Randy Ingermanson has a great website with a wonderful idea on his method for writing novels. He calls it the "Snowflake Method." Visit: www.rsingermanson.com for more info. This technique has really helped me in character and plot development!
I have a few problems with this idea. Basically you start to look over some ideas and then it pops you a question or task that you hadn't thought of before. Should you just make something up at random? I say no -- if you just make something up at the spur of the momment, you're going to spend hundreds of hours working on something you madeup within only a matter of moments. This will make your writing process painfully slow. It'll make you go from one benchmark to the next after having long forgotten the reasoning behind writting your book and you'll just be writting the story without much intent to send out any message. I think that most of the ideas presented here are rather good, but it dumbs it down and it makes it all too simple to make quick decisions. You don't want to do that. In fact, I think it takes almost as long to do it the crash and burn way than with this meathod, if you're wanting brilliant results. Careful time, care and consideration should be put into this. Also -- I say NOTHING should keep you from writing, not even a synopsis of your book. You should be writing and also use this as a means to think ahead and plan things out. The places where you're stuck without an answer with this meathod are the points where it's informing you that you're going to hit Writer's Block. Although this prevents writers block, you need everything well thought out. I also say step three should be step one and other than that my complaints are over and done with.
With so many people studying this, can someone please help me out with my book while using this meathod. Unfortunately, I had already HIT writer's block by the time I found this article. So, I'm asking for help. I spot the points where I can't answer the snoflake formula, so possibly someone can give me suggestions. on the pinpointed spots I can't finish or quite answer, or possibly suggestions that could improve the answers I already have. Please help me out. This really sucks for me. Here's the link to my thread asking for help. https://www.writingforums.org/showthread.php?p=2759#post2759
