The Snowflake Method. Step 3: Character Summaries - PLUMA

At this point in your outlining of your story, you have a basic structure of your plot laid out which includes the main plot points, and a resolution to the protagonists’ desires and obstacles laid out in the logline. Having a solid and cohesive plot is crucial, but characters will almost always play a role just as critical in fiction.

I say “almost” because there are no rules written in stone when it comes to writing and exceptions can always be made. It is possible to create a story with no characters. Traditionally, however, fiction will include characters who use their agency, personality, and choices to move the story along. People are hard-wired to connect and empathize with characters. Characters in a story don’t need to be human, they don’t even technically have to be living. A character can be any entity that has some kind of agency. When they also have believable motivations, struggles, and development, these qualities will appeal a lot more to readers than having a story where the plot magically chugs along and resolves itself without any input or effect on its characters.

This step will focus on crafting intriguing characters and figuring out how to best weave them into your plot to strengthen both the overall themes and trajectory of the story. Characters and plot should work to strengthen one another and create a story that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Ingermanson recommends taking an hour to write a one-page summary of each character with the following information:

The character’s name
A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline
The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
The character’s 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

Although he doesn’t specify the order, I would actually reorder the points like this, step by step. You’ll see why in my explanation.

The character’s name
The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
The character’s 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-sentence summary of the character’s storyline
A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

The name should need no explanation, but it would be worthwhile to spend some time thinking about the other points.

The way I re-ordered the points was to take the second bullet, the one-sentence summary, and toss it to step number 6 and I also swapped out the next two points Why? Because although conventional wisdom would say that it’s best to start small and then work your way up to larger sections, I tend to disagree, at least when it comes to editing and writing concisely. I also think its easier to think of goals than motivations.

If you read my writeup of the first step of this method you’ll see that what seems like a simple task: a one-sentence summary, can be one of the hardest things to do as a writer. I was able to write an entire novel before even attempting to write summaries or synopses this short (I still struggle with this!).

For me, and most students I’ve taught, it’s easier to brainstorm and throw a lot of ideas on paper, than whittle away that mountain of ideas to find the gold nuggets hidden there. Most ideas won’t make it to the final product, so I think this part of the Snowflake Method is the perfect place to practice this edit-down approach.

Another reason is that any summary, whether it’s one sentence or one paragraph long, will need to contain at least hints of things such as the character’s motivation, goals, conflicts, and epiphany in order to be structurally sound.

1. The Character’s Name

This one shouldn’t need any explanation.

2. The Character’s Goal

A goal should be a concrete thing that the character wants. This could be to become king, find a magical sword, defeat the evil empire, win the tournament, or rescue the prince or princess. Goals also need to make sense only to that character and may not seem like a desirable goal for everyone.

3. The Character’s Motivation

Now that you have the goal, think of the why of it. Why is it important for your character to reach or obtain this goal? This is where you’ll be digging deeper into the character’s emotions, desires, and even flaws. Let’s take a look at the example goals above and flesh out some possible motivations based on those goals.

Become king – character feels powerless and thinks that becoming king will give them the respect and power they crave.
finding a magical sword – character thinks that having a magic sword will make them the most popular kid at school
Defeat the evil empire – character wants revenge after the empire destroyed his hometown
Win the tournament – character wants the prize money from the winnings to pay for his cancer treatment bills
Rescue the princess – character wants to find true love

You might already realize that there can be an endless number of different motivations for any single goal. The goal is generic, the motivation is what will give your character life and will make readers care about them.

For example, just as one person may seek out a magical sword to become the most popular kid in school, a different character may also be seeking out the same goal but for a different reason: to become an unstoppable warrior.

This situation, two characters seeking out the same goal for different reasons sounds like a recipe for conflict. Speaking of…

4. The Character’s Conflict

The main conflict that should guide a character’s journey and development in a story, are the things that prevent them from reaching this goal.

You don’t need a bad guy or a shady organization to get in your character’s way, all you need are obstacles in their path.

For example: let’s take a look at those goals from before, and think about possible conflicts you could create.

Become king – there is already a king, and they wouldn’t just give up their power because your character wants it
finding a magical sword – the sword is hidden and well guarded
Defeat the evil empire – the evil empire is seemingly unstoppable and will crush any resistance
Win the tournament – their opponents are incredible athletes, and just as hungry for victory
Rescue the princess – there’s a giant dragon guarding her

Once again, there are just as many potential conflicts for a goal as there are motivations. Your job as a writer is not just to think of something that works, but to think of something that will be fresh, innovative, clever, and entertaining. Let’s do some advanced creative writing thinking and modify the above examples (they’re kind of cliche) with more unique and creative conflicts instead.

Become king – the character is one of three identical triplets, and now all three must enter a tournament of triplets to see who should be the king and win the support of the people.
finding a magical sword – the sword is intelligent and doesn’t want to be used to make the character popular
Defeat the evil empire – the character is a tech support worker for the Evil Empire and needs the money, he can’t just quit to join the rebels.
Win the tournament – the character is not fully recovered from her cancer treatment and must keep it a secret to not be disqualified (triple conflict: character struggling with their health, against opponents, and trying to hide their condition from the sports league)
Rescue the princess – the rescue is part of a reality show where a group of bizarre contestants are also trying to rescue the prince for different reasons

5. The Character’s Epiphany

This is what will define the growth and fate of the character. Some characters don’t change, and that’s the point of the story, but generally, most characters (especially the main characters) should have some kind of realization by the end of the story. This realization should prompt them to do something different than what they’ve been doing. If not, then a reader may wonder why they invested so much time and energy following a character only for them to end up where they started with no changes.

Let’s take a look at our juiced-up conflicts above, (I’ll also include the goals and motivations to keep track of them) and think of some examples of how a character in that situation might change or what they might learn near the end of their journey.

Goal	Motivation	Conflict	Epiphany
Become king	Wants power and respect	Character’s has to compete against their triplet twins for the crown	Character realizes he and his 3 brothers have always been better when working together, so they decide to share the crown.
Find a magical sword	Wants to be popular	Sword is intelligent and refuses to be used for such a purpose	Character realizes that friendship is better than popularity, and befriends the sword instead of trying to use it to be cool
Defeat Evil Empire	Wants revenge for the destruction of their town	Character works tech support for Evil Empire and can’t afford to join the rebels and take a pay cut	Character realizes stopping the empire is more important than keeping their job, decides to use their expertise to sabotage the Empire’s systems and help the rebels in that way
Win sports tournament	Wants money to pay for cancer treatment	Character is still receiving treatment, and has to keep the condition secret from the league as well as play while still weak from the medications	Character learns that their lies only continue to make the situation worse, so they decide it’s better to tell the truth and accept any consequences that come with it
Rescue the princess	Wants to find true love	They are on a reality show where a bunch of weird contestants are also trying to rescue the princess for different reasons	Character falls in love with an opponent, and realizes that love is not about grand gestures but getting to know someone and opening up to them.

6. “One” Sentence Summary of Character’s Storyline

At this point, you probably realize that we already have more than this. If you look at the table and put together the pieces, it could fit nicely in a one-sentence summary. Notice how I put the “one” in quotations. This is because I don’t think it’s very helpful (or very practical) to smush the ideas we’ve already developed into a single sentence.

Why? Well, for one thing, we’d be trying to fit four different ideas, each of which can be best expressed in separate sentences, into one single complete thought. If you’re pitching an idea to a slick movie executive and he only allows you to pitch your idea in one sentence, that’s one thing, but this is your planning phase. You don’t need to pack all your ideas into the smallest space possible, so instead of thinking of this step as a “one-sentence summary” I suggest expressing your goal, motivation, conflict, and epiphany in as many sentences as needed for it to flow naturally without adding any unnecessary details.

It’s okay if the results are a bit unrefined. This is not the finished product but a map of where things should go.

Let’s take the sports example above and see what it could look like as a short summary.

Parts:

Win sports tournament

Wants money to pay for cancer treatment

Character is still receiving treatment, and has to keep the condition secret from the league as well as play while still weak from the medications

Character learns that their lies only continue to make the situation worse, so they decide it’s better to tell the truth and accept any consequences that come with it

Short summary:

Erika wants to win the Rockville Soccer Cup to pay for her cancer treatment with the prize money, however, she is still receiving treatment and needs to keep it a secret. Things get tough, and Erika finds her health slipping as her lies spiral out of control. Eventually, she learns that her lying is only hurting her health and her reputation, and she realizes it’s best to come clean and tell the truth no matter what happens.

Just for practice’s sake, let’s do the same for the “rescue the princess” example:

Rescue the princess

Wants to find true love

They are on a reality show where a bunch of weird contestants are also trying to rescue the princess for different reasons

Character falls in love with an opponent, and realizes that love is not about grand gestures but getting to know someone and opening up to them.

Charlie enters a reality show called “Rescue Me” because he wants to rescue the beautiful princess Televiza and make her fall in love with his victory. This season, however, his opponents are all incredibly talented and just as motivated to win the season for different reasons. As the show progresses, Charlie makes enemies with Serena, another contestant, and as they try to outwit each other, Charlie realizes he’s fallen in love with his TV rival. He learns that love for him is about getting to know a person and not about impressing each other.

7. One Paragraph Summary of Character’s Storyline

Finally, the last step!

Honestly, there is not much difference between what I suggested in the previous step and here. You could call the previous examples paragraphs, and you’d be right.

So why bother with this step, why not turn step 6 into the paragraph summary and be done with it?

It’s because I think we’re still missing a crucial piece to the puzzle, and that’s the character’s conclusion.

We have their epiphany, sure, and most people can probably guess how the character’s storyline will end based on this realization, but as writers, I think it’s important for us to try and have an ending in mind as we do our plotting.

So let’s take what we have, and see if we can flesh out an interesting way to end the character’s storyline based on their trajectory. Let’s start with the tennis example.

Erika wants to win the Rockville Soccer Cup to pay for her cancer treatment with the prize money, however, she is still receiving treatment and needs to keep it a secret. Things get tough, and Erika finds her health slipping as her lies spiral out of control. Eventually, she learns that her lying is only hurting her health and her reputation, and she realizes it’s best to come clean and tell the truth no matter what happens. After revealing her condition, she is disqualified from the league, but the tournament winners use their winnings to pay for her cancer treatment and Erika is seen as an inspiration to others.

And now let’s do the same for the reality TV idea:

Charlie enters a reality show called “Rescue Me” because he wants to rescue the beautiful princess Televiza and make her fall in love with his victory. This season, however, his opponents are all incredibly talented and just as motivated to win the season for different reasons. As the show progresses, Charlie makes enemies with Serena, another contestant, and as they try to outwit each other, Charlie realizes he’s fallen in love with his TV rival. He learns that love for him is about getting to know a person and not about impressing each other. In the final episode, Charlie is pitted against Serena and confesses his love for her. They both drop out of the show and lose the contest but become fan favorites and end up happily together.

Now, as a way to show how important endings are, let’s keep everything up to the epiphany and rewrite the ending to completely change the storyline.

Charlie enters a reality show called “Rescue Me” because he wants to rescue the beautiful princess Televiza and make her fall in love with his victory. This season, however, his opponents are all incredibly talented and just as motivated to win the season for different reasons. As the show progresses, Charlie makes enemies with Serena, another contestant, and as they try to outwit each other, Charlie realizes he’s fallen in love with his TV rival. He learns that love for him is about getting to know a person and not about impressing each other. In the final episode, Charlie is pitted against Serena and confesses his love for her. Serena doesn’t feel the same way, so Charlie lets her win since Serena’s only goal is to win at all costs. Although Charlie never found true love, he now knows how to go about finding it.

The first story summary has a feel-good ending where Charlie gets what he wants in the end (goal) just not the way he expected.

In the second story summary, Charlie doesn’t achieve his goal (falling in love) but he realizes that his ideas about love were all wrong. What he achieves, instead, is a more mature outlook on romance and this can help him find love in the future, whereas, he realizes how silly his previous view was that he could find love by winning a reality show.

The second character story (in my opinion) is more nuanced and bittersweet, and I prefer it to the first one, but this may not be the case for everyone. Think about what you want to achieve in your story for your characters, and why.

Is it more important to give them what they want, or what they need? Is it better to help them grow, or maybe they don’t grow and make the wrong choice and suffer the consequences? Every choice will affect your story in terms of tone, outcome, and themes.

It’s okay if you’re not sure why you prefer one ending or choice over another, and it’s okay if you can’t fully analyze or explain how it will affect all elements of the story, but for now, it’s important to make choices as a writer and ask yourself why, even if you don’t have all the answers yet.

Important tips:

During or after this stage, you may realize you want to go back and change the storyline summaries from steps 1 and 2. That’s okay, you can go back and change what you started with.

This simply means that the more you flesh out your characters, the more they are informing the overall course of the story. Go with whatever changes you need to make to improve the overall story.

Any revisions made now will save you loads of editing during later stages where its much harder, and much more painful, to edit or delete, or rewrite entire chapters or parts of the story.

Always remember that we are not striving for perfection in these early planning stages. The point of these early steps in the process is to build momentum. One thing should take you naturally to the next. Even going back to revise previous steps is a part of this momentum. As long as you keep progressing, the story can grow.

What you want to avoid is to stop altogether because you are second-guessing something, or because you can’t come up with the perfect ending or the most beautiful way to write a summary. The longer you stop, the harder it is to come back to a project in this planning stage.