When I began the day, I didn’t expect to get that far. There was still quite a lot to do and I wasn’t certain how some of it was going to play out.
But when I closed work for the afternoon and tallied words written for the day, I was so close to a new record word count for a single day that I decided to attempt reaching a new record, even though I’d have to wait until after band rehearsal to do so.
I didn’t set the new record, but when I finally stopped for the day just a few minutes shy of midnight, I had finished the scene descriptions.
The descriptions need some polishing and some of the scenes are on the skimpy side, but I was very pleased to be able to go to bed knowing that Step Nine was done.
I’ve been working the snowflake since January 20. Four weeks today. It seems a lot longer, but it’s pretty close to the amount of time outlined in the description of the snowflake method. For someone who has always written by the seat of her pants, taking a month to design a story seems like forever. But I am more satisfied with the second draft before writing starts than I am with the finished first draft. That tells me that the system is sound and that any time I spend at this stage is going to advance the process several steps in the later phases of work.
My next objective is to take a day or two to review what I’ve written. I need to get answers for a couple of questions and they may require some adjustments to the story. I also need to be able to look at the descriptions with a cold, objective eye and be able to spot slow or inadequate areas and fix them before writing begins. Once that work is complete, I’ll bring all the previous documentation up to date so everything is in agreement, but after that…writing!
After that, the goal is to remember to spend four weeks in designing a story before I spent hours writing the first draft instead of afterward. That will really advance the process!
Another milestone reached! I finished Step Nine of the snowflake method of story design last night.