The Snowflake Method. Step 4: The One-Page Skeleton

At this stage, you now have a one-paragraph summary of the story: neat, tidy, precise, and hopefully, engaging.

I’m sure that for many of you who may have followed a similar process as this, the most difficult part so far has been condensing what might have started as big or undefined ideas into small, concrete, descriptions.

There are as many pieces of writing advice as there are writers. Some writers may tell you to start big, writing as much as you can and then whittling it down to the final product. While this might work for many, I think most beginners will freeze when it comes time to edit their work down. Not only is editing a grueling process, but it also continuously asks writers to eliminate great chunks of something they spend countless hours building- something they’ve fallen in love with and are now being asked to part with.

A lot of us just can’t take the pain of having to let go of so many precious things.

I’m not saying this method will eliminate editing, but if you can start with a brief and concise idea, it is much easier to expand that structure into a story with good bones and then trim the fat, than it is to begin with a many-headed monstrosity that you’ll get tired of hacking away at.

If you start too large, in the end, you may not be sure what to cut, or what’s worth keeping.

Well, you can now breathe easy, because it’s time to start lifting the constraints of brevity and expand that carefully crafted paragraph into its most basic skeleton outline.

I am using the term “skeleton outline” here to mean the most bare-bones map of the story along with its major beats. I wouldn’t call what has been created so far an outline, as much as a summary or synopsis.

1. Break up your paragraph into sentences

That’s pretty much the first step. Chop it up.

Each sentence should serve as a basis for one of the major beats in the story and will be fleshed out into a paragraph.

Example:

I’m a big believer in seeing examples, so let’s bring back one of the example paragraphs from the previous step and work with it here.

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.

Now let’s cut it up by sentence, and let’s add a number at the front of each sentence to help us keep track of them.

1. 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.
2. This season, however, his opponents are all incredibly talented and just as motivated to win the season for different reasons.
3. 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.
4. He learns that love for him is about getting to know a person and not about impressing each other.
5. In the final episode, Charlie is pitted against Serena and confesses his love for her.
6. Serena doesn’t feel the same way, so Charlie lets her win since Serena’s only goal is to win at all costs.
7. Although Charlie never found true love, he now knows how to go about finding it.

Boom. We now have the “skeleton” of our outline. Let’s see how turning these sentences into their own paragraphs will go in the next step.

2. Flesh out each sentence into a paragraph

Hope you didn’t think it was all downhill from step one. Here’s where it gets a bit complicated.

To give us a bit more direction, let’s see what Randy Ingermanson has to say about this stage:

Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

Why would Randy want you to fill your story with disaster?

As mentioned before, conflict, obstacles, complications, and disasters are what move a story forward. Even in stories that might seem fairly tame, notice the small or large obstacles the main characters must navigate or overcome. Whether it’s spinach stuck in teeth, or the end of the universe, the best way to draw in readers and provide a natural progression to your story will be conflict. It’s the butter that will give your croissant its delicious flakiness (if your story were a croissant, that is).

Example:

Using that as our guideline, let’s try to expand each sentence, ensuring that each paragraph (except for the last one) ends in disaster.

1. Charlie has just been broken up with by his girlfriend of 3 years. He struggles to connect with anyone with small talk and can’t find success on dating apps. As he walks home from a shift at the pizza shop, he sees a flyer calling for submissions for a new show “Rescue Me” where contestants compete to win the love of Televiza, a beautiful influencer known for role-playing as a medieval princess. Charlie is physically fit and has always loved competition and attention, so he calls the number on the flyer. They tell him the office closes in 10 minutes and this is the final day of walk-in casting. Charlie panics but then parkours through the city to get there in time, even climbing some exterior scaffolding and fighting off security guards to get to the rooftop studio in time. He gets to the balcony of the studio but finds someone closing the door and now the studio is empty.
   
2. Charlie is caught, arrested, and thrown in jail for his stunt. As he re-thinks his life in jail, a woman in a sharp suit bails him out and tells him to follow her. She’s a rep for the network and fronts the money to bail himself out. He steps into a limo and it drives to the studio. He asks if they’ll let him audition, and she tells him that he already did. She gives him back his phone and he sees a million notifications. His desperate stunt had been recorded by a few onlookers and had gone viral. It turns out, he was already a fan favorite and the online fans demanded he be in the show. He is whisked through wardrobe, makeup, and thrown into a cocktail mixer with the other contestants. Cameras are recording every interaction, and Charlie soon realizes how out of his league he is. Among his competitors are world-class athletes, super-geniuses, billionaires, influencers with millions of loyal fans, and other ruthless opponents forged in the fires of showbiz. Charlie ignores the “points” up on a board that the producers use to motivate contestants to offer entertaining clips for the audience and instead just fades into the background, his score sitting at 0. As the social comes to an end, the producers announce it is time for the season’s first elimination.
   
3. Charlie knows there’s no way in hell he can win, so he does the most sensible thing. He finishes his drink, goes over to the exhausted servers, tips them $20, and leaves the party. One of the contestants, a trust fund brat, is caught on a hot mic saying “Think about how many shitty pizzas he had to prepare to make that 20.” The fans hear this comment and are repulsed by it while being endeared by Charlie’s generosity to the staff. the trust fund brat gets eliminated and Charlie is safe. On their way to the boat that will take them to the show’s island set, he gets sucker-punched by another contestant. Her name is Serena, and she’s a roller derby star who became famous after knocking out a drunk heckler. Charlie complains about getting hit, and Serena tells him to toughen up. She says “You were lucky that victim crap helped you back there, it won’t work again. Nobody likes a victim. I’m gonna beat you, and I’d rather beat a worthy opponent than someone who wants to act like they don’t deserve to be here.”
   
4. As the show progresses, Charlie becomes fierce rivals with Serena, and as they try to outwit each other, Charlie realizes he’s beginning to develop some inexplicable feelings towards her. He can’t stop thinking about her, but at the same time, he’s obsessed with beating her in every challenge. He begins to realize that getting to know Serena as a whole person, her flaws, her strengths, her ambitions, and spending more time with her allows him to develop feelings that he fears are starting to resemble love. He begins to care less about winning, and more about impressing Serena and making her fall for him, too, but Serena keeps up her tough exterior. Charlie, Serena, and one other contestant make it to the final episode. Charlie wants to tell Serena how he feels about her and to let the other guy win but he chokes. At the end of the episode, right when the 3rd contestant is going to win, Charlie takes the other contestant down with him, ensuring that Serena wins instead.
   
5. Due to fan demand, and producers being angry at Charlie’s intervention, they plan a final final episode where Charlie will go head to head against Serena to compete to save and win the love of Princess Televiza. Serena is glad she gets another chance to earn her victory instead of being handed it. In the final showdown, Charlie finally overcomes his fear of rejection and confesses his love for her. Serena confesses she loves him, too, but that she loves winning more. Charlie is rejected live and to a worldwide audience, his biggest fear coming alive.
   
6. Charlie stands up and instead of letting this rejection defeat him, he gives Serena what she wants, a fair fight. They duel until the end, and Serena ends up narrowly beating him and winning, getting what she wants in the process. Serena takes the trophy, but rejects Princess Televiza, telling her she could never be with someone so helpless, shaking up the show with even more controversy which the producers love. Charlie shoots his shot with Princess Televiza who side-eyes him and tells him she doesn’t date second-place finishers or people who can’t get over someone else, she tells Charlie that he’s both of those things and to get lost. Charlie faces another crushing rejection on international TV yet again, but he simply says, “Your loss” and leaves.
   
7. Although Charlie didn’t win the contest or end up finding love on set, he has now lost his fear of rejection. He reflects that he’s probably one of history’s most publicly humiliated people, can’t get much worse than that. He also says his dating app inbox has been blowing up with messages from people wanting to date him. Charlie reflects that he’s sure there are a lot of really nice people in those messages that he could maybe spend the rest of my life with, but right now, there’s just one person he wants to spend time with. He messages Serena and is about to put his phone down, but then the three dots appear, showing that Serena is writing back.

I did not have this prepared ahead of time. I wrote this out as I was typing this post which is a great way to test out the very methods I’m discussing in real time. I have to say, I was surprised by how intuitive and quick it was.

As with any writing advice or method, your mileage may vary, but I was able to put together what I consider to be a solid and entertaining outline by following these two simple rules:

1. Turn each sentence into a paragraph
2. End each paragraph (except the final one) with some kind of disaster
   
   Actually, let me add a 3rd rule of my own.
   
3. Revise, rearrange, and recombine your sentences as needed to fit the outline

If you compare my list of sentences to my paragraphs you’ll notice some big changes.

Changes and why I made them

You’ll notice the 3rd paragraph doesn’t include anything from the 3rd sentence:

3. 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.

I invented a great disaster to end the second paragraph, but now I needed a way to resolve it! I needed paragraph 3 to resolve this and it would have felt rushed to include the romance with Serena in that same paragraph, so I pushed that into the next paragraph. I essentially combined sentences 3 and 4 into what would be my 4th paragraph.

It’s always far better to change what you have written for the better than it is to reject the new material because it doesn’t “fit” what you already have. Writing is not math. It can always be changed and improved to fit your vision.

You’ll notice I made a lot of changes in the second half of the outline.

The new details made me reconsider and even do a 180 on some of the previous ideas I had.

Originally I had the ending consist of Charlie confessing his love to Serena, him being rejected, and him letting her win the contest. After all, Charlie had gotten what he needed, which was a new perspective on love. But this felt wrong now that I’d had more of the events fleshed out.

So I broke up the “final episode showdown” into two main beats, one being a 3-person finale where Charlie fails to confess his love for Serena due to fear of rejection, and instead does the “nice guy” thing of throwing away his chance to win. Having this happen before the true ending allowed for two things to happen: having Charlie fail to confess his feelings when it counts makes him see the cost of his fear of rejection which is that never gets a chance at what he truly wants, to be with Serena.

Similarly, Serena could never be happy with Charlie letting her win, and neither would the fans and producers. She wants to feel like she’s earned her victory, it’s what she cares most about. Not just winning, but being the best.

This false ending allows for Charlie to stumble, and in doing so shoots himself and everyone else in the foot.

I had to resolve this disaster in the next paragraph, so I decided that in a sudden turn of events, they should get a FINAL-final episode since the fans and producers weren’t happy with the ending of the season. In this final episode, it’s just Charlie and Serena, face to face. No other contestant to deal with. Now the stakes are higher and more personal, and Charlie has a chance to learn from his mistakes. This time, Charlie swallows his fear of rejection and confesses his love to Serena. I thought it would be more interesting if she reciprocated his feelings BUT still wanted to win the contest more. Now Charlie’s worst fears have come true, he’s been rejected in the most public way. I’d call that a disaster. Instead of resolving this issue in the same paragraph, I started a new one and wondered how this would unfold.

Initially, I had Charlie let Serena win, but this already happened during the first finale. As I mentioned before, this doesn’t feel like a great resolution. One, it would undermine Serena’s efforts throughout the story and take away her autonomy, and two, it would mean Charlie doesn’t care about Serena’s wishes. Serena wants to fight the most worthy adversary and win. It felt much better to have Charlie decide to give it his all to defeat Serena. He doesn’t care about winning Princess Televiza’s love at this point, but by giving Serena what she wants, he shows that he cares about her and will let her earn her victory.

These changes conjured up a different ending. Instead of Charlie knowing how “to go about finding love” which is an ambiguous lesson, instead, he overcomes his fear of rejection which becomes his new and powerful weapon and the very thing that lets him continue to pursue what he wants in the end.

this process not only helped me flesh out important details the story needs to come alive, but it gave the story a new and more impactful goal and journey for the main characters.

Don’t be afraid to screw up and chop up your story in any of these stages. Let it take on a life of its own. When in doubt, save both versions and decide which one you like better later.

Follow these steps, and now you’ll have a shiny skeleton outline of your next great story.

Each paragraph will give you a rough idea of the main beats of your story, interesting conflicts, and will force you to think of interesting ways to solve them.

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