STORY STRUCTURES
Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method
The method has 10 steps: tiny snowflakes to build your story with, like a giant snowball.
Structure a novel is not a simple thing. Besides the narration, you have to choose different elements. For instance, which narrative techniques to use, how to create dialogues, and others.
In this first part of our Story Structures Series, you can learn how to structure a novel with Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.
Everything starts with a basic story structure in which you define a beginning, a middle, and an end. But there are also different story structures you can consider structuring your novel, which we will see in the following articles of this Story Structure Series.
Let’s start with Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.
What is the Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method?
Are you curious about how to structure a novel with Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method?
Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist, and he is also an award-winning author of six novels. He invented “The Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method”, composed of 10 steps.
His Method aims to start from a central idea. Then, develop your narration around this starting point by adding different concepts, techniques, and details.
The 10 steps of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method
In other words, imagine that these 10 different steps are like little snowflakes. You can create your very final result as a big ball of snow, your narration, through them. Every step has approximately a duration that you can use just for reference, like a guideline.
- Start by writing a single sentence in which you summarize your novel. (The duration of this step is about 1 hour)
- Furthermore, expand the sentence you create in the step above. Then, create a complete summary and give more details about the most important events (this took 1 hour)
- Concentrate on each character. Write a page where you resume your characters’ behavior, characteristics, attitude, and other details. (It took about 1 hour for each one)
- Each sentence you wrote has to be expanded into a paragraph summary, as you have done in point #2. (Several hours)
- After that, put yourself in the shoes of your character. Write about one page about the story from their point of view (1–2 days)
- As you have done in point #4, detail each paragraph, you create. After that, create a full-page synopsis (this is the longest part of the Method: it took about a week)
- This is the moment to create a character chart to give more details. Write a complete description of your character (about 1 week)
- Take advantage of point #6 and make a list of every scene you need to complete your narration
- For each scene, write a whole paragraph with a complete description
- Now is the time to write your draft, which you can revise at the end
You need three major resources to have a successful writing career: time, writing space, and money.
Randy Ingermanson
Conclusions
Every writer has a method of writing a novel. In this article, we covered Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.
In conclusion, in this Story Structures Series, we keep analyzing some of these methods from which you can start to create your narration, full of details, of exciting dialogues, which will take your reader’s breath away.
Check out the other articles in the same series!
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