A month-long novel-planning challenge with prizes galore. |
Ok, here's what I remember... I'm not totally sure if I did the snowflake method "correctly," but what intrigued me was the idea that I could start out with a one sentence description of my story and "build up." If you think about it, summarizing an entire novel in one sentence is harder than fleshing out all of the details. Once you can clearly say what your novel is about, all of the other stuff just starts filling in. For outline revision #2, I expanded my summary to include a beginning, conflicts/disasters and an ending. (If you've been doing the assignments in order, chances are you already know some of the conflicts your protagonist might go through.) The farther you get in the assignments, the easier it is to fill in details. For outline revision #3, I kept my summary, but added one more paragraph for each of my main characters. In each paragraph, I wrote a summary of that character's personal storyline. In other words, how does that plot effect his or her character? What is their background story, and how does it relate to the plot? For the final outline revision, I literally broke down my entire novel into scenes. First, this happens. Then, that happens, etc. . . I also created a rough timeline of months/years in which each event took place. This was the most time consuming part, but my novel was practically done at that point! Will this method work for you? It depends on how you think. If you don't like having the rigid structure of a formal outline, I say go for it! And thanks to Brandiwynš¶ for tagging me on this. Even if it was a dirty trick to get me thinking about novel and actually thinking I might be able to do it this year. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |