#preptober2023

Here in the Office we're going to be doing Preptober using the Snowflake method.

What is Preptober? During the month of October, people planning to do NaNoWriMo prepare for the month, getting their story and their lives ready to complete the challenge. The programme is actually 6 weeks long, so this room is going to be a little longer than a month.

What is NaNoWriMo? During the month of November, writers around the world attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month - known as National Novel Writing Month.

What is the Snowflake Method? This is a fiction writing method where you follow 10 steps to get your novel ready to write. The steps all involve gradually expanding and branching your story (sort of like a snowflake). It is the brainchild of Randy Ingermanson.

I strongly recommend buying Ingermanson's book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method and reading along with it. Its a very engaging read. At first the unusual style in which it was written put me off a little, but after a while I realised I was actually hooked on the story he was telling too (following the journey of the book's protagonist quite closely, which I am guessing was the point). I often struggle to read 'examples' in fiction writing books and the way this book is written overcame that completely.

For this room, I will use the material Ingerman provides for free on his website. I will not add anything from the book, but I will suggest chapters to read if you are also reading.

How will this work? Throughout the 6 weeks of Preptober, I will post prompts to complete two things:

The steps of the Snowflake Method, spaced out according to their length.

The steps of the Preptober course outline from the NaNoWriMo website.

We’ll use the Snowflake Method to cover the first few weeks of Preptober. Because you move around between things like plot and character, we won’t be doing these in order. Below is the the full schedule of posts.

Week 1 (normally idea generation)

18 September: Step 1 (takes about 1 hour)

20 September: Step 2 (takes about 1 hour)

22 September: Step 3 (takes a few hours, depending how many characters you have)

Week 2 (normally characters)

25 September: Step 4 (takes a few hours)

28 September: Step 5 (takes a few days)

Week 3 (normally plot)

2 October: Step 6 (takes a week)

Week 4 (normally worldbuilding)

9 October: Step 7 (takes a week)

Week 5 (normally grow your writing community)

16 October: Step 8

Week 6 (normally find and manage your time)

23 October: Step 9

Here we are at the beginning of the journey. But what is a beginning? Even if you think you are at the very beginning, starting with a blank page, that probably isn’t the case. You are full of experiences and ideas and all the books and TV shows and movies and everything else that you have consumed.

For those who don’t have an idea in mind, you might want to go to the NaNoWriMo website and look at their week 1 exercise around generating an idea.

Snowflake Step 1: Your Novel in a Single Sentence

Recommended time: 1 hour

Write a single sentence description of your novel. Keep it as short as you can. No character names.

Tip: Ingarmanson recommends reading the one line blurbs on the New York Times bestseller list.

This is the one step I had already completed before I thought to make this a series on this website. Its harder than it sounds. I did need a full hour, as I revised it quite a few times. I also needed to limit it to an hour or I could have kept revising it forever. And since then I’ve already thought of changes to it.

This is also the one step I am going to share. At the moment it looks like this:

Snowflake Method Step 6: Your novel in 5 pages

Recommended time: A week

Expand each paragraph from step 4 into a full page.

Snowflake Step 5: Who are your characters really?

Recommended time: A few days

Write up descriptions of your characters - one page for major characters, half a page for the rest. These should tell the story from the point of view of each character.

Snowflake Step 3: Who are your characters?

Recommended time: 1 hour per major character

For each character, create a summary sheet covering the following:

The character’s name

A one-sentence summary of their storyline

Their motivation (their abstract desire)

Their goal (their concrete desire)

Their conflict (which stops them achieving their goal)

Their epiphany (what they will learn during the story)

A one-paragraph summary of their storyline

For all steps from now on, finish this by seeing if you need to revise anything you’ve already created.

Snowflake Step 4: Your Novel on a Single Page(ish)

Recommended time: A few hours

Take the one paragraph description and turn each line into a paragraph of its own.

Snowflake Step 2: Your Novel in a Single Paragraph

Recommended time: 1 hour

Expand your sentence into a full paragraph. This should cover the premise (1 sentence), the major disasters (3 sentences) and the ending (1 sentence).

Snowflake Method Step 9: Your story, the mini version (Optional)

Recommended time: A week

Step 9 is to write a narrative summary of your novel. Using your spreadsheet you can flesh out each scene and ensure it has conflict of some kind. This should include any cool ideas, images you have in your mind. He would then print this out and use it as a ‘map’ to the story and a place to make notes. Ingermanson notes that he doesn’t do this any more, but found it useful once.

As step 10 is WRITE, then you are done when you complete this (or choose not to).

Tip: If you have the book, there is an alternate step 9. You can do this instead, or do both. I plan to do both. Ingermanson said he started each chapter on a new page. If I decide to write this longhand, I’ll probably put each scene on a page and add a fairly large margin for future notes.

Tip 2: The NaNo Prep activity this week is about managing your time. You should absolutely spend some time on this! This is an important part of setting yourself up for success. Some tips that work for me, and give you an idea:

Look through November and plan when you can/cannot write. Then think about how you will hit your word count within those limitations. Find the little pockets of time you can use as well.

Plan all your meals for the month. I am going to set up shopping lists on the online shopping tool I use to make this quick.

Blitz clean the house before November starts and try to make it easy to maintain for November.

Talk to anyone you live with about not interrupting you during writing time. I struggle to write if I keep getting interrupted.

Plan your playlist. I am basically just going to listen to Sleep Token all month, so this was a quick step for me.