I managed to slog through fourteen pages of notes, outlines and character profiles (through step six) before I let myself get to actually writing.Īnd it wasn’t any fun. I used the Snowflake Method to plot two books in between my second and third completed manuscripts. Yes, while I am a fully converted pantser, I forgot to mention that my first attempts at plotting almost put me off the practice forever. For all the writers I know, the joy of the journey of writing is in discovery, and if you’ve made all your discoveries before you start writing, sometimes there’s nothing left to motivate you to write on.Īnd I can say this from experience. Or, somewhat conversely, if you go through the first nine steps of this method, for some writers that level of detail in planning can sap the fun out of writing. On the other hand, using this method can lead to analysis paralysis-you can spend so long trying to perfect your outline and your character profiles that you never actually get around to writing anything. Simply put, if you like to know as much as you can about a book before you start writing, this can be a great way to discover your characters and their storylines. You know the events, the sequence, the logic there.Īnother strength is that you can start with almost nothing and “grow” a plot “naturally.” If you start with just the most basic idea-say, National Treasure for the Amish or something )-you can develop your characters and your plot.Īlso, the method’s steps alternate between working on characters and on the plot, ensuring that you develop both-but that you don’t have to spend so long working straight on each one that you get bored. Before you even write one word of your story, you have pages and pages of information on the characters, their backgrounds, how they see the story unfolding. So what are the potential strengths and weaknesses of the Snowflake Method, so we can do this for ourselves? ProsĪfter spending so much time refining them and writing about them, you get to know your characters and your plot well. (And we’ll continue to look at more methods to plot stories over the next two weeks.) We’ve already seen how Carol adapted the Snowflake Method to suit her needs as a writer, using its strengths for her and discarding its potential weaknesses.
The Snowflake Method of story design is just one way to create a plot-but it’s not the best way, nor is it even a good way for all of us.
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