Writing A Novel Is Hard Work!
We Just Made It Easier.
A Lot Easier.
Iโm Randy Ingermanson,ย known around the world as โthe Snowflake Guyโ in honor of my โSnowflake methodโ for designing and analyzing novels. Iโve written six award-winning novels. Before those, I wrote a few that never got published. Each story was tough to write. But the later novels were a LOT easier than the earlier ones.
Why? Because one day I realizedย it was simpler to design my storylines and create my characters BEFORE I wrote my novels. That way, I was able to spend more of my writing time being creative and less of my writing time worrying about whether it was all going to fit together into a cohesive design.
Years ago, I put my ideas togetherย into an organizational tool I call theย โSnowflake methodโ. That has become the most popular page on my web site and has been viewed over six million times. The Snowflake method is used by novelists all over the world.
If you want to knowย what people say about the Snowflake method,ย Google โSnowflake method.โYouโll find that some people love it and some donโt. Thatโs because different people are different, which is fine by me. The important point is that zillions of people around the world use the Snowflake method, including a number of published authors.
A Challenge To Work Hard
The bad newsย is that the Snowflake method makes you work. Letโs not fool ourselves that writing fiction is easy. If it were, everybody would be writing great fiction. Writing a novel is hard. The Snowflake method helps you organize your ideas, but it also makes you work. Hard.
The Snowflake method has ten stepsย that include a high-concept story idea, a Three-Act Structure, a detailed character analysis, a synopsis, a scene list, and more. Thatโs some serious thinking you need to do.
The good newsย is that Iโve written software to make it simple and fun to work through the first nine steps of the Snowflake method (everything but step 10, writing the actual first draftโyou can already do that in any word processor). Iโve got more than thirty years of experience writing software. So I wrote a program,ย Snowflake Pro, to make the steps of working through the Snowflake method a joy โ at least for me.
I added in four examplesย of Snowflake analyses of popular books and movies. (Iโd like to thank my daughter Carolyn, who has a degree in English Literature, for helping me write these four example Snowflakes.) Theyโre all included inย Snowflake Pro:
- Gone With the Wind
- Harry Potter and the Sorcererโs Stone
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Pride and Prejudice
Seeing the Big Picture
Many writers have a hard timeย explaining their story to agents or editors. The Snowflake method asks you to define a one-sentence summary and then expand that to a Three-Act Structure. That takes some thinking. It forces you to really understand your own story.
Understanding Your Characters
Several of the stepsย in the Snowflake method ask you to define your characters and then to get to know them โ really well. This pays huge dividends in your fiction writing. The better you understand your characters, the more real theyโll seem to your readers.
Lining Up Your Scenes
A modern novel has dozens of scenesย โ often more than a hundred. Managing all those scenes is hard, because they cover hundreds of pages in your manuscript. A Scene List allows you to see all your scenes at a glance.ย Snowflake Proย makes it easy to create and edit your Scene List. You can import your scenes directly from your synopsis, edit scenes, move them around, add new scenes, delete scenes that arenโt working, and estimate the page count of your story. And a whole lot more.
Creating a Proposal โ At The Press of a Button!
Many editors and agentsย insist on receiving a book proposal for your novel. Thereโs nothing complicated about a proposal. It spells out a suggested business partnership between you and a potential publisher, explaining the risks and rewards of publishing your novel.
The good news?ย Many of the pieces of a book proposal are actually steps in the Snowflake method.
So I added a bonus step in Snowflake Pro. This is not part of the Snowflake method; itโs just a little goodie that I threw in as an extra feature because I had all the information needed:
At the press of a button,ย Snowflake Proย will write the skeleton of a book proposal for your novel. If you do all of the first six steps in the Snowflake method, theyโll all go straight into the correct places in your proposal. If you skip steps, thatโs OK โย Snowflake Proย will leave empty slots in your proposal, with directions on how to fill them in.
Snowflake Proย will also write in empty slots for things like your market analysis and marketing plan which are NOT part of the Snowflake method โ along with some savvy suggestions on how to fill in these essential parts.
Just press that buttonย andย Snowflake Proย will save your proposal skeleton as an RTF file on your hard drive โ ready for you to load into any word processor, where you can then fill in all the details. (RTF files are universal. All word processors can read them.)
If youโve ever tried to write a book proposal, you know that the hardest part is just getting started. What should go in and what shouldnโt? How do you format it? How do you know if youโre doing it right?
Donโt be paralyzed by uncertainty. I love writing proposals. Iโve written many. One of my former editors teaches โhow to write a proposalโ at conferences all the time, using an old proposal that I sold to him years ago.
Use Snowflake Pro to get a running startย on your proposal. And then use all the handy tipsย Snowflake Proย embeds in the proposal to guide you in polishing it to a high sheen.
Your License
When you buy Snowflake Pro, you buy a license to run it on up to five of your own personal machines. For example, if you have a laptop and a desktop computer and you own other computers that your spouse and kids use, you are licensed to install and runย Snowflake Proย on all of them. Yes, really. Thatโs a very permissive license. In exchange for that, I ask that you not pirateย Snowflake Pro. I try to do the right thing by you; thanks in advance for doing the right thing by me.
Will Snowflake Pro Run On Your Computer?
I wrote Snowflake Proย in a language called Java, which runs on ANY modern laptop or desktop computer running Mac or Windows. If your computer was new within the last ten years or so, you should be able to just downloadย Snowflake Pro, install it, and run it. Iโve worked hard with my team of testers to make the whole process as simple and error-free as we can. See the System Requirements below.
System Requirements:ย 15 MB of hard drive space. Java version 1.8 or later.
(Java comes installed on most modern computers. If itโs not pre-installed on your machine, you can get Java FREE at the official Java web site here.) Here are the systems my team of testers have testedย Snowflake Proย on:
- On Windows XP,ย Windows Vista,ย Windows 7,ย Windows 8, or Windows 10, youโre good.
- On a Mac, (any version of Mac OS, including the latest, Catalina), youโre good.
- On Linux, (there are a zillion flavors of Linux, and Java runs on all of them), you should be good, but I canโt really test on all possible variations of Linux.
Please note that tablets and phones are not laptops or desktop computers.ย Snowflake Pro does not run on an iPad, iPod, iPhone, Blackberry, or Android device.
Hereโs What You Get in Snowflake Pro
Here are some of the key thingsย you get inย Snowflake Pro:
- An easy formย to work through each of the key steps of the Snowflake method:
- Your one-sentence storyline. This is your most powerful selling tool for selling your book.
- Your one-paragraph summary. If somebody asks about your โThree-Act Structure,โ this is it in one paragraph. Memorize it before you talk to editors or agents.
- Your character key info. Each characterโs storygoals, ambition, epiphany, and other crucial information. If you donโt understand your characters, odds are itโs because you havenโt asked yourself the right questions yet.
- A one-page synopsis. Grow this naturally from your one-paragraph summary. This is your baseline for creating the synopsis youโll need for your editor someday.
- Character sketches. These are terrific for inserting straight into a proposal because editors love character-oriented fiction.
- A four-page synopsis. Grow this out from your one-page synopsis. With this in hand, youโll know all the important turns in your story.
- Character bibles. This is where you save all those pesky details you need to write three-dimensional characters. Take care of the details and your characters will take care of you.
- A scene list. You can get this rolling by importing one of your synopses, then tweak it so you have an overview of every scene in your novel. This makes rearranging scenes in your novel a breeze. Includes a word-count projection so you always can estimate how long your novel will be.
- Scene details. Any stray information that you need for each scene goes here. Donโt lose that info! Put it where you canโt miss it.
- Audio help on each stage of the Snowflake. If youโre an audio learner, this will help lock it into your memory.
- Text help on each stage of the Snowflake. If you need to see the words, this is for you.
- Four example Snowflakes to show you how itโs done:
- Gone With The Wind
- Harry Potter and the Sorcererโs Stone
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Pride and Prejudice
- A button to create the skeleton of your proposal. Click that button, andย Snowflake Proย will write an RTF file that contains the core of a proposal. Donโt be paralyzed by doubt about how to write a proposal.
- The accumulated wisdomย of 30+ years of a published novelist. Iโve published six novels. Iโve won about a dozen awards. The Snowflake method contains what I believe to be core to writing fiction. I have no patience for the fluff, so I left that out.
How Much Does It Cost?
When Iย first created Snowflake Pro, I looked at various software toolsย for novelists in software review articles inย Writerโs Digest. The trend was clear: The simple tools were free or very inexpensive. The complicated programs tended to be very pricey โ hundreds of dollars.
I thought hardย about those tools and their prices. I didnโt want to makeย Snowflake Proย too expensive, because I wanted to give you good value for your money. But I also didnโt want to price it too low, because I believed that people donโt value things that they get too cheap. I wanted my fans to valueย Snowflake Proย enough to use it.
Based on those thoughts, when I launched Snowflake Pro, I setย the priceย atย $100. That was and still is a fair price. I also have offered for a long time a 50% discount for those people who own a copy of my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method.
But after running a storeย for ten years, things have changed for me. Iโve recently updated Snowflake Pro to run correctly on the latest version of Mac OS. Iโve added in an autosave feature. Iโve added the ability to drag scenes around. But the fact is that I donโt really like the administrative hassle of running my own store and dealing with constant requests for people who bought the software many years ago and now want another download because their hard drive crashed. Itโs hard to automate those kind of requests. So thatโs why Iโve made a fairly radical decision โฆ
Snowflake Pro is Currently Free (With a Caveat)
As of December, 2019, Snowflake Pro is no longer for sale at any price. That means, I donโt have to run a store anymore and I can simplify my life.
Instead of selling Snowflake Pro, Iโve made it available as a free download if either of the following is true:
- You previously bought a paid copy of Snowflake Pro.
or
- You own a copy of my book How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method.
Whatโs the catch? There is no catch. You get a $100 product for free. I donโt have to deal with the admin stuff anymore. Thatโs a win-win, right?
But how will I make money?ย Thatโs easy. I have plenty of books I want to write and (possibly) some teaching tools I want to create. I need my time and energy back, so I can work on new stuff. Donโt worry, Iโll make plenty of money from those. Snowflake Pro has been very good for my customers and very good for me, but I just donโt want to run a software company anymore. I have other fish to fry.
Will I do any more updates on Snowflake Pro? Maybe. Or maybe not. I use it myself, so if I need it to work better, Iโll tweak it and issue an update. I may possibly sell the product to somebody who wants to run a software company. Or I might license it to them. If that happens, of course theyโll sell the product, and at that point, Iโll no longer give it away for free. But right now, Snowflake Pro is my toy, and I can give away if I want to.
Get Snowflake Pro In 30 Seconds
Snowflake Proย is available for immediate download. It should normally download in less than 30 seconds if you have a decent internet connection. Get it now!
Please remember that Snowflake Proย is ONLY available as a download, NOT as a CD. This is pretty standard these days, but I still occasionally get an email asking for a CD option. There isnโt one.
Please rememberย that if you have some glitch in downloading or installingย Snowflake Pro, the problem is most often a problem with Java. Most of my customers donโt have any problems at all, but if you hit a snag, please make sure that the latest version of Java is installed on your system. Itโs free and you can get it at the official Java web site. If that doesnโt solve your problem, send me an e-mail from myย Contact pageย and Iโll do my best to get you squared away as fast as possible.
How To Get Snowflake Pro
If you already boughtย an earlier version of Snowflake Pro, then hop on over to my Download Again page.
If you already own my bookย How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method, then you can also downloadย Snowflake Pro for free on my Download Again page. You canย get the paper version of my book forย less than $12 and theย e-book versionย costs $5.99. And thereโs also an audiobook version available.
Why would I give you such an outrageously good deal? As I already explained above, Iโm done with running a store and a software company. Iโm moving on to other challenges, but the software still works fine, and lots of my fans want it. So have at it, and have fun!
Where to buy the book:
Here are some online places you can buy How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method:
- Amazon (paper, e-book, or audiobook) (Audiobook is free if you sign up for an Audible subscription)
- Audible (audiobook only)ย (Free if you sign up for an Audible subscription)
- Barnes & Noble (paper or e-book)
- iBooks (e-book only) or iTunes (audiobook only)
- Kobo (e-book only)
- Smashwords (e-book only)
To go to the download page for Snowflake Pro, click the button below:
Acknowledgments
Iโd like to thankย my team of Alpha Testers who helped me test the downloading, installation, and running ofย Snowflake Proย on a wide variety of computer systems. In alphabetical order, they are:ย Rick Acker,ย Tom Adshead,ย Bryce Beattie,ย Sven Bergner,ย Jeannie Campbell,ย Phil Conrad,ย Sean Dare,ย Peter Economy,ย Meredith Efken,ย Dale Emery,ย Jorg-Peter Friederich,ย Lynne Gentry,ย Tim Greene,ย Jeff Hilton,ย Jim Huskins,ย Chris Kirkby,ย Tosca Lee,ย Steve Lewis,ย Ken Marable,ย Alastair Mayer,ย Colleen Peterson,ย Srey Seng,ย Lynetta Smith,ย William Stanley,ย Guy Wade.