All great authors know that the key to writing a successful book is to use a story structure you’re comfortable with. (Yes, “pantsing” is technically a structure, too.) One popular method of storytelling is The Snowflake Method, which was developed by Randy Ingermanson.

This blog post will take you through The Snowflake Method in detail so you can understand how it works.

Warning: If the thought of creating a highly detailed outline forces a Wilhelm scream past your tightly clenched jaw…you’re in the wrong class, mate. In that case, take a look at our article on the Pantsing method.

The Snowflake Method Story Structure: 10 steps

The main idea for this story structure is like building a snowflake: start with a simple main idea and branch out from there. As you go, you add detail until your book is finished. Hooray! Here are the steps.

Step 1: Write a one-sentence summary of your book

Randy gives an example: A Harvard symbologist and a female French cryptographer solve the puzzle of the Holy Grail in a race against death across Europe—The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown.

Things to keep in mind:

• The shorter the better (think 15 words or less)

• You can use this as an elevator pitch for your book!

• Don’t use character names here–they’ll come in later.

And a tip from Randy himself: Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.

Step 2: Expand that sentence to a full paragraph

This is essentially where your baby snowflake starts branching out. Catch the drift? Sorry…we’ll see ourselves out.

With this story structure, you’ll want to describe the story setup, major disasters, and story ending. You’ll plan three disasters, plus an ending for the book. Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop, and the ending takes the final quarter. Obviously, adjust this as necessary for your book and writing style.

One tip from Randy is that if you’re familiar with the Three-Act Structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2 and forces Act 3, which wraps things up.

The second and third disasters are the perfect way to make things worse and worse as the main character tries to “fix things.”

The Snowflake Method: Handy tip!

Ideally, this paragraph is about five sentences long and covers your entire story, which is the perfect length for an elevator pitch. #win

• The first sentence sets up the story.

• The second, third, and fourth sentences cover each of the three turning points.

• The final sentence is the conclusion.

Step 3: Write a one-page summary for each of your main characters

In step two, you made a high-level view of your book. Now it’s time to do something similar for your book’s main characters. Your characters will make or break your story, so putting time into them now will pay dividends later.

For each of your main characters, your one-page report will explain:

• the character’s name

• a one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline

• motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)

• goals (what does he/she want concretely?)

• conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)

• the character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?

• a one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline (yes, this is meant to be repeated)

If you find yourself needing to make revisions as you go, excellent! Your characters are revealing themselves to you, which is fantastic! If you make the revisions now, you won’t need to later when you’re already 400 pages deep into your story.

Don’t let your character summaries stop you from moving forward to your next step. You won’t always know every little detail about each of your MCs, so it’s okay to come back and fill things in once you do. The goal is to keep your momentum and finish the story.

Step 4: Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph

Our little snowflake is branching out again!

Remember those five(ish) sentences you wrote in step two? We’re taking each of those sentences and making them into full-fledged paragraphs now. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster, and the final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

Once you’re finished with this step, you’ll have a pretty decent skeleton of your book! Now to start adding all the gory bits–blood, tendons, organs, etc.

Step 5: Write a one-page description of each major character

You’ll also write a half-page description of the other important characters in your book. During this step, your character descriptions should tell the story from their point of view.

If you find that you’ve got a lot of supporting characters here to fill in, stop and ask yourself:

• do you need all of the supporting characters?

• can any of them be merged together?

• are they all distinct enough to stand out in a crowd? If not, merge some together or delete them.

The same goes for your main characters as well. Think of the main character group in Lord of the Rings. Each main character and supporting character are distinct enough for readers to instantly know who they are with a simple description. For example, if I say:

• the hobbit who gardens and assists Frodo. (It’s Sam!)

• the good-looking elf with incredible vision and bow-hunting skills. (It’s Legolas!)

• the feisty dwarf who’s always in competition with Legolas? (Obviously Gimli.)

At the end of this step, you’ll have well-rounded characters, which will help you avoid issues with things like motivation, personality, etc. down the road.

Step 6: Expand the one-page plot synopsis of the novel to a four-page synopsis

Look! The snowflake is growing again!

In this step, take the one-page plot synopsis you made in step four and turn each of those paragraphs into full pages. This step might take a couple of days since you’re figuring out the high-level logic of the story, making strategic decisions, etc. Take your time, but remember to keep that forward momentum.

As your story starts filling itself in, you might need to go back to earlier sections and make some tweaks. That’s okay (and completely expected). This is the step where you fix plot holes and start incorporating new ideas that come up.

Step 7: Expand on your characters

Remember those one-page character descriptions from step three? Step seven of this story structure is to take those descriptions and develop them into character charts. We want to know everything about them, such as:

• birthdate

• description

• motivation

• history

• goals

• flaws/weakness

• strengths

• quirks

Most importantly, we want to know how the character will be changed before the end of the novel.

Remember that great fiction is heavily character-driven, so make as many updates and revisions as necessary here.

Step 8: Time to start drafting

If this is your first time completing a novel, Randy suggests using your four-page synopsis to write all of the scenes that need to happen in your story. If you love spreadsheets, you could use Sheets or Excel as a tool to keep track of your scenes. You can also incorporate the Save the Cat! method to plan out your scenes. No matter what, do what’s most comfortable for you.

Keep that forward momentum! #ithinkican

In your spreadsheet (or other tool), notate:

• which character POV each scene be in

• what’s happing in each scene (use a one-line description for this)

• how many words or pages you plan to use for each scene

• anything else you think would be useful

After mapping out your scenes, take some time to make sure they’re in the correct order. Moving some scenes around might improve the flow of the story. Keep track of when things are being revealed so that everything makes sense to the reader.

As you finish your spreadsheet, you can start assigning chapters to each of your scenes. Again, this is where using another story structure (like Save the Cat!) in tandem with The Snowflake Method can be useful.

Step 9: Write a narrative description of the story

Once you have your list of individual scenes, go ahead and expand them into multi-paragraph descriptions of each scene. If there’s something specific (like specific dialogue, a revelation, etc) you want in your story, this is where you’d find its home.

This step can take up to a week, so again, take your time. By the end of this step, you should have a highly detailed synopsis of your book, which you can then use as a prototype for your first real draft.

The Snowflake Method: scenes

From an editor’s point of view, each of your scenes should have a purpose to your story. If there’s no conflict, character development, or something else that moves the story forward in each scene, you can:

• add what’s missing

• merge the scene with another one to fix the issue

• delete the scene altogether

When a scene doesn’t have a driving force to move things along, it slows down your momentum, which can be annoying to readers. Thinks of books in your “Did Not Finish” list—what went wrong? What turned you off? Now avoid those issues with your own story.

Step 10: Start writing your first draft

Congrats, your snowflake has gone Super Saiyan.

With this story structure, you should now have enough information to sit down and start pounding out the first draft of your novel. Remember to keep revising as you go!

Time to go!

Have you used this story structure method before? Let us know what you think by posting a comment below.