I’ve only ever written poems and short stories. Writing long-form fiction just seemed so daunting. Where does one start? How do you know if the story is any good without first writing hundreds of pages? How could my attention span possibly hold up?
One of the reasons I finally decided to take the plunge was the discovery of the Snowflake Method, a writing paradigm which well matches my personality. The Snowflake Method encourages the creation of small pieces of the story which are then expanded further and further in discrete, manageable steps. For instance, the first step is to write a good one-sentence summary of the story. Next, you expand that sentence into a paragraph. The remaining steps alternate between creating/expanding your characters and expanding your story.
This works well for me because it involves a mix of planning and writing. You don’t truly begin writing the novel until everything is mapped out and you have a pretty good idea about whether the thing is going to work or not. But the planning is balanced with the writing of summaries and character dossiers. Further, my short attention can (I hope) handle the process because of the bite-size goals.
The Snowflake Method is almost the complete opposite of another method I’ve used in the past: the Seat of the Pants Method. Like it sounds, this writing style involves sitting down and just going for it. Without too much forethought — and with little idea of where the story and characters might lead you, — the author writes and writes.
The SotP Method serves me beautifully for poems. I don’t believe I’ve ever thought out a poem in advance. Because poems are so short, it’s not a big deal to write blindly and then go back for some cleanup.
The same cannot be said for longer form writing. A few years ago I began writing a story with only the barest idea of where it was going. I wrote and wrote, fretting the whole time whether it was going anywhere. Eventually, after about 10,000 words, I came to a dead end and my attention span gave out. I liked my characters, but the story was a pointless mess. Had I any confidence in its direction, I may have been able to convince myself to go back and fix it. As it was, I couldn’t bring myself to put more effort into something so amorphous. I revisited the story a few years later, made another weak attempt to finish it, and haven’t touched it since.
Perhaps that story will one day see the light of day. For now, I have a new story and a new plan of attack. Writing methods aside, I am well aware that the success of this project depends on my commitment and perseverance. I don’t know any method for improving those attributes, so hopefully this won’t run into another dead end.
