I have been driving myself bat shit for two years trying to complete this book. I'm always at the point where I think it's done, but then when it's "done", I get this over whelming feeling that it isn't finished yet.

I have been so frustrated for such a long time with this. Finally, I decided to do an internet search to see if there was any advice for a writer who is in this kind if a slump and what they should do about it. I found this website that speaks about the "snowflake method" for designing a book. Now, first let me explain that I didn't have any kind of design or diagram or outline when I started this book. I had the ideas for a shit load of cool scenes in my head, comedy bits, dialogue and I just started typing. This has been an absolute failure of a writing method. Don't ever, ever, EVER DO THAT!! A total nightmare! Constantly writing and re-writing, trying to make this story make sense. Trying to make sure everything comes together seamlessly. Please, never do it that way! It will turn your hair grey! Yes, SERIOUSLY! I found grey hair!


The problem is though I TRIED to make an outline for this book but it never worked for some reason. I don't know why; It just didn't. I would sit there and write Chapter 1: such and such and such. Chapter 2: such and such and such. I would still write the book and feel like it wasn't complete and everything didn't match up. So I figured maybe the whole outline thing wasn't for me, even though I wrote two books in highschool using loose outlines that worked out fantastic.

Anyway, out of desperation I tried the snowflake method, cutting a lot of corners. I want my book out by December and his method of outlining a story would probably take at least a month. A month to outline a story is too much, especially since I have 300 pages already written. But I did the first two steps, writing the basic idea for the story, which was easy enough. Then writing detailed character outlines and writing the characters personal story.

As soon as I finished the character outlines for the story I started to feel better. Then hen I got to the character stories something amazing happened. I realized I could just link up each sentence of the characters story to a chapter/portion of my manuscript. For instance: "Character A wants to find the mystical key of light." (that's just an example, my story has no mystical key of light).All I had to do was take a pen or a pencil and draw an arrow to a little note that says "this is shown in chapter 3 when he's explains this to the hobgoblin king." Then, if there was a part of my character story that wasn't matching up to the manuscript, I would be able to see it clearly and change it.

After I did that I went back into my story and changed the titles. Rather than writing random titles for each chapter I wrote a very brief description for the major points in each chapter. I saved the descriptions, so that it created a big story/outline combining all the character stories. Now I had a real outline for my book and reading it over I could see what needed to be fixed, what didn't make sense, what could be cut, what could be saved and how to alter things so it blends together cohesively.


Whew! I know a lot of work but it's paying off. I can plan what's going to happen in each chapter and I have a clear definition of what these characters are all about and how to execute them. Now the funny thing is, if I had tried to make an outline from scratch before I started writing the book, it's wouldn't have been as dynamic and cool as the outline I've just made. The reason being that some things just don't make sense, but I force them to make sense in a way because I think it's a cool idea. Personally, I think it adds more drama and excitement to the story. It's like seeing a very serious room full stock brokers or something having a sort of "gathering of witches" for business types. Then an Italian guy with one of those curly mustaches, walks into the room and smacks one of them over the head with a giant halibut. Now, afterwards, I fully explain why the guy just got whooped with a dead fish, but stuff like that is a nice little wake up to anyone reading the story. That's the kind of thing that I might miss out on if I try being very organized and plotting my story out in the beginning. But I suppose this is why the creator of the snowflake theory makes the entire process last 1-2 months. You can't plot a whole story out in one night, it'll be lame. 

Anyway, this all just goes to show that not everything works for everybody, but if you try you will find something that WORKS. Some people do perfectly well with the "Chapter 1-Chapter 2-Chapter 3" kind of outline. Some people might benefit from the writing out the story and then plugging in how and where you're going to show this and this and that.

This is a long boring post that only writers care about. And maybe not so much even then. Hope I didn't put anyone to sleep but finally making an outline I could work with just felt good!