One of the first "teachers" whose "classroom" I invaded and within which I set up a squatter's camp was Randy Ingermanson's. You can find his Snowflake Method spelled out at advancedfictionwriting.com. But be forewarned: if you are going there to learn about his process for writing a novel, you will be able to "check out any time you like, but you can never leave" as the Hotel California song warned. ;-) That is because once you've studied Randy's brilliant concepts you will be unable to ever abandon them completely. I spent over a month following his step-by-step process and have been extensively utilizing what I learned ever since.
Randy lays out a 10 Step process for writing your novel. The process starts with a one-sentence summary of your novel and ends with the first real draft of it. In between, are eight steps of filling out the complexity of your story step-by-step. He calls this process the Snowflake Method because it starts simple like the drawing of two triangles laid out with one inverted upside-down atop the other to create the basic shape of a star. Using that simple analogous illustration, Randy then "builds" (moves forward through the process) the "snowflake" (story structure) one layer of detail upon another (the 10 Steps) until an exquisite "snowflake" (completed story structure) is produced. At the time I discovered Randy's approach to writing a novel, The Snowflake Method had been viewed over 2,400,000 times on his web site! This guy is no beginner!
I hope that, if you are an interested future novel writer, that you will check out Randy's Snowflake Method. You won't be disappointed that you did!
In my next post, I will describe my fascination with Christopher Vogler's The Hero's Journey. I hope that you will return to hear what I have to say about that! Till then!
Randy lays out a 10 Step process for writing your novel. The process starts with a one-sentence summary of your novel and ends with the first real draft of it. In between, are eight steps of filling out the complexity of your story step-by-step. He calls this process the Snowflake Method because it starts simple like the drawing of two triangles laid out with one inverted upside-down atop the other to create the basic shape of a star. Using that simple analogous illustration, Randy then "builds" (moves forward through the process) the "snowflake" (story structure) one layer of detail upon another (the 10 Steps) until an exquisite "snowflake" (completed story structure) is produced. At the time I discovered Randy's approach to writing a novel, The Snowflake Method had been viewed over 2,400,000 times on his web site! This guy is no beginner!
I hope that, if you are an interested future novel writer, that you will check out Randy's Snowflake Method. You won't be disappointed that you did!
In my next post, I will describe my fascination with Christopher Vogler's The Hero's Journey. I hope that you will return to hear what I have to say about that! Till then!
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