How to write a novel using the snowflake method (2013)

- Discovery / Outline

- Pantser / Plotter

- Gardner / Architect

Those labels apply to the extremes of either technique, and writers often fall somewhere more to one side or the other. Stephen King is a discovery writer. It's why his endings often fizzle. Brandon Sanderson is an outliner, which is why his novels tend to have a recognizable escalation to what fans have taken to calling "the Sanderlanche."

There's no right way to do it, and it really depends on what works for the writer.

I kind of like Jim Butcher's take on the process, instead: https://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/461.html

You'll have to page through these, and an ad blocker is strongly recommended as that LiveJournal site is ad-fested (it didn't used to be that way... he wrote it in 2004 when it used to be friendlier).

My impression is that it makes the former easier and the latter harder.

Having a planned-out plot-focused story can lead you to a very tight, satisfying climax. But it can often make the characters feel wooden or like they are acting out of character in order to do what the plot needs them to do.

When a writer focuses more on the fidelity of a character's inner psychology, they can write more believable, interesting characters. But they sometimes get stuck in the position of "The plot needs them to do X but their psychology makes it more likely they would do Y." Then the author has to decide whether they keep the plot on rails and sacrifice some character fidelity, or have the story meander more to keep the characters feeling rich and authentic.

At one end of that continuum, you have thrillers and action novels where characters are little more than a bullet list of personality archetypes, but a bunch of cool shit happens and the pacing is perfectly dialed in. At the other end, you have literary fiction where you feel like you're getting a window into the minds of actual people, but nothing really happens.

I've tried to completely pants a story, and I've also tried planning stories out ahead of time in extremely rigorous detail, and I've ended up deciding to stay sort of in the middle. I generally have a pretty detailed idea of where I want a story to start and end, even down to some sense of how to get there, usually composed of some of the big events or set pieces or that happen in between, so I'm not pure pantsing, but then I just sort of find out as I go along how I get between each point, and really revel that process of finding out.

I think I've ended up writing things this way precisely because on the one hand writing a story based on a complete outline is extremely boring, it essentially becomes work, it just isn't Fun anymore, but on the other hand, I am an extremely set piece motivated writer — I am motivated to write things by specific scenes that I want to have happen or even specific vivid images — and so those scenes, spaced throughout my narrative, sort of act as the carrot on the end of the stick to get me to keep going to find out how I get there. If I go into writing a story without a sufficient string of high points and an ending, I'll tend to just sort of vaguely peter out after the last cool idea I did have in mind when I started and then lose interest eventually.