Ingermason's Snowflake method

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alexanderian
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Ingermason's Snowflake method

Post by alexanderian »

Has anybody tried Ingermason's snowflake method when trying to write a book? If so, does it help you? By my understanding and reading about it it seems like there's a lot that goes into book planning but then it seems all worth it not just for writing the boo but sending out boo proposals as well.
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Post by Carla Hurst-Chandler »

Had never heard of it...after a googling...it sounds like a very good basic approach to a novel!
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Post by zeldagreene »

I had heard of it before, but I didn't know exactly what it was. Once I googled, it seemed valid enough. But unfortunately for me, I am not very good at organization for the most part.
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Post by Carla Hurst-Chandler »

zeldagreene wrote:I had heard of it before, but I didn't know exactly what it was. Once I googled, it seemed valid enough. But unfortunately for me, I am not very good at organization for the most part.

It sounds like it could be used as exactly that...an organizational assist. That is something I love about the OBC...always learning new approaches! :D
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Post by RussetDivinity »

I used it for a novel a few months ago, and it helped a lot, but I think it mainly helped because I had a lot of plot threads to tie together. For simple narratives, it may not be necessary, but if you have a lot of characters that need fleshing out, then it's great.
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Post by moderntimes »

Rather interesting method but a bit too rigid for me. But okay. What it appears to be focused on is to prevent getting stuck or getting writer's block and it's an organized method to help your creative juices flow. At least that's how I see this snowflake method. I use a more casual approach I'll share, if someone is perhaps "stuck"...

Here's how I write a novel (and I've written 3 private detective novels)...

I have a general idea of the raw story line, but no real details. A basic idea might be "Mitch falls in love with a client and gets messed up as a result" or "Mitch gets mixed up with the Chechen Mafia" -- very generalized idea.

I might type out a few ideas or just think about them. I've got a very sharp memory so I don't need to write these ideas down if I don't want to. But regardless of typing out the basic plot ideas or just thinking about them, I might have an idea or two, for example, with the "Chechen Mafia" idea, a particular sequence might be "Mitch thinks he's found a Mafia bad guy but the guy is an undercover FBI agent." Ideas like that, maybe a half dozen of them, very vague plot points to muddle over.

Then I start writing. Now here's where lots of newbie authors get stuck --- "Chapter One, I am born." (ha ha) but the new writer cannot get started and loses interest.

Here's how I deal with this... I simply write "Chapter 14, the big fight between Mitch and the secret agent" or whatever. Important is this: to write the chapter that most intersests you, the sequence of things that might be floating around in your mind. And you simply write that particular chapter, sitting all by itself.

Maybe another chapter is "the big love scene" or "the witches have a meeting and elect a leader" or "the Mars mission blasts off" -- there's no difference in what you want to write, just so you write something, anything, even a few paragraphs.

So the snowflake method seems to be a certain way to get started and help defend against writer's block. At least that's how I see it.

My method is less structured. I simply "skip ahead" and write a crucial or interesting chapter first, not necessarily "chapter one". Then I sort of branch out from there, and maybe think "What happens after the big fight?" or "What led up to the big fight?" (in which you substitute "love scene" or "blast off" in lieu of "big fight") and then you therefore write a couple of connecting chapters.

Then you write a totally disconnected chapter, the chapter that depicts another crucial point in the story.

My "method" is simply this: Don't try to force yourself to write the book in sequence, starting with the first sentence. Instead, start where your interest is piqued and then build upon that, and you'll then write connecting chapters and those fill in the book's story line. As you build up a series of critical chapters, you can then link them and orgainize them in sequence.

I hope this makes sense.
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Post by John Macgregor »

Randy's method is very useful for someone starting out writing and is directed more towards those intending to write a book as opposed to something like a short story. It is a structured approach to writing.

Many people view writing as a creative art. It is....around 5%. Mostly it involves a lot of planning and hard work. That makes it 95% work. Like any work that you might do there is a requirement for some level of rigidity. The snowflake method offers this for the pre-planning or pre-writing portion of the process. Where it falls down is on the post writing portion of the process that involves editing, copy editing, etc.

I personally found it to be an important tool when I started and it help organize my thought processes, outlining or story-boarding the story. I will probably use it again for the same again.

Once I got into the actual writing portion of the process, I turned to his book "Writing Fiction for Dummies." I found this to be far more useful.

In the end, it turned out that Scrivner with its internal organization was what got me through my first project. I stongly recommend it.

When it was all said and done, none of the above mentioned items helped with the 'post production.' That was nothing but elbow grease and hard slogging.

I hope this helps you out a little bit. :-)
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Post by moderntimes »

Bottom line in my estimation is "whatever works".
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Post by Tanaya »

I've tried using this method several times and usually run into problems once I get to step 8 (making the list of scenes). I usually don't completely/thoroughly finish this step and move onto step 9. Or I even skip earlier steps because I want to get to the good, higher up ones. Basically, I've learned that patience really is a virtue. What I like about the Snowflake method is that it gives you a full view of your story so that you can find out what's broken and needs fixing before writing and realizing the idea doesn't work in its current state. Hopefully I make it all the way through the Snowflake method one of these days and am satisfied with what is produced.

One thing I would caution any potential author against is getting too preoccupied with the planning. You're supposed to be a control freak when it comes to a product of your own creation, right? Anyway, I find that I have a good idea of what I want to write going in and end up writing something entirely different. So use the Snowflake method to get your ideas down and come up with some new ones, but it doesn't have to be a strict blueprint for what you ultimately create.
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Post by moderntimes »

taco is spot on. Don't get too stuck on planning. Excessive planning can put you into a funk of useless details instead of just writing. Some planning is essential but overdoing it is not productive. Do what works for you but also don't think that a "formula" will make things work. What matters is the writing. Learn from various suggestions and hints but stick to your own productivity.

-- 02 Aug 2015, 11:06 --

Had not heard of it either but it seems like a lot of ancillary work rather than just writing. But thinking back, I non-fondly remember these various exercises that we'd be put through in class that were meant to teach us how to write better, and I'll say that NONE of them ever gave me the slightest help. Not a single exercise.

And I'd think that the snowflake method, although cute and kind of interesting to read, would be of any real benefit to a serious writer.

This is just my opinion, of course, but for me, having written 3 mystery novels (sold), various essays and articles (most sold), some short stories (some sold), and many book & movie reviews (all published), that I never learned to write anything from an exercise, whether self-induced or classroom imposed.

The only way I've learned to do publishable and pretty decent writing has been to do 2 simple things: Read a lot of the type or genre for which I'm writing, and then write write write write, over and over as I honed my talent and skills. That's it.

Understand, I'm pretty well organized, mentally. I majored in chemistry with asides in biology and math, and worked for years in research and technology. Scheduling your day via the scientific method and keeping meticulous notes and records of every experiment and test helps you make things well set forth and linear. So I therefore applied this to my fiction (and nonfiction) and it's worked pretty well for me. But other than a fairly solid sense of organization, I cannot think of any sort of exercise that might help me with writing my 4th novel, now in progress.

But as I say, that's for me. Others who benefit from exercises, snowflake or other, tell us how that's helped you.

-- 02 Aug 2015, 11:08 --

Had not heard of it either but it seems like a lot of ancillary work rather than just writing. But thinking back, I non-fondly remember these various exercises that we'd be put through in class that were meant to teach us how to write better, and I'll say that NONE of them ever gave me the slightest help. Not a single exercise.

And I'd think that the snowflake method, although cute and kind of interesting to read, would scarcely be of any real benefit to a serious writer.

This is just my opinion, of course, but for me, having written 3 mystery novels (sold), various essays and articles (most sold), some short stories (some sold), and many book & movie reviews (all published), that I never learned to write anything from an exercise, whether self-induced or classroom imposed.

The only way I've learned to do publishable and pretty decent writing has been to do 2 simple things: Read a lot of the type or genre for which I'm writing, and then write write write write, over and over as I honed my talent and skills. That's it.

Understand, I'm pretty well organized, mentally. I majored in chemistry with asides in biology and math, and worked for years in research and technology. Scheduling your day via the scientific method and keeping meticulous notes and records of every experiment and test helps you make things well set forth and linear. So I therefore applied this to my fiction (and nonfiction) and it's worked pretty well for me. But other than a fairly solid sense of organization, I cannot think of any sort of exercise that might help me with writing my 4th novel, now in progress.

But as I say, that's for me. Others who benefit from exercises, snowflake or other, tell us how that's helped you.

-- 02 Aug 2015, 11:08 --

Sorry for the double post. My bad.
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Post by DATo »

It would be interesting to know what the great classical novelists would have to say about the Ingermason's Snowflake Method.
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Post by moderntimes »

DAT, I'd doubt that any major novelist uses any specialized exercise. From what I know, they just write write write.
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