On The Writing Process

These posts are all about how I developed my plot, and handy tips that may be useful to you when you’re in the formative stages of your novel-writing journey.

April 12 2022

To Snowflake or Not to Snowflake?

Abena Sankofa On The Writing Process 0

What is the Snowflake method, and did it work for me?

Well, before I get into it, a brief disclaimer: the man behind the Snowflake method, best-selling author Randy Ingermanson, is an authority on the subject — so I the article below is not a critique, it’s purely an exercise in figuring out:

A) is your writing style is like mine, and

B) if it is, would the Snowflake Method layer well on top of that?

So, here goes:

So, when I heard of The Snowflake Method the first time, from a friend of family, my sister and I immediately ran to the P.C. to look up what that was:

And here, you can read the official description at advancedfictionwriting.com.

But here is my paraphrase: You start with a sentence, a kind of a movie-logline, of what makes this story special. (I came up with mine waaay after the story’s beginnings in 2011, just last year, 2021):

“A teenage songstress-turned sleuth matches wits with the most dangerous syndicate in Chicago in a race to find an inheritance worth millions.”

Pretty fair, right?

The only problem was (for me, that is): I came up with that one line last year, after ten years spent shaping the story, meditating on its structure, and then switching to my marketing phase: figuring out what about it would most appeal to the market, not necessarily myself.

Because, you see, what catches your fancy about your story might not be necessarily what eventually interests the publishing world.

With my long-held interest in the history of the Underground Railroad, what I found most interesting about my own tale at the time, was the escape from their initial home, and their edge-of-your seat escape Northward, and gradually putting down roots, and learning the ways of the jazzy, swanky North with its bright lights and opportunity. It was the slow build that interested me, the cultural sweep of Phyllis’ coming-of-age story. And I needed to sit with that, expand on it, and only ten years later did it slowly dawn on me that it was the city slicksters and the crime ring that would probably mostly catch the everyone else’s attention.

So, what I’m saying is, don’t beat yourself up if your initial logline is more of a wispy half-paragraph, and when read aloud, it doesn’t sound like a film trailer: I feel the logline method suits an experienced writer, who’s been in the world of fiction for a while, and has honed an instinctive understanding of their audience. You (me, really), at the beginning of our long adventure, need not pin down what everyone else is looking for yet—or even what we’re looking for. We need some space and time to gather our thoughts, and realize why we’re interested in this.

But back to the Snowflake method. Expand your logline (if you have one) to a paragraph.

Next, add your character’s name (again, my intuitive, zany, out-of-sequence style balks at this, for my character names only come to me when I’m not thinking too hard).

And by Step five, you’ve written a page on each character, their back-story, their aims, their foibles, the lot.

But really, in my experience, I only came up with Smith Owens’ (my top antagonist’s) aims, somewhat later in the process, after I thought of the climax of Book 1.

Suppose the thing he was really after was less of a person and more of a thing? Suppose the long chase, and it’s continuance into the sequel, was because he was after treasure? One rumoured to be in my main character’s family-line, and therefore, a treasure he — wrongly — believes he owns?

And then, I finally had my Antagonist’s back-story.

You see, this style I have (if you can call it that ??), is a little like Billy in the comic “Family Circle” — it’s a three-yard walk from his front door to the mailbox. But he’d take the scenic route, walking all round the yard, looking at beetles and interesting things until he remembered what he was actually there to do, and found his way to mailbox.

Similarly, when I’m unsure what to write, I meander, perusing through all the most sentimental scenes I’d most like to see on the big screen. and Oh! up pops a plot solution I hadn’t thought of before. I find this style so much more organic, and seems to let through the einsfall (a real word for sudden inspiration!) that we’re all looking for.

So, in a nut shell, I would say, don’t strain to summarise your story too soon — that would be like trying to estimate the final, adult height of a child right after it’s born. Give it a chance.

BUT THEN, PLEASE USE THE SNOWFLAKE METHOD.

What do I mean? Well, here’s what I did:

I attempted to catch hold of, and put on paper, the “soul” of the story, the bite-size flashes of insight from all around the story, and built outward from each one, until they touched and merged, like this:

If you were to look into my notebook right now, you would see amply blocks of text, excerpted from later stretches of the saga, random places in the timeline of my story that just happened to come clearly to mind just then. This is very important, I wrote them in the order that they came to me easily. Trying to link them up and write them in sequential order when you feeling out-of-sorts leads to grey, un-feelinged prose, at best, strained re-hashing of tropes one has seen elsewhere, at worst.

I have to pause to give credit where credit is due, however: I’d never have gotten these down without the help of my sister. I was so timid and hopelessly judgmental of my own handwriting, of things, that I would never have gotten down this amount in such time. I rather, walked around, and she took dictation. You could get this effect with text-to-speech, and then freely speak right from your imagination “…And then, X would say this, and Y character would be taken aback, but not respond just then…and then later, it’d be too late…” something like that. UN-polished, raw thought-matter.

Eventually, I snapped these into order—again, with Big Sister’s help (Thx, Akos!) and—voila! I had a story-timeline:

There, I could clearly which parts where done, as if a clay sculpture, to be made from clay patted onto a wire form, I could see which parts of the wire-form were still empty.

I began writing in Word files, copying the journal-notes (that I just spoke about in post-before-last, “How to make a Scene come Alive”!) onto Word documents, and there, finally, the process naturally coaxed me to keep adding more. Always referring back to my written time-line, I knew what direction to each scene things in.

And there it happened. Up North.

No matter how finished you feel at the end of this, the next step is absolutely to edit it yourself, (take out all the parts where you couldn’t decide which way to write a given scene, the places where you inevitably find yourself stuck no matter how long you look at it. For that, I have two possible solutions, as seen in my next planned Blog Post “Can There Be Too Much Editing?” which I’m thinking of re-naming: “Gosh, Now I’m in a Fine Pickle”:

But here’s a tantalizing teaser: Tip #1: Write it both ways—don’t choose, not just yet.

And Tip #2: Mime it out –Do Acting Exercises. (Yes, you read that right.)

And as Johnny Carson’s famous go-to-break montage used to say, “More to Come….”

—Love, Abena

August 10 2021

How to make Scenes Really Come Alive

Abena Sankofa On The Writing Process 0

So, your idea starts out as an unsolicited thought of a premise that’s fun for you to imagine:

It’s something you would want to watch if it were a feature film…or a video game, or a TV series.

Then, it starts growing, like there’s some momentum of enthusiasm behind it, and you keep attaching arms and legs to the story fairly effortlessly.

The reason I say this, is because it had better be effortless and enjoyable in the beginning, because this is, for certain, the last time it’s going to be effortless. The process of writing a novel takes so much dedication, that it had better be a subject that inspires you easily.

But how to keep this effortless stage alight for as long as possible?

Tip #1: Look up music that fits the era; keep yourself going. If you’re easily bored by writing down, or researching through a lot of dry text (ME!), this keeps things popping. Or instance, if your writing about Harlem in the Jazz Era, listen to jazz. Watch films from that era, but try to listen to ones with plots that are sufficiently different from what you’re going to do, so you can draw inspiration, without worrying about your plot being too influenced by theirs.

Tip #2 – Explore your World:

In terms of my own favourite novels, the Redwall series was my first love:

My older sister got the book from the local library — the first one we ever read, Mossflower, and kept it to herself — not sharing a single plot twist with me until she was finished it. I course, was dying to know what was in it — from the faded, but lively medieval artwork on the cover, something really good, I imagined. I was not disappointed.

The book took me away into a far and distant land of chivalry, loyalty to home and brethren, good deeds and courage against all odds. It’s a must-read for all ages 10 and up, and although the main characters are anthropomorphized mice, the depth of storytelling and dramatic climaxes creates nail-biting reading for even adults.

Practically everything I know about how to make a story come alive came from reading Brian Jacques’ books, from his simply, but ever-useful advice for young authors: “Paint a picture with words.”

But, I want to share exactly what one of the key elements of the Redwall Series was: The Universe.

You could start out the story under the bowers of a summer orchard in the peaceful abbey of Redwall, and within those 360+ pages, end up venturing north to the freezing, wave-lashed coastline of the north, where suddenly, a sprinkling of characters had Scottish accents. The richness of the world was that it was entirely fashioned after a real place and culture: Britain’s.

All of this was ensconced in one of my favorite things about Brian Jacques’ novels: The hand-drawn map in the beginning.

Taking inspiration from this, I actually drew my own map of Chicago for my novel — more on that, too, in a future post.

When you’re writing your story, think about the environment of the story. When you close your eyes, and imagine your story as if it was a Virtual Reality walk-through, where would your characters go? What is the full breadth of their physical journey through the landscape of their world?

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

What places would they just have to explore?

In Up North, for instance, my character comes from Low-Country Louisiana. As a result of her desperate flight North, she’s able to experience South Chicago’s jazz-filled swinging nightlife, the slightly more staid and somber lawyer’s office in wealthy, off-limits Hyde Park, the glinting ballroom of a Steam-liner, and the cold, gritty streets of the industrial belt outside Chicago proper…all of this I did, basically, because I’m a busy-body, and, my way of travelling — and more importantly, time-travelling, is to “explore” every era as thoroughly as possible through my cast of characters. [But more on that in a future post.]

Another example: Say you’re writing a kind of turn-of-the century, European nobility sort of story, set in a formal estate, with flowering gardens, and the drama of the tale is mostly inside the gilded halls, among sparring family members, etc.

We know all of these manor-home dynasties had to have reams and reams of servants to make their lifestyle work. How far does their property extend? Do they fit into the regional culture — if not, are they in for a surprise? Which region, or town are they in — and I mean specifically? Not to rush your creative muse, but what does it feel like it should be? Make sure to add some context around that.

So it makes sense to make use of all the space in your story. You don’t have to dwell anywhere that is not of interest to you, the author, or takes away from the story, but adding special context to the story makes it feel more like a world. That was part of the appeal of the Harry Potter movies: It wasn’t just the school, it was the grounds, the Whomping Willow, the lake, the Shreaking Shack, Zonko’s joke shop, all the places the students could go when they were off school, to continue their adventures.

And finally,

my Tip #3: When in doubt, actually grab a pen and a notebook to right down all the initial inspiration.

I know, it’s going to sound “woo”, but months down the road, when you’re exhausted, and you don’t even remember why such-and-such was a good idea to begin with, you’ll grab that paper, and, just by looking at your own handwriting, you’ll remember what mood you were in:

You’ll “see” your excitement on the page, where you sped up writing versus when you slowed down and chose your words more carefully.

When you grabbed the blue pen to write a more “blueish” scene, and when you grabbed the red pen. All these things will fuel you to put it down on the P.C. just the way you would have wanted to initially.

And before you blow that off, take this into consideration: it’s been found that actually writing, the movement of your hand on physical paper, stimulates the creative centres of the brain more than writing on the computer.

Have a go! (And even if you don’t, at least tell your friends. It makes one sound as if one reads Scientific American — I’ve tried it, and it works).

via GIPHY

And if you need more evidence, it’s all there in one of my favourite books, “Steal like an Artist” (and no, it’s not about stealing, it’s a cheeky turn of phrase. You’ll love it.)

So, in short: Definitely write on paper to seize inspiration, then edit on P.C.!

But what to do once you’ve put down all of these stray paragraphs out-of-sequence in your notebooks? How to order them into something that could be called a manuscript?

See you there, and enjoy the writing journey!

— Abena

July 29 2021

Why the Best Writing Style is Your Own

Abena Sankofa On The Writing Process How to Write a Novel, Writing Style, Writing Tips 3

First things first — you have a collection of paragraphs from the most iconic, key parts of your story — the rest are still in your mind, and you’re waiting for the right mood to put them on paper.

But how to structure your writing style? Here’s where I’m going to be controversial with my answer:

Don’t.

At least in terms of what works for me, that’s the worst thing you could do with your writing in the beginning. It’s about capturing those random flashes of insight that make you remember later what excited you about this story-concept to begin with.

It’s like that moment in Avatar where those floating, magical seeds come to land on Jake’s arm. He would be ill-advised to shake them off and go,

“Look, guys. I’m trying to complete my mission. Why don’t you come back later?” Chances are, they wouldn’t. And there goes the story.

via GIPHY

So here’s what I’d say about my writing style—

When the spark came back to me, perfect phrasing and all, I’d just often drop everything I was doing & write. And luckily, I did — and here’s a good example:

It turns out to be a good job I took the time right then and wrote that down — it turned out to be one of the more iconic scenes of the story.

Now, I don’t mean to say it’ll never come back to you as good as it did the first time — that, again, is possible, but why give it the chance?

In my next blog, I’ll get down to the nitty-gritty of how I (with help!) pulled together some of those random ideas into larger chunks of text, and then how I structured them into some form of sequential story — a novel-timeline, if you will.

And after that, we’ll get into the juicer stuff: When and how to work the Snowflake method to your benefit (what I have learned so far in my writing journey)…

Can There Be Too Much Editing? The pros and cons of editing your precious ideas half-to-death (yes, you are beginning to guess where I stand on this)…

And, even more: How to Capture the Essence of a Lost Era (my favorite! And possibly yours too — for all the historical novel fans out there).

Cheers,

and Keep Writing!

Abena

July 9 2021

Hi. My Name is Abena Sankofa.

Abena Sankofa On The Writing Process 2

Hi. My name is Abena Sankofa. I am a 20-something-year-old fiction author. And I have too many notebooks. Way too many notebooks.

Many of them are journals. But some of them are books reviews, film reactions, or just things I’ve found interesting, that will go on to fuel more of my own novels.

In them as well, over time, I’ve managed to chart the progress of writing my first novel, from idea, to outline, to manuscript.

So, with all this material on my hands, I thought: Why not share these with you, so you can learn tips and strategies, best advice, and hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls one can encounter on the way to writing your first novel.

Cheers!

— Abena

Music: https://www.bensound.com

Audio

On The Writing Process

To Snowflake or Not to Snowflake?

What is the Snowflake method, and did it work for me?

Well, before I get into it, a brief disclaimer: the man behind the Snowflake method, best-selling author Randy Ingermanson, is an authority on the subject — so I the article below is not a critique, it’s purely an exercise in figuring out:

A) is your writing style is like mine, and

B) if it is, would the Snowflake Method layer well on top of that?

So, here goes:

So, when I heard of The Snowflake Method the first time, from a friend of family, my sister and I immediately ran to the P.C. to look up what that was:

And here, you can read the official description at advancedfictionwriting.com.

But here is my paraphrase: You start with a sentence, a kind of a movie-logline, of what makes this story special. (I came up with mine waaay after the story’s beginnings in 2011, just last year, 2021):

“A teenage songstress-turned sleuth matches wits with the most dangerous syndicate in Chicago in a race to find an inheritance worth millions.”

Pretty fair, right?

The only problem was (for me, that is): I came up with that one line last year, after *ten* years spent shaping the story, meditating on its structure, and then switching to my marketing phase: figuring out what about it would most appeal to the market, not necessarily myself.

Because, you see, what catches your fancy about your story might not be *necessarily* what eventually interests the publishing world.

But back to the Snowflake method. Expand your logline (if you have one) to a paragraph.

Next, add your character’s name (again, my intuitive, zany, out-of-sequence style balks at this, for my character names only come to me when I’m not thinking too hard).

And by Step five, you’ve written a page on each character, their back-story, their aims, their foibles, the lot.

But really, in my experience, I only came up with Smith Owens’ (my top antagonist’s) aims, somewhat later in the process, after I thought of the climax of Book 1.

And then, I finally had my Antagonist’s back-story.

So, in a nut shell, I would say, don’t strain to summarise your story too soon — that would be like trying to estimate the final, adult height of a child right after it’s born. Give it a chance.

BUT THEN, PLEASE USE THE SNOWFLAKE METHOD.

What do I mean? Well, here’s what I did:

I attempted to catch hold of, and put on paper, the “soul” of the story, the bite-size flashes of insight from all around the story, and built outward from each one, until they touched and merged, like this:

Eventually, I snapped these into order—again, with Big Sister’s help (Thx, Akos!) and—voila! I had a story-timeline:

There, I could clearly which parts where done, as if a clay sculpture, to be made from clay patted onto a wire form, I could see which parts of the wire-form were still empty.

And there it happened. Up North.

But here’s a tantalizing teaser: Tip #1: Write it both ways—don’t choose, not just yet.

And Tip #2: Mime it out –Do Acting Exercises. (Yes, you read that right.)

And as Johnny Carson’s famous go-to-break montage used to say, “More to Come….”

—Love, Abena

How to make Scenes *Really* Come Alive

So, your idea starts out as an unsolicited thought of a premise that’s fun for you to imagine:

It’s something you would want to watch if it were a feature film…or a video game, or a TV series.

Then, it starts growing, like there’s some momentum of enthusiasm behind it, and you keep attaching arms and legs to the story fairly effortlessly.

The reason I say this, is because it had better be effortless and enjoyable in the beginning, because this is, for certain, the last time it’s going to be effortless. The process of writing a novel takes so much dedication, that it had better be a subject that inspires you easily.

But how to keep this effortless stage alight for as long as possible?

Tip #2 – Explore your World:

In terms of my own favourite novels, the Redwall series was my first love:

Practically everything I know about how to make a story come alive came from reading Brian Jacques’ books, from his simply, but ever-useful advice for young authors: “Paint a picture with words.”

But, I want to share exactly what one of the key elements of the Redwall Series was: The Universe.

All of this was ensconced in one of my favorite things about Brian Jacques’ novels: The hand-drawn map in the beginning.

Taking inspiration from this, I actually drew my own map of Chicago for my novel — more on that, too, in a future post.

When you’re writing your story, think about the environment of the story. When you close your eyes, and imagine your story as if it was a Virtual Reality walk-through, where would your characters go? What is the full breadth of their physical journey through the landscape of their world?

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

What places would they just have to explore?

Another example: Say you’re writing a kind of turn-of-the century, European nobility sort of story, set in a formal estate, with flowering gardens, and the drama of the tale is mostly inside the gilded halls, among sparring family members, etc.

And finally,

my Tip #3: When in doubt, actually grab a pen and a notebook to right down all the initial inspiration.

I know, it’s going to sound “woo”, but months down the road, when you’re exhausted, and you don’t even remember why such-and-such was a good idea to begin with, you’ll grab that paper, and, just by looking at your own handwriting, you’ll remember what mood you were in:

You’ll “see” your excitement on the page, where you sped up writing versus when you slowed down and chose your words more carefully.

When you grabbed the blue pen to write a more “blueish” scene, and when you grabbed the red pen. All these things will fuel you to put it down on the P.C. just the way you would have wanted to initially.

And before you blow that off, take this into consideration: it’s been found that actually writing, the movement of your hand on physical paper, stimulates the creative centres of the brain more than writing on the computer.

Have a go! (And even if you don’t, at least tell your friends. It makes one sound as if one reads Scientific American — I’ve tried it, and it works).

And if you need more evidence, it’s all there in one of my favourite books, “Steal like an Artist” (and no, it’s not about stealing, it’s a cheeky turn of phrase. You’ll love it.)

So, in short: Definitely write on paper to seize inspiration, then edit on P.C.!

But what to do once you’ve put down all of these stray paragraphs out-of-sequence in your notebooks? How to order them into something that could be called a manuscript?

More on that in the next post — To Snowflake or Not to Snowflake?

See you there, and enjoy the writing journey!

— Abena

Why the Best Writing Style is Your Own

First things first — you have a collection of paragraphs from the most iconic, key parts of your story — the rest are still in your mind, and you’re waiting for the right mood to put them on paper.

But how to structure your writing style? Here’s where I’m going to be controversial with my answer:

Don’t.

At least in terms of what works for me, that’s the *worst* thing you could do with your writing in the beginning. It’s about capturing those random flashes of insight that make you remember later what excited you about this story-concept to begin with.

It’s like that moment in Avatar where those floating, magical seeds come to land on Jake’s arm. He would be ill-advised to shake them off and go,

“Look, guys. I’m trying to complete my mission. Why don’t you come back later?” Chances are, they wouldn’t. And there goes the story.

So here’s what I’d say about my writing style—

When the spark came back to me, perfect phrasing and all, I’d just often drop everything I was doing & write. And luckily, I did — and here’s a good example:

It turns out to be a good job I took the time right then and wrote that down — it turned out to be one of the more iconic scenes of the story.

Now, I don’t mean to say it’ll never come back to you as good as it did the first time — that, again, is possible, but why give it the chance?

In my next blog, I’ll get down to the nitty-gritty of how I (with help!) pulled together some of those random ideas into larger chunks of text, and then how I structured them into some form of sequential story — a novel-timeline, if you will.

And after that, we’ll get into the juicer stuff: When and how to work the Snowflake method to your benefit (what I have learned so far in my writing journey)…

Can There Be Too Much Editing? The pros and cons of editing your precious ideas half-to-death (yes, you are beginning to guess where I stand on this)…

And, even more: How to Capture the Essence of a Lost Era (my favorite! And possibly yours too — for all the historical novel fans out there).

Cheers,

and Keep Writing!

Abena

Hi. My Name is Abena Sankofa.

Hi. My name is Abena Sankofa. I am a 20-something-year-old fiction author. And I have too many notebooks. Way too many notebooks.

Many of them are journals. But some of them are books reviews, film reactions, or just things I’ve found interesting, that will go on to fuel more of my own novels.

The only problem was (for me, that is): I came up with that one line last year, after ten years spent shaping the story, meditating on its structure, and then switching to my marketing phase: figuring out what about it would most appeal to the market, not necessarily myself.

Because, you see, what catches your fancy about your story might not be necessarily what eventually interests the publishing world.

How to make Scenes Really Come Alive

At least in terms of what works for me, that’s the worst thing you could do with your writing in the beginning. It’s about capturing those random flashes of insight that make you remember later what excited you about this story-concept to begin with.