I think it should be called “weekend planning,” but I sort of like alliteration, so it’s staying. After all, I have to write while I plan, so it kind of fits.

Many readers don’t know, but I don’t have classes on Fridays, and I usually use it for a “rest day” where I don’t do any work. In order to jump-start a lot of these projects, I’m going to be Snowflaking Fridays and seeing how much I can potentially do in a day. I would imagine that I can accomplish quite a bit if that’s the main focus of the day. 

I am a firm believer on sharing goals with a larger public (even if that only includes a best friend). The simple act of sharing includes another person, which means the possibility of disappointment. So, even though many of you will not be disappointed if I don’t reach this goal, the simple fact that I will have to admit it to the “world” is enough for me to try my best. 

I’ll preface this a little bit. If you’re not familiar with the Snowflake Pro software, there are 9 steps. 

1. One-sentence summary (basically taking the entire novel idea and paring it down to one sentence. It’s harder than it seems!)
2. One paragraph summary (Taking step one, you are supposed to expand that further into one paragraph. Think of it as Act 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. until the ending.)
3. Define your characters (This includes ALL characters - big or small. In here, there is the name, ambition, story goal, conflict, epiphany, and more.)
4. Short synopsis. (Each sentence in Step 2 gets expanded into its own paragraph.)
5. Character synopses (Each character’s story through their own eyes.)
6. Long synopsis (The short synopsis expanded to about 4 pages.)
7. Character charts (Age, date of birth, occupation, eye color, hair color, height, weight, type of dressing, humor type, personality, ethnicity, etc. This takes a LOT of brainpower!)
8. List of scenes (Just what it sounds like. Each scene gets ordered and categorized.)
9. Notes and ideas for scenes (Dialogue, setting, prose, etc. for scenes.)

Those are the nine steps to building a very-detailed skeleton for a novel. Right now, I’m on step 5. I’ve done one character, and I have ten more to do. This will take a pretty long time to really switch viewpoints.

Okay, so reasonably, what can I expect of myself by midnight on Saturday? 

1. Finish Step 5 (5 hours total - 30 minutes for each character, which isn’t a lot of time!)
2. Finish Step 6 (rest of the day - approximately 8 or so hours).

I think that will take the most of my energy. I don’t usually do step 6, but I think it is important to get to know the structure of the novel BEFORE writing and making scenes. 

That’s Friday. I think I can squeeze Saturday in there. Saturday will be devoted to just Step 7, but there are 11 characters and 47 questions to answer for EACH of them. So, that’s 517 questions total. Some are easy, but other require a lot of detail. Because I do have homework and exams to study for, I’ll only be focusing on this step on Saturday.

On Sunday, if I have time, I hope to begin Steps 8 and 9. Because they’re related, I usually work on them at the same time. I do 300 scenes, and I expand them in prose/dialogue to roughly 333 words each to have a grand total of 100,000 words at the very end. 

Easy, peasy. 

Now, let’s just see if that happens. ;)