3/23

As of right now my 20 time is my first attempt at starting a novel. I at first thought that I was going to be able to finish it, but with the research that I conducted, I found out that I would basically have to drop out of school in order to finish it before the school year is up. So, that was out of the question. I had to change it to getting the first couple of steps done in the process to making the novel. I did this because each step takes a while and I'm just getting to the character development step which will take up a lot of time. What I am changing it to is being able to get through the character development, the prologue and maybe two or three chapters. I know that this is a huge step down from what I wanted to do, but as of right now, it's really the only logical thing that I can do.

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People might say that teenagers can’t make a quality piece of writing.  That they don’t have the maturity to stay on one topic long enough to make a novel that is something worth reading.  A lot goes into making a novel. Time, which it seems that teenagers have none of.  Commitment, which teens seem to lack because they can’t even stay in an activity long enough to see it though.  Effort, kids these days can’t even keep good grades let along write 300+ pages on one topic.  Desire and creativity, which also isn’t promising considering the most creative teens get is how to hold their phone in bed to keep it from falling on their faces.  From the things that society thinks about this newest generation of teens, all of these are not traits that we as a collective group do not have, therefore, cannot make a good piece of writing, let alone a novel.  Well, there are ways that these people can be proven wrong.

            Writing takes more than just creativity, it takes structure.  “Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed,” States Randy Ingermanson, a theoretical physicist and award winning author of six novels.  He has come up with a method that he calls “the Snowflake Metaphor.”  What this means is you start out small, but as you add and add, your story will start to take shape, just like a snowflake.  He came up with this method while he was still an architect designer.  He said that writing a novel was no different. You have to start with a good base to build on, and as you add more structure, you can start to focus on the little details.  This whole method that he uses is a process of 10 steps. In each one, he focuses on a major part in writing a novel.  Each step is important, if you skip one, you might just leave out a major part of your story.  He also highlights the fact that each step takes time, some of them, he states, might take weeks to do.  The first step alone, creating a one sentence summary of the novel, should take about an hour to do.  All of this has been said to help out new writers with creating their first novel.

            I think that what Ingermanson has done with this snowflake method is pure genius.   I myself have been struggling with getting my first novel up and running.  I had the creativity, I had the desire, but what I didn’t have was structure.  I didn’t know how to start.  I thought that all you had to do was start writing and a story will magically flow out your fingertips.  In short, I was wrong.  Before I found this, I came up with the notion that if you were to start planning out a novel, you had to start with the character development.  I found out that it was a step in Ingermanson method, but it was the third step. I found out that you have to first make a summary of your story.  Knowing what your story is about and how it starts and ends will help you with the development of your characters.  Also, if I wouldn’t have found this method, I wouldn’t have found out how much time it takes to plan out and write a novel.  When people say that teenagers don’t have enough time to write a novel, they are right.  I assume for this reason alone; you don’t see many teenagers putting out any award winning books.  If I am to write my novel, the hardest thing for me to do is find the time to do it. I have a method I can use for structure, I have the desire to finally write my first novel, I have the idea and the creativity for it. All I need is time.