How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method

Easy to understand "How-to" book...

This is a great beginners book on how to write a novel. It covers the basics of defining your audience, how to properly work out your characters, planning your story, setting up conflicts, etc. The book does a fine job of covering this information in an easily digestible manner.
What sets this book apart from others on the subject, for me, is in how the information is presented. Instead of telling the information, the author SHOWS the information in action. The Snowflake writing system is presented by having the main character, an aspiring novelist, take a class on, you guessed it, the Snowflake Method. As the information is being presented to the characters by the professor, all of the action going on around them, and the events happening to them provide a wonderful example of the system at work. So, in addition to learning how to write a story, you also get an engaging story that shows the system in action. Presenting the information in this manner made it easy to understand, and helped cement it in my head. Personally, I gained a lot of knowledge on how to write my story in an effective, simple to understand manner.
In addition to the author having an effective book on writing, with an engaging storyline, the narrator did an excellent job of giving each of the characters their own distinct voice, which not every narrator succeeds at. It made the entire book a very enjoyable, easy listen.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

incredibly helpful methods for beginners

as a beginner fiction writers, I find this book extremely helpful. must read. it help me organize my thoughts and work better. the style is fun and the story is enjoyable. if all writing and literature classes could be like this, we would have many more creative writers.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful

Couldn't finish it

I agree with others that the "story" format is distracting and annoying. I got half way through, around step 5, and I couldn't tell you what any of the steps were or why it's called the Snowflake Method, I was totally lost. Maybe it's because I got the audiobook version.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

What a waste of time

I understand the attempt to tell a story within a story to try to show how to write a novel. That's been done before, however, what made this unbearable was to listen to the narrator change the pitches of his voice to depict the range of nursery rhyme characters stuck in a classroom lead by Baby Bear.
Fighting my way through listening to all of this just to get my credit's worth was brutal, but then to find out that all that was necessary was the final chapter which was summarized point-by-point in a normal voice made me think that there was so much hype and fluff and so little substance.
Just get a hold of the last chapter somewhere online and you'll get the breakdown of the snowflake method.
Take it from the narrator, himself, who admits that the Snowflake Method "just does NOT make good audio".
Wish this was made clear before I made the purchase.
This shouldn't even be listed on Audible for that very reason.

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

Shockingly Bad

The irony is astounding.

The author spends a great deal of time teaching his readers that we need to understand our audience, yet he painfully misunderstands the audience for his own book. His audience is adult writers who are looking for mature, well-articulated help with their writing, yet instead he writes as though his audience is children who need to be pandered down to. The book is a narrative between Goldilocks, the three bears, and every other children's tale you can imagine. Baby Bear tries to teach Goldilocks how to write, and we have to sit through all the lame antics a setting like this would create. It seemed like a forced, awkward situation that I assumed was just a "playful" introduction, but as I kept fast forwarding to get to the "real" book, I soon realized the ENTIRE book was written in this painful, immature, out-of-touch format. The only thing that makes it worse is the male narrator trying to do voices for Baby Bear and Goldilocks. Ugh.

When waterboarding prisoners won't work, interrogators should torture them with this audiobook instead. Even innocent people will confess in seconds.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

loved it.

stick with it. seemed silly, but ended up brilliant. highly recommend this for writers struggling with their stories.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Worst book ever!

I could barely keep myself awake while listening to this. I can’t tell you how it came out in the end because I never got there!

Okay for a beginner, Not for advanced writers

I had already heard about the snowflake method and had an understanding of what it was through what I found online. I hoped this would delve more into the method, but for me, it was a waste of time.

The writer wrapped the information in the veneer of a story about an aspiring author going to a writing conference. This made it lose its impact, as the information was sprinkled throughout the "story" parts which didn't help absorption. At first, I kept hoping the Goldilocks fluff would stop and they would get to the meat and potatoes, but I figured out soon enough that this was going to be the whole book. I tried to slog through it, but six or seven chapters in, I gave up.

If you're brand new to writing and need information spoon fed to you, this could be a good book for you. If you have already been studying the craft, then save yourself the annoyance of wasted time and just look up the Snowflake Method online. you'll get all this information in a 15 minute blog post.

Edit: Other reviews noted that chapter 20 contained a summary of the information without having to slog through the ridiculous Goldilocks scenario. I went back to listen to just that chapter and stand by my previous statement. Look it up online and save yourself the time and money because even that chapter wasn't worth using a credit or buying the book.

Love the Method

While I love the snowflake method and have recommended it for years, this 'fairy tale' while creative, got on my nerves after a while. I wanted an audio version of what I was already familiar with. It does bring to life the method though.

Creative help for new writer.

I liked the clever presentation of the information.
I listened to the book and believe that if the information was presented just as a lecture I might not have listened to the whole process.

I am inspired by this method.