Snowflake Method of Writing

As you can see from my Twitter feeds, I'm working my next novel/story via the Snowflake Method.

To date, I've worked through the following steps:

A one-sentence summary of the story: A gender-switching character comes back to the page to save the author who wrote her off.

A paragraph summary of the story: Nick Aceret is a crime novelist with a penchant for creating characters who are more than they seem on the page. While working on the final novel in his latest series, Nick suffers a momentary blackout as he delivers the final death blow to the series’ antagonist, Malcolm Price. When Nick comes to, he finds his essence is now in the body previously occupied by Malcolm in the novel and he has to move quickly not only to stay alive but also to figure out what happened and get back to his own reality. Enter Marlena Kevan, a character Nick wrote off in the third novel of the series, and who is now assigned to save his life and bring Malcolm to justice. Marlena, who had developed a talent for changing genders to fit the circumstances, has to face her past and resolve her feelings for both Malcolm and Nick in order to accomplish her mission.

Character summaries for the major characters (as follows):

Name: Nick Aceret

One-sentence Storyline: Author Nick Aceret finds himself looking at his characters in a new light after one takes over his body and tries to write him off the page.

Motivation: to stay alive

Goal: to regain his reality

Conflict: Malcolm has his body and he has to find a way to get it back with the help of Marlena.

Epiphany: He realizes words truly do have power

One-paragraph Summary: Nick Aceret finds himself looking at the characters he creates in a new way when Malcolm Price, the antagonist in his crime series, switches bodies with him. Nick momentarily blacks out when he is writing the scene where Malcolm is being dealt his death blow. When Nick comes to, he discovers he is now in Malcolm’s body and has to move quickly to stay ahead of the novel’s protagonist who is trying to kill him. He also has to work with Marlena Kevan, a character he had previously written off the page, to find his way back to his own reality. During the course of their efforts to stay one step ahead of the protagonist and figure out how to get Nick back to his own reality and Malcolm back on the page, Nick discovers that Marlena is much more than he created her to be. He faces up to his callous treatment of his characters and the effects it has on them.

Name: Marlena Kevan

One-sentence Storyline: Marlena has to face her feelings toward the author she is sent to save and the character she must put back on the page to face his fate.

Motivation: Peace

Goal: To save Nick Aceret and put Malcolm Price back on the page to face his fate.

Conflict: Her feelings towards both men and herself.

Epiphany: Marlena realizes she is more than what others think of her.

One-paragraph Summary: Marlena Kevan’s assignment is to help Nick Aceret, the author who created her and then wrote her off the page during the course of the first three novels of his series, regain his body and his reality from Malcolm Price, first her kidnapper and then her lover in the series. In order to do so, Marlena must face her past, conquer her fears, and deal with her feelings towards both men, all the while using her talents, including changing genders, to outwit both the protagonist in the novel and Malcolm in order to return Nick to his reality and put Malcolm back on the page to face his fate. During the course of these events, Marlena realizes she has much more to offer than anyone ever gave her credit for, including herself.

Name: Malcolm Price.

One-sentence Storyline: Malcolm Price discovers how to step off the page into reality only to have the woman he tossed aside return him to the page to face his fate.

Motivation: Survival

Goal: To take over Nick Aceret’s body by killing Nick off.

Conflict: His plot is discovered and Marlena is sent in to thwart it.

Epiphany: Karma does get you in the end.

One-paragraph summary: Malcolm Price figures out how to switch realities (and bodies) with his creator, author Nick Aceret. However, Malcolm failed to take into account Nick’s caffeine habit and the effect that would have on a supposedly newly-dead body. He also didn’t think the folks at the Asylum for Miscreant Characters were aware of his activities, or that they would send in Marlena Kevan, the character he’d kidnapped, made his lover and his pawn and then tossed aside, to stop him. When Marlin Karvala came on the scene, Malcolm knew he was in trouble, and realized his actions caught up with him in the end.

Now, I'm working on taking each sentence in the paragraph summary of the story and making each one a paragraph.

Here's what I've got so far...

Paragraph #1: Nick Aceret is a crime novelist with a penchant for creating characters who are more than they seem on the page. During the course of writing his Diabolical Soul crime series, Nick created both Malcolm Price, his antagonist throughout the series, and Marlena Kevan, a character used as a foil for Malcolm until she was written off the page at the end of the third novel, as well as other less notable characters that existed for a few scenes here and there. While Nick was writing the fourth novel in the series, Tracy Averdue, a security agent working with the Asylum for Miscreant Characters, noticed that several of Nick’s characters were much more than he had created them to be. One particular character, Millicent Marianna Freedman, had the audacity to push the essence of the author using her at the time out of the author’s body to hang about in the library until Mr. Von Schutzel, the Asylum’s director, recruited Marlena as part of the team to deflate Millicent’s ego, allowing the author’s essence to move back into her own body and enabling the team to move Millicent back to the Asylum without incident. As Agent Averdue studied the flow of Nick’s series, he noted that Malcolm was a more devious character than Millicent had grown to be, and brought his concerns to Mr. Von Schutzel. Mr. Von Schutzel tried to gain Nick’s attention about the situation, but Nick put the voice in his head down to the natural process of letting go of a character he had spent the better part of the last ten years with.

Paragraph #2: While working on the final novel in his latest series, Nick suffers a momentary blackout as he delivers the final death blow to the series’ antagonist, Malcolm Price. During the course of the last two novels, after his small success in getting Marlena written off at the end of the third novel of the series, Malcolm had studied Nick’s creative method in order to plot how to switch realities with his creator. He’d heard about Millicent’s escapade, and figured if a one-dimensional character who had barely made it through three scenes in the fourth novel of the series could get as far as she did, surely he, being more fully evolved, could succeed where Millicent had failed. Malcolm realized he would not only have to push Nick’s essence out of his body in order to fill it with his own, but also to put Nick’s essence into the body of his character on the page in order to be able to kill Nick off and keep Nick’s reality for his own. What Malcolm didn’t count on was Nick’s heavy caffeine habit during the final writing phases of his novels having the ability to restart a newly dead heart and bring his character back to life in the novel!

Paragraph #3: When Nick comes to, he finds his essence is now in the body previously occupied by Malcolm in the novel and he has to move quickly not only to stay alive but also to figure out what happened and get back to his own reality. Though the body he now inhabited was a mass of bruises, and probably even a fractured bone or two, Nick knew he had to keep moving in order to stay ahead of the protagonist in the novel, Riley Brown, the latest agent assigned to stop Malcolm. He also knew he had to cover his tracks very well until he could figure out what the hell happened and how he was supposed to get back to his own reality. He’d created Riley to be the one to finish Malcolm off in this novel after all! Nick moved to the sewer system, where he knew only by bringing in the cadaver dogs could Riley stand a chance of finding him. He only hoped one of the denizens of the system didn’t make the dogs’ job easier by making him an actual cadaver!

I've still got two paragraphs to go here, but I already see some tweaking and straightening out of plot I need to do. Now, the creator of the Snowflake Method, Randy Ingermanson, does point out that you are likely to revise things as you go along, as your characters teach you things about your story - and I can definitely see some revision in my future already!