How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method (Advanced Fiction Writing)

Who is this book for? This book is for someone interested in finding an alternative writing method to (or extra tool to use with) 'outline writing' or 'discovery writing' methods that inherently helps them create a logically consistent story and world and thereby reduce revisions needed in the editing stages. I would say a person with some knowledge of writing, but you don't have to have a bunch of knowledge - someone with medium knowledge about writing a book. There are some terms and concepts that may be foreign and so confusing if you don't have knowledge of basic concepts of writing. But most everything is explained even for people with relatively little knowledge of writing theory and english, etc.If you wanted to read this book really fast, just skip to the step summaries at the end of the book and don't read the story - the summary goes over pretty much everything in the story - but if you have hard time understanding the summary of the steps, you may want to go read the story parts for the sections you don't understand. This being said, I read the whole book in a day and a half, so it's a very quick read as I would consider myself an average reader in terms of speed. The concepts in it are not very complicated.IMO the heart of this guide is centered on world building and the logical consistency of your world and story. I enjoyed the story with Goldilocks - it made it fun and easy to read and learn, and I found myself chuckling though out, which always helps.It was also a really interesting way to teach the method by using a story - it was totally different than Plato, but almost just as unique in how the dialogues between characters play out in order to teach the reader the entire 'snowflake concept' in a how-to book. Unlike Plato we are not left scratching our hands and wondering at the end of the story and its much easier to remember everything that was taught.Goldilocks often reflects the questions, insecurities, and concerns you may have yourself as a writer and student. The Big Bad Wolf, and Baby Bear, are pretty funny throughout adding even more humor to all of Goldilocks hilarious embarrassing moments.The snowflake method helps you imagine the world and settings and characters of your story and then to write your novel from that solid foundation. Once you have all your scenes of the book written (one sentence summaries aka step #9), and each scene of your story has motion (some type of conflict so its not boring - also part of step #9), you can begin to write your novel.In fact if you feel you really know your world and characters and settings and themes, you could just skip all the way to step #9, yet for most people they need time to learn and immerse themselves in their fictional world before step #9, hence steps 1-8.Maybe if you are a discovery writer, you might discover your scenes and try to build a logically consistent world as you write your scenes, and then further build the world and logical consistency of your world while your write the full novel. But this may lead to more revisions if you didn't really grasp your world as good as you originally thought.The point is: there are options, you are not trapped into the "snowflake way of writing" when you find a better way to tackle your next writing project. He mentions this method is very flexible, and the steps can change depending on what you're writing - freeing you to find your own 'best way' of writing in the end.So in summary the book teaches you how to immerse yourself in your fictional world (a world with characters, plot, settings, themes, and conflict, etc.), and then to write your one sentence scene summaries for your story, and finally to write the whole story from there.The reason it is a fun and useful way to write is because you can write out your entire book in 25-100 sentences, give or take, and then from these sentences and your understanding of your world and character(s) you can easily enjoying writing, what you KNOW will be, an AWESOME AND LOGICALLY CONSISTENT story. Why? Because you already preplanned for it and worked out most of the major kinks before hand.Of course you have to be creative enough and hard enough working to come up with all your scenes and make sure they are not boring and to be able to write the book from these scenes at step #10. But the author even mentions writing takes hard work and dedication. Yet with the snowflake method the hard work is in the preplanning stage of steps 1-9 and the writing at step 10 is mostly pure joy, in theory.He mentions how this method also makes editing easier if problems occur or revision is needed, etc.And the author says one of the main pulls of using this method is that you will typically have to do less revising than if you use either of the classic 'outlining' or 'discovery' methods while you write, and when you go to edit.

The book had a status = Acceptable but the one I received is like New. Shipment was really late, I'm not sure why. Maybe they couldn't find the "Acceptable" book, so they found me a better one. Maybe that held up the order, or USPS held up the delivery. I've ordered from this Vendor before and the books have always been in good shape and shipped on time. It wasn't shipped through Amazon, shipped USPS, so if you are in a rush, don't choose USPS. Amazon even offered me a credit because it was taking so long. I don't think it was the Vendor's fault. Luckily I was not in a rush. I really wanted the book. It was Worth the wait !

I bought this book on Sunday. I read through it once, then as I walked through the steps with the story kernel I had in my head, I read through it again. By Friday I had completed a first draft of 12,000 words, and by Sunday night I had published my book in the Kindle Store.Prior to this, the last story I finished was over 5 years ago (and that was about 2,400 words long). I always felt I was meant to be a writer, but I have always had trouble creating plot and keeping things moving forward. I was comfortable writing description, and I enjoyed writing dialogue, but I never knew what to make my characters say or do!I have attended multiple writing workshops, and read about a dozen books on writing, but none were as clear or as practical as this one. As Randy says, it's not for everyone. But if you have tried a bunch of methods and they didn't exactly get you rolling, try this one out.(On a side note, I had read Randy's popular blog post on the Snowflake Method a bunch of times over the years and tried to implement it, but the blog post is nowhere near as detailed or useful as the book. So buy the book.)With this method, you are not creating *plot*, you're creating story. There is a lot to this book, especially considering how short it actually is, but I want to talk about two sections that absolutely blew my mind and (I know this sounds like massive hyperbole) probably changed my life forever.1. When thinking about your characters, think about this: values --> ambition --> goal. This simple formula will create great characters. Let me explain why. You ever hear a writer say something like, "the character came alive on the page" or "I just sat back and let the characters determine the direction of the story?" Yeah, me too. I read this all the time, in great books like Stephen King's On Writing. That's all well and good, I always thought, but how the heck can *I* do that? This little values-ambition-goal thing does that for you. In particular, I have found that the "values" portion of this trick is the most useful for me.Here's what you do. You give your characters two values. As an example, off the top of my head, I'm gonna say my character believes that: a) Nothing is more important than upholding the law, and b) Nothing is more important than the safety of my family. Now, think of a situation that might put those two values in direct competition with each other. Say my character's teenage daughter is being stalked by some creepy older dude, and the authorities won't do anything about it. Now, does my character take the law into his own hands? Or does he sit back and let the situation play itself out? Either way, you know something is going to happen, and whichever way it goes (maybe my character kills the stalker, maybe the daughter gets abducted, maybe the character has an argument with the daughter and she runs away), it will lead to tons more story. And whatever happens then, we look to the values of the character to determine what they might do in that situation down the line. It leads to consistent characters and weirdly, focusing on the mind of the character gives us stuff for them to do!2. Character synopses. So, the Snowflake Method basically recommends the three-act structure. (To paraphrase poorly: three escalating disasters with the final one being the ultimate showdown and resolution of the central conflict.) But in this book, Ingermanson also recommends you not only write a synopsis for your book (i.e. your main character) but also do a one-sentence and one-paragraph synopsis for your other characters. Holy moly, this floored me. By looking at the central story from the perspective of the secondary characters, you get great ideas that add dimension to the world of your story.Even if you don't tell the reader everything about your secondary characters (and you shouldn't), it might be useful for you to know that the creepy stalker guy developed his crush on the teenage daughter at a daycare she attended and he worked at. Hmm, maybe that might impact your story in some way? YA THINK? It takes you into directions you didn't expect, and again, gives your characters well-rounded edges, instead of the paper-thin one-note characters you find in books like [redacted].Last night, I swear, I couldn't fall asleep because my head was overflowing with one story idea after another, all of which I could easily write into short story, novella or novel form.Also, while not exactly an outline, after I had completed the steps of the Snowflake Method the picture I had created in my mind of the story I wanted to write was so clear that I was writing upwards of 2,000 words per hour for my first draft, basically just dictating from my brain to the paper. It was magical. But it was because I had already thought through the important parts of my story.Alright, I have gone on long enough. Please buy this book. I have barely scratched the surface of its awesomeness. And anyway, it's cheap! And it's short, so if you don't like it, you didn't waste much time or money. But if, like me, you have always found it hard to find stuff for your characters to do, this book will likely help you. Don't worry about the Goldilocks/Three Bears/Big Bad Wolf story. It's just a dumb story Randy uses to illustrate the point of the book. Some people here are taking it way too seriously, like he meant for the story to be published in The New Yorker for gosh sake.I love this book. I love Randy Ingermanson. I feel like this book will be the main reason for igniting my writing passion and, spaghetti monster-willing, career.

I bought this book with low expectations. Science, I'm not going to understand this. But with the example of the goldilocks story, it all fell into place. Is it easy, no. It makes you think. I've tried other methods and wasn't getting far until I tried the snowflake method. I write mainly for kindle vella and novellas, so I don't use all 20 steps, but that's OK. I only use what I need.

I bought this book thinking that (for me) science-types are really adept at explaining things. Think of Alton Brown. Snowflake Method did not disappoint. Step-by-step plans for writing a draft helped me see my way out of the weeds of planning a novel. Goldilocks analogy provided examples of what the planning steps looked like, which is helpful in learning new things. And the author's sense of humor made Snowflake Method a fun read.

I heard about The Snowflake Method of writing on a NaNoWriMo forum post and thought it sounded interesting. I took part in NaNoWriMo 2019 and wrote 119K words and then fizzled out. I couldn’t do the whole outlining thing because it was dull to me and the pants method seemed to be unsuccessful so I decided to get the book and take a look.I have to say this method seems to fall into a happy middle ground between the two methods that I think I could employ when I come to start again with the abandoned book.The concept of the book is clever with it starting with a story about Goldilocks who wants to write a book after her children go to school and leaves her at home with no job because she’s been out of the market for 8 years. She decides to attend a writing conference where she is introduced to the Snowflake Method by Baby Bear the teacher.It’s a ridiculous story, which is why you focus on the lessons that Baby Bear teaches and it seemed to sink in quite well for me. The author then went on to show his method for writing the short story, which, though repetitive in places, was illuminating. It showed how to work through the method, illustrating it more clearly.If you are struggling with how to actually tackle writing a book, this is a very good purchase.

I'm currently plotting my sixth novel. For each book, I've been trying a different approach to plotting with the goal of finding the mehtod that works best for me. I pantsed the first novel, which took ten years, then adopted verious plotting methods for the next four.I've found some great guides (anything by KM Weiland, for instance) but found that all of them separate out plot and character, making it harder to fit the two together. This book doesn't do that. It alternates between the two, giving you the opportunity to work on both at greater levels of detail as you go along.I enjoyed the way it was presented as a story and the opportunity that gave the author to demonstrate his techniques. Show, don't tell in action!The sections on proactive and reactive scenes were really useful and were like switching on a lightbulb for me, mainly because they were demonstrated before they were described. I've now ordered the accompanying book on writing scenes, so I can inject as much pace as possible into my scenes.The only thing I would add is more detail about how character arc drives plot in the early stages of Snowflaking, and an examination of the role of the protagonist and the antagnoist in driving the internal and external plots. I'm going to be layering that onto my own use of the Snowflake method.Al in all, an excellent, entertaining and highly practical resource. Highly recommended.

I am new to writing and have tried plotting and pantsing and neither have really worked for me. While much closer to plotting than pantsing, The Snowflake Method offers something a bit different, I would say. I felt bogged down in all the advice and methods out there in books and on websites, but this book has helped me understand what is most important to the way I want to write. Thank you Randy!

This is a strange book, but it's great at what it's intended to do. The curious decision to teach the method by using the method, while unusual in itself, is overshadowed by the even more curious decision to do so with a cast of characters including Goldilocks, the Big Bad Wolf and Mother Hubbard. For some this will be a stumbling block. If you're expecting a dry textbook, you won't get that here. If you're prepared to put the time in to read the story and absorb the lessons in it, I think you'll find it valuable though.The method itself is eye-opening. As someone who has tried to write long-form fiction several times over a number of years, and always run out of steam before 20,000 words, I greatly appreciated the framework this book gave me, to plan out what I was going to do, and work out the twists and turns of my story early, long before I've committed thousands of words to paper. I don't have the patience of a traditional plotter, and I can say with some confidence that my pantsing skills leave something to be desired, having painted more than one story into a depressing corner over the years. The snowflake method does seem to give some hope, and I'm trying it out right now. I suppose the best way to judge this book, and my review of it is to wait and see if a novel turns up on Amazon with my name on it in the next year or so :)

I have scribbled on and off for years and have an assortment of uncompleted novels which I have lost interest in. The idea of this book appealed to me and when I started reading it I was totally engrossed in it. The author uses fairy tale characters in a writing workshop scenario to demonstrate the ten steps of the snowflake method for planning and drafting a novel.The idea might seem a bit twee but like the famous management book about change 'Who Moved my Cheese?' stories and story book characters help to fix ideas in your head. Human beings are story telling creatures and telling stories makes things more memorable than a list of facts.Basically the snowflake starts with a one sentence description of your novel and builds up from that with more detailed summaries of the plot and characters right up to outlines of each scene in the book. This might seem quite dull but the writing workshop scenario really brings it to life. You could just read the chapter where the whole process is set out and work from that but you will miss a lot if you don't read the story which illustrates the process.If you've tried other methods and they haven't worked for you do give this one a try - it just might be what you're looking for. I know it has made me think more carefully about what sort of novel I want to write. Give it a try - it will only take you a few hours to get to the point of creating a detailed synopsis and you will be able to see what isn't working without having to get half way through the first draft before realising that you need to completely rewrite it.