I plan to hit the ground running with my first ever novel, and my first novel set in the Waybetween! To that end, I will be needing to do some planning and do some outlining, and I’ve already begun using the Snowflake method. What’s the Snowflake method? I am glad you asked.
So, the method has 10 steps to designing your novel and I’ve completed the first two. Step one is come up with a one-sentence summary of your novel. Here’s mine:
“Surviving the end of her world, the shopkeeper’s wife discovers a vast, broken universe.”
Under 15 words, no character names, pretty evocative if you ask me, but general enough not to give too much away. We’ll get more specific in the later steps. Like Step 2, which is to expand the one sentence into a five sentence paragraph. I ended up writing like ten sentences and separated that into two paragraphs. I think it’ll be fine. Here’s what I came up with:
Surviving the end of her world, the shopkeeper’s wife discovers a vast, broken universe. It’s all breaking down, the Spider and her Silver Heralds struggle to pull things back together, and Len has lost everything. The mysterious Ziegander gives Len an opportunity to see her husband again, but in all her searching all she finds are Shards of sundered worlds in peril of being swallowed up by the Void just as her world was. She finds her calling. With the powers vested in her as a Silver Herald she can link Shard worlds to the Spider’s web to prevent them being lost to the Void, and she resolves to find and save as many as she can. If her husband is out there she’ll find and save him too. But if not…
After toiling away in her new role for some time, Len is approached by an Eldar Thing, an empty wurm that burrows through the stars. It tells her of another place she might find her lost husband, indeed *everyone* that has been lost to the winnowing dark. If she were to travel to that evil place, perhaps she could free them all from oblivion… In the end, Len must choose: will she traverse the Abyss to save her husband or will she seal away its evil power forever?
And that’s my Step 2! I’ve got a one-sentence summary, and a more high-level sort of overview/pitch for what the meat and potatoes of the novel will entail. What do you think? Next up for Step 3 I will be going into heavier detail about each character, developing a sort of dossier on all of the major characters I plan to include in the novel, who they are, what makes them tick, etc, etc. But we’ll save that for another day. Hope you like what you’re reading! See you next time!
The Waybetween 