❄️Snowflaking
Grow your story like a crystal.
Episodes of Into the Storymaze = writing ideas or writing-in-progress; a creative something creative to share; a highlight from my comic book writing; and a quote to think/act on.
A new lift from a fun podcast I did with Mark Bellusci. Street Writers was all about the practical biz of writing: producing when you’re “in the street”. We learned and shared many techniques and inspirations from each other. Here’s one:
Dan: Randy Ingermanson is a six-time novelist, a theoretical physicist, and a big supporter of helping other writers get started. He came up with this process called the snowflake method.
The idea behind it is the crystalline structure of a snowflake. It starts off as maybe four or six little elements. And as the ice forms around the snowflake, it becomes more detailed, more complicated and builds out to this really elaborate, beautiful thing.
When you write using this snowflake method, you start with one simple sentence, let’s say 15 words. “An alien farm boy who goes on to defeat a galactic empire.” That's Star Wars, right?
Then the second step is you take that one sentence, and you expand it into a paragraph and you add a few characters.
And if you're thinking a novel conflict that might be: three disasters and an ending right: here's your three points of conflict. Now that snowflake is building.
Then you go into character summaries and you create, “Who are your main characters? Who are those characters names? What is their one sentence summary? What's their storyline? Where are they going to go?”
Now you're working on a essentially a plot summary. You take that paragraph — maybe it had four or five sentences in there — and you're expanding each of those sentences into a paragraph on its own.
Then from there, you're looking back at those characters. Now you turn those characters into a little bit more of a chart with more detail about who they are. And with all those pieces of that snowflake forming out, you expand that into a four-page synopsis.
You've started with one sentence — and you've now gotten to this four page synopsis which hits all your story beats. It tells you where your characters are, where they're going to go.
Mark: First off I hate him. I hate Randy because he reminds me of one of my favorite authors, David Brin — who wrote a million different things, he's also an astrophysics physicist, I think he teaches at MIT. And I'm just like, “I can't keep up with the piddly stuff I have to get done in a day!”
How do these people do this? If Randy’s saying to snowflake, then I'm all in.
What I love about what you just described is it's more — if you stay with the snow analogy —it's that snowball that grows as you roll down the hill. The hardest part than coming up with the idea is maintaining, right?
Dan: One of the things in researching this and reading about it was that whole point of how many people start something and can't finish it.
Mark: The typical responses are either, “Just start writing and see where it goes.” Or you're going to outline and just write to that structure in a detailed way.
So Randy’s giving us another good option. I like that idea of just the snowflake coming out. It's like a branch structure. There's always a next step, and you don't have to necessarily know that full outline or write blindly. You kind of have this nice little momentum building.
At the time it came out, it seemed like Pacific Rim would be this major thing: a cinema free-for-all that would spawn a whole new franchise. The idea was refreshingly lunatic: giant robots fighting kaiju (giant monsters) ripping into our world through a dimensional rift deep in the sea; the style spectacular — no surprise, with the visionary genius of Guillermo del Toro; plus it had Idris Elba going full throttle with lines like, “Today is when we cancel the apocalypse!”
But if it didn’t take the big screen by storm, it has to have been an inspiration for the small screen strategy of Into the Breach. In this most excellent video game, you command a squadron of giant Mechs in a series of tense, turn-based tactical rounds, harnessing your forces to undo the planetary invasion of the insectoid Vek. Each Mech brings a different skill to the 8x8 battlefield, and how you position their missiles, flames, freezes, punches and pulls will determine the very fate of humanity. (Giant sized menace brings out the hyperbole in me…)
Don’t be put off by the retro 8 bit(ish) graphics, or think those mark this as a simplistic, easy win. This is a form of battle chess, and you will need to carefully consider your team selection and their moves carefully/craftily if you’re going to counter the ever-spawning Vek’s own combos of flight, acid, ooze, webs and general malice.
As you work your way across a series of islands under siege, you’ll also need to contend with different terrain and weather. Earthquakes, landslides, lightning and ice storms can take down your Mechs, but are also fine strategic traps for you to lure the Vek to their doom. Further adding to your tactical consideration will be chances to collect time pods with technology bonuses, as well as access to new Mech pilots and their abilities.
There’s a story of sorts, with different island leaders either voicing their support for your battle prowess — or condemning you for your failures. But across the many rounds, I found myself thinking of it more as “*me* against the Vek” — and writing my own tale of confrontation and conquest.
Sometimes it’s a fight to their death. Sometimes you will need to sacrifice one of your own for the win. But even in defeat, Into the Breach delivers that rare and great game quality of “Just one more time, this time I’m going to make it!”
And when you’ve spent many long minutes calculating every possible consequence of an action, and the Veks’ response, and finally commit to an attack that sends those crawling monsters to their graves? Don’t be surprised if you cackle triumphantly. (Or if you see me cackling in public, that might be the reason. Then again, I have many reasons to cackle.)
You can cancel the apocalypse — um, get Into the Breach — on your PC, Switch and mobile. (Special Storymaze bonus tip for those of you with a Netflix account. Check out the Netflix app on your phone: there is a “game” tab that grants you access to a number of mobile games for free — including this one! Veks beware…)
The penultimate installment of the serialized afterword to BOOM Studio’s fab Nightbreed collection. With quotes from editors Marcus McLaurin and Gregory Wright…
THE DEVIL TAKE YOU
“It was important to me to allow the creators to be faithful to the material and not shy away from anything,” Greg continues. “Creator owned material at Marvel [the original mission of the Epic Comics imprint — Detail Dan] was a safe place for creators to experiment, and I felt the only person who should be rejecting material or concepts was Clive. If anything, Clive was always saying to push it some more.”
Which unleashed Jihad. One of the many beauties of Clive’s imagination was its ability to never stop asking, “What if…?” So why not combine his two creations into one magnificent creature? The fact that the Hellraiser and Nightbreed rights were under thrall to two different film companies might have given pause to mere mortals.
But Mr. Barker was at a high point of his powers of influence, juggling movies and games and novels and comics, and both production companies — Miramax and Morgan Creek — signed over these souls for our cage match. There were lots of miracles in this holy war, not least of which was Clive’s mastery of deal-making.
If “The Blasphemers” storyline came to life in a white heat (I really did “legal pad” out the story beats for the whole run in one night, although the written plots took somewhat longer) — then Hellraiser vs. Nightbreed was a fugue state. No doubt all the foundational pieces had been laid in the order vs. anarchy themes that each title represented. But it was as if the tale was channeled, broadcast up from Hell and south from Midian to arrive near complete in my brain.
Whole scenes and dialogue exchanges conjured themselves into existence. My fingers may as well have been a planchette on a ouija board, typing out Pinhead’s goodbye as he walked out across the surface of Lake Avernus. Odd and wonderful references I had collected over the years — about alchemists, aborigines, and astronomy, sorcery, scarification and sex acts — leapt forward to tentacle their way deep into the storyline. It was like they had been waiting for this very ritual to begin.
The raw, wild colliding of Cenobite and ‘Breed was not without its controversy. “I knew there was a scene that might cause some trouble regarding a forced violent abortion,” Greg recounts. “but it was a very necessary story point and I knew it was going to be handled with the utmost taste. We did get called in to the office of Carl Potts, the Epic editor in Chief at the time, to discuss this particular scene.
“I insisted it was necessary to the story, and with D.G. Chichester there to defend it and reassure Carl that it would not be a gratuitous scene, we were trusted to do it. We all know where certain lines are drawn, so I knew it wouldn’t be a problem in the end, but it warranted a discussion. And artist Paul Johnson handled it very well.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs
Amazing Times
I’m D.G. Chichester. If that looks pretentious, feel free to just call me “Dan.”
I earned my storytelling cred writing comic book titles like Daredevil, Terror Inc., Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, along with digital widgets in the world wide web of advertising. I like weird tales, so if things here bend that way — now you know why!
Folks seem to like the comic book adventures I’ve written, so if you haven’t checked one out — please do. Many are now available in fab collected editions.
For the eager moments between newsletters…
@dgchichester — 280 characters from the Twitterverse
@dgchichester — images via Instagramland