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How to Use The Snowflake Method to Write Your Book

March 19, 2020 | 6 min read

There’s a proverb that says “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” In other words, however long and difficult the task, it has to start with one simple action. If sitting down to write 60,000+ words feels like that proverbial journey, then The Snowflake Method of planning your book might be right for you.

The Snowflake Method was invented by Randy Ingermanson, a theoretical physicist who, for reasons not even clear to himself, suddenly developed the burning desire to write a historical suspense novel. His first attempt was (in his own words) “horrible drivel”, but undeterred, he persisted for ten more years, working hard at improving his craft until an agent finally took a chance on him and got his first book into print.

Suddenly – again for reasons he cannot understand – people started asking him to speak at writing conferences, and he discovered a passion for teaching fiction. That’s when he put an article on his website about his method of writing a novel, which he had named “The Snowflake Method.” The rest, as they say, is history. 

So, what is The Snowflake Method? As the name suggests, it’s a way of writing a book that mirrors the way a snowflake forms. First, a droplet of water freezes to a particle of dust, creating an ice crystal. As this crystal moves through the atmosphere, water vapor freezes to the outside of it, growing and building the flake’s unique structure. In this analogy, your story’s premise is the original ice crystal, and you build outwards from there.

Let’s cover each step of The Snowflake Method in detail. If you follow these steps faithfully, you’ll complete the entire process of planning and writing your book.

Step one: Write a one-sentence summary

Recommended time – 1 hour

In one short sentence (try to keep it to 15 words or less), describe the premise of your novel. Don’t worry about character names right now – just concentrate on who they are and what challenges they face. Ingermanson suggests looking through the New York Times’ Best Sellers List to see some great examples. For instance, their summary for American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is simply, “A bookseller flees Mexico for the United States with her son while pursued by the head of a drug cartel.” 

Step two: Write a one-paragraph setup

Recommended time – 1 hour

Once you’ve distilled your premise into a single sentence, the next step is to expand it into a paragraph of around five sentences. The first sentence should set up your story, and the next three should outline the conflicts/disasters/problems that arise throughout the novel. Finally, the fifth sentence should wrap up everything that happens. 

Step three: Introduce your characters

Recommended time – 1 hour per character

Now that you know the story you’re going to tell, you need to start thinking about your characters. For each one, create a one-page summary that contains:

  • Their name
  • A brief sentence about their storyline
  • Their motivation
  • Their goal
  • Their conflicts or challenges
  • What they learn or how they change throughout the story
  • A more in-depth paragraph about their storyline

These character overviews don’t have to be perfect right off the bat – feel free to revisit and refine them as you work through the process. The more you think about your characters and how they fit within your story (and with each other), the more evident it might become that elements of your original setup to change. Now is the best time to do that, before you invest hours and hours writing the first draft!

Step four: Write a one-page summary

Recommended time – 3-4 hours

Now you’re getting deeper into the business of building up the structure of your novel. Take your one-paragraph setup from step two and turn each sentence into a paragraph. Here, your first paragraph sets the scene, and the next three explore the different challenges and conflicts that your characters experience. The final paragraph explains how everything comes together and how the story ends. When you’re done, you should have approximately one page covering your story from start to finish.

Step five: Create your individual character stories

Recommended time – 1-2 days

Next, you’re going to do the same fleshing-out exercise with each of your characters by writing a one-page synopsis for each major player that tells the story from their perspective. Do the same thing, but shorter, for the minor players in your novel. Don’t forget that you can return to steps one through four at any time during this stage to make changes as you start to learn more about each character. 

Step six: Create your synopsis

Recommended time – 1 week

This step involves taking your one-page summary and each of your character’s story threads and combining them to create a four-page synopsis. Here is where your story really starts to come together, and you can see the way all the elements interact. You’ll probably discover that you want to go back and make some adjustments to the previous steps so that everything fits.

Step seven: Expand your characters

Recommended time – up to a month

It’s time to get to know your characters better and create detailed sheets for each of them. Include every little detail, like how old they are, what they look like, their likes and dislikes, their motivations, dreams, goals and fears. What experiences shaped them? What kind of personality do they have? What are their qualifications? Do they have any odd quirks? This might seem like a time-consuming activity, but it saves you even more time once you finally start writing your first draft, because you’ll have a fantastic handle on everybody, and you’ll have already tweaked your story summary and synopsis to accommodate any revelations that come out of this process.

Step eight: Create a spreadsheet of scenes

Recommended time – up to a week

Before you jump boots and all into your first draft, you may find it helpful to plan out all your scenes in a spreadsheet. Assign one row to each scene, with one column for the POV character and another column to briefly describe what happens in the scene (just a sentence or two). If your descriptions run off the page and you don’t want to be constantly scrolling from left to right, ensure you have “wrap text” enabled. Use your four-page synopsis to help you create this list. While it might seem odd to use a spreadsheet for this task, it helps to keep everything visually neat, and it’s easier to move scenes around as required. You can add extra columns for things like how many pages each scene might fill and what chapter it belongs to.

Step nine: Expand your scenes

Recommended time – 1-2 weeks

You might be ready to start writing now, but if not, this optional step helps you to prepare even further. It involves taking each brief scene description from your spreadsheet and writing several paragraphs describing the scene. Here’s where you can start jotting down snippets of dialogue and confirming the purpose of the scene – what’s the essential conflict? If you can’t find a purpose for the scene, then you will either need to add one or remove the scene from the story. You should start each scene on a separate page or in a separate document. Ingermanson recommends printing them all out and putting them in a loose-leaf binder so that you can jot notes on them and swap scenes around easily.

Step ten: Write your book!

Now you have all the tools to write your story, and this part of the process is going to be much quicker because you already know who is doing what and when. There will still be little details to work out along the way, but you’ve already done the hard work, so any decisions required at this point will be small.

The Snowflake Method isn’t just good for starting from scratch. You can also use it to finish a half-written novel if you’ve lost your way, or to polish a completed novel so that your story is tighter and more cohesive. 

If you’ve had a story floating around in your head but felt overwhelmed by the enormity of writing a book or just didn’t know where to start, The Snowflake Method’s system of breaking it down to its smallest step might be just what you need to finally get writing.

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How does a USA Today bestselling author use Freewrite? Chelsea Conradt takes us inside her writing process.

June 19, 2025 4 min read

What's a romance author to do when a global pandemic hits?

For Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, the answer was to start writing horror.

Carolina was writing romance when she first signed with her literary agent six years ago. But, Carolina explains, when the pandemic hit, she pivoted to horror.

"There was something about being isolated at home, living through the literal nightmare that COVID-19 was, that made me want to dive into a haunted house book," she explains. And it's a good thing she did.

That horror novel, Bochica, sold to Simon & Schuster at auction. (Trust us, it's a big deal.)

In fact, switching genres changed her life in more ways than one. "Writing Bochica made me want to move to an old manor in the woods," Carolina says, "so I now live in a house that I’m pretty sure is haunted."

Read on to learn how this Freewriter uses her four-year-old Freewrite Traveler to draft.

ANNIE COSBY: What does your writing process look like?

CAROLINA FLÓREZ-CERCHIARO: My writing process varies depending on the project, but generally, I start with some brainstorming before drafting. I’m not a heavy outliner, but I do make a rough roadmap — usually marking where the character starts, the midpoint, and a general idea of the ending.

It’s often just a list of bullet points to give me some structure. I don’t always know how I’ll get from point A to point B, and the outline changes as I go. I usually re-outline after drafting to make better sense of the story. I don’t treat the outline as strict — I let myself get lost in the story once I’m in it.

It’s really important for me to get the words on the page, even if they’re messy. You can’t edit a blank page, and revising is actually my favorite part of the process. So I focus on finishing that first draft so I can dig into the part I enjoy most.

For projects like Bochica where the historical backdrop is essential, I research before drafting, and continue to do so while writing and revising.

"I don’t treat the outline as strict — I let myself get lost in the story once I’m in it."

AC: How long did it take you to write Bochica?

CFC: The first draft took me about three months to write, and I revised it for another six to eight months with my agent before we sold it to my editor.

AC: That's really fast! How did Freewrite factor into your writing process?

CFC: My Freewrite Traveler is an essential part of my writing process, for every project I work on. It helps me get the juices flowing when I’m stuck, but it also helps me get those words on the page faster. I call it my little magical device!

I not only use it when I draft, but also when I’m revising, and I need to rewrite or add new passages, chapters, or scenes. I use it ALL the time.

"I call [Traveler] my little magical device!"

AC: Why do you prefer to draft on a Freewrite?

CFC: There’s a literal freedom that I get from using it as I’m drafting, similar to when I write by hand, but way more convenient. It’s quick, it keeps me off the internet, and I can easily upload it to my computer!

AC: Let's dig into your publishing journey. How did Bochica get published?

CFC: Bochica isn’t the first book I ever wrote, and it’s also not the book that got me my agent. I was actually writing romance when I signed with my literary agent almost six years ago, and when the pandemic hit, I decided to pivot into writing horror which had always been my favorite genre to read.

When the book was ready for editors, my agent sent it out, and I got an initial offer within days, then we got more offers, and the book ended up selling at auction to Simon and Schuster.

"Writing Bochica made me want to move to an old manor in the woods, so I now live in a house that I’m pretty sure is haunted."

AC: How has the publishing process been so far?

CFC: It’s been quite an experience; you go from hitting the lowest point to feeling on cloud nine the next second.

To sum it up in one word: WILD.

I’m lucky to have an amazing team behind me, both with my literary agent, and with my publishing team at Atria/Primero Sueño Press, to help me navigate this road, to get through the good, and the bad.

"[Publishing] has been quite an experience; you go from hitting the lowest point to feeling on cloud nine the next second."

AC: And before we sign off, what is Bochica about?

CFC: After her father is accused of murder, a young woman returns to her haunted childhood home — turned luxury hotel — and is forced to face the sinister shadows of her past, and unearth the truth of her mother’s mysterious death.

Think Mexican Gothic meets The Shining.

AC: Wow. I'm in!

If Bochica sounds like a wild ride to you, too, check it out here

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