of three pages, and I’ve been suffering from a particularly nasty cold.

Anyway on Kos’s Character Page, you can find the whole story from his point of view. I’ll be following that shortly with a (hopefully) shorter version from Achi’s perspective.

I’m beginning to see how much material is hidden away in this plot, waiting to be unpacked in prose. It’s exciting!

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.

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!

The Deep Theme

In my first post, I mentioned that the central theme of this story is going to be focused around PERCEPTION. I want the novel to acknowledge that things are rarely what they seem to be, that the forces driving behavior are often hidden deep below the surface. Many aspects of the protagonist’s journey will involve looking deeper, piercing the veil of perception, as it were.

To that end – some of the major plot points will have to revolve around people thinking one thing, but the reality being something different. Smoke and mirrors. I’ll have to keep this theme in the forefront of my thoughts as I write.

I already have some ideas on how to bring this theme to life through various aspects of the story – I’m looking forward to developing those.

Length

First time novel writers obsess about length. It’s thought of as a major factor in a book’s marketability to a publisher. That may be true, but that truth is a sad fallacy (see, already elements of my deep theme are poking through!). Books that are long cost more to print and distribute – and typically cannot be sold for more than other, shorter books, and therefore have a slimmer profit margin. That’s why you’ll often hear that first time novelists should keep to under 90,000 words. I disagree – for a few reasons.

First off, your story needs the number of words it needs. If it’s a good story, people will buy it, and so will a publisher. That’s the old argument. The new argument has two prongs. The first prong is that more and more people are buying and reading ebooks these days, so printing costs needn’t enter into the equation, or at least, not as strongly. The second prong is that it’s becoming somewhat more acceptable to self-publish – and as that’s my plan with this novel (since I’m writing it in public and offering it for free) I don’t give a fig what any publisher thinks at this point.

But thinking of length raises another issue – that is, how much of the story should I tell? I have something of an arc in mind – should I tell the whole thing in one volume, or should I split it up into a series? Because of the way The Snowflake Method works, that’s a decision I need to make now, before I start Step 1.

In the end, it was thinking about Step 1 that helped me decide to write in volumes. The story I have in mind is too big to be condensed into a 15 word sentence.

The Beginning

The fact that I’m already thinking about how to distill my story for Step 1 makes me think I’m ready to begin. Expect an announcement soon that I’ve officially begun writing a novel using The Snowflake Method – and stay tuned for the result of Step 1, which will appear somewhere in the Story Bible area of the site.

The first step in The Snowflake Method is to write one sentence that communicates the essence of the story, in 15 words or less, if possible. Well I can’t do that until I’ve done a great deal of thinking about what sort of story I want my novel to tell. So before Step 1, comes Step 0.

3 Cornerstones

I know three major things about my novel:

1. It will be a fantasy novel
2. It will be an epic physical and metaphysical journey
3. It will be about looking through what SEEMS to be, and finding what really IS

So from those three points, I can determine my genre, the fact that my novel will be jointly driven by plot and by character development, and I have a central theme. That’s a great start to Step 0, but I need a lot more.

Setting

I started thinking about the fantasy genre in general and how much the fringe of the genre is stretching, and how many different ways you can tell a fantasy story. There’s high fantasy, portal fiction, dark fantasy, steampunk, magical, non-magical, modern fantasy, and so much more! I’ve settled on a slightly non-traditional version of high fantasy for my setting.

I enjoy portal fiction just as much as the next geek, but something about writing portal fiction seems like a bit of a cop-out. It makes finding excuses for exposition way too easy. How am I supposed to explain the strange and wonderful workings of my amazing world to my readers? I know! I’ll make the main character a normal person, just like them, who needs everything explained! It also seems just a little too easy to fall into the trap of making the main character too much like me – after all, he’d be a normal guy from my universe. I like the challenge of writing a story completely contained within a world of my own creation.

I know there will be magic – in fact, I’m fairly certain it will play a very large role in the story – however, magic will be rare. I’ve learned from role-playing games, that deciding something like this up front is vitally important to the integrity of the story being told.

My departures from the typical high fantasy setting will be as follows:

1. A smattering of steampunk
2. A somewhat non-traditional look at the standard fantasy races

Characters

I’ve given some thought to the protagonist – and the fact that his story will be a journey. It’s a bit of a cliché in fantasy fiction, especially high fantasy, to make the protagonist a village boy or a farmer who dreams of world travel and adventure, and then finding some way of actually getting him out doing amazing things. I like stories like this; they work. If the protagonist is already somebody important, most people will have a harder time empathizing with him. However – I don’t want to go the country bumpkin with big dreams route. That’s where I draw the line.

My protagonist will be committed to his life – more likely in a city than in the country. He’ll have a lot of reasons to stay – and he’ll go off into the great unknown against his will. More on him later.

As for the other characters – I haven’t yet given them much thought. I’ll need a companion (or two) for my hero, as well as potentially a love interest. I’ll need someone to act as a sage as well. I’ll need a villain, of course, as well. Are there other big character shoes that need filling? Probably – let me know in the comments.

I think that’s enough to chew on for now. I’ll most likely post a “part 2″ of Step 0 soon with a little more initial planning.