No – really…
Even in this heat!
When I say snowflakes I mean writing snowflakes. You see, because of the dyslexia I have real problems with planning of novels. I have eight all started and all hitting about 20k words. But going no further.
Why?
Well, I can’t sequence and I can’t plan. Have a look at what is wrong with me HERE. So you see I can’t really do any complicated plots or subplots, but that is about to change…
I have found the snowflake!
Basically you don’t plan linearly – something I can’t do – instead you go out in concentric rings. Now I’m only having a go for the first time but so far it is working! I am shocked… I could describe it here but the process is done in 10 steps and has been written about by others, so please go HERE to check it out.
The good news is that if this works then I should be able to work through my backlog and get a fair number of novels out fairly fast. Some of which will be self-published and others will find themselves in different slush piles.
I’m even using it with the blog novel – The Gone – and it is working there too. So wish me luck and if you have problems with linear sequencing give it a go. I must admit though I do seem to be changing it so I will do a post to let you know what I found good about it and what I found bad. All I am at the moment is relieved that I have finally found something that works.
Now – back to the WIP and my snowflake before it melts. 😀
Kate Murray 
I’ve heard of the snowflake method, but I have yet to try it out. Certainly looks like a very different way to plot out a book 🙂
It is and I keep thinking I’m going to fall down any minute but it really works. :O Although I have used the steps more as ‘guidelines’ rather than hard and fast rules.
I think it’s good to take any advice and change it suit your needs 🙂
Same here. 🙂
I wrote my science fiction novel ‘The Golden Banner’ in 2008-9 using the snowflake method, Kate. It worked really well for me on that occasion. Clearly it’s not a silver bullet for my planning problems because I’ve had a bit of a difficult time planning long stuff again since, but I’d certainly recommend it to others as a way of breaking through the start-and-stall barrier. Oddly enough I mentioned it to someone else on the course just a few weeks ago…………….. and some how, given that I am the world’s worst self-marketing self-publisher, I’m even still selling the odd copy of that snowflake generated novel of mine. 🙂
Brilliant! And it gives me hope. I am just terrible at the linear method.
But I have high hope for this one.