Pondering A Story Part 3

If you have been following this blog, you’ll remember I’ve been pondering a story using The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson. In Pondering A Story I attempted step 1. In Pondering A Story Part 2 I attempted step 2. Today’s post may be shorter, but I’m going to attempt step 3.

Step 3 is where we work on discovering who are characters are. Here is a check list taken from Ingermansons’ own website www.advancedfictionwriting.com.

1. The character’s name

2. A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline

3. The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)

4. The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)

5. The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)

6. The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?

7. A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

I’ll admit, when I first looked at this, I thought, “Do what? I can’t do that.”

Turns out, I did. It’s not perfect, and every time I look at my answers, they change. But, below is what I came up with for my story. Note: This is my interpretation. Yours will be different, because you are different.

Character’s name: Mercy Wakefield

1 sentence summary: Mercy Wakefield purchases an indentured servant to help run the farm and ends up falling in love with him.

Motivation: desire to better herself. Make a life without a man.

concrete goal: purchase indentured help rather than marry to make farm work

Conflict: servant looks like husband and doesn’t act like she thought he would, and she falls for him.

Epiphany: trusts him, realizes she can have both love and successful life. 

summary paragraph: Embittered widow, Mercy Wakefield purchases an indentured servant to help her run her farm. He isn’t like her husband, though. He works hard to make farm a success and keeps his word. Then, he breaks a promise, and she is hurt. She gets to lowest point and realizes she can’t do it on her own anymore. Only after she decides to write to late husband’s family for help does she learn servant is brother-in-law. Family arrives from England and servant is cleared of crimes. She must learn to step out in faith and embrace love and life God has for her.

Now, for him

Character’s’ name: Gabriel Wakefield

1 sentence summary: On a search for his twin brother who was kidnapped as a child, Gabriel Wakefield is convicted of a crime and sentenced to seven years in the colonies..

Motivation: love of family, sense of honor, to marry someday and have what parents have, to have brother back and/or know what happened to him.

Character’s goal: find brother or find out what happened, make family whole again

Conflict: accused of crime and sentenced to seven years transportation to colonies, bought by a woman who makes him feel sympathy, gives his word to stay, begins to care for the woman, caught escaping and sentenced to hang

Epiphany: lets God have control, realizes he can’t fix it all. trusts God to fix it

summary paragraph: On a search for his twin brother who was kidnapped as a child, Gabriel Wakefield is convicted of a crime and sentenced to seven years in the colonies.. He promises he won’t escape in exchange for being loosed from his chains. Begins to fall for the woman who purchased him. When he realizes the woman is his sister-in-law, he tries to escape to send a letter home. He is caught and sentenced to hang according to terms of his indenture. At a low point, he turns to God for help. When his family arrives and he is cleared of the charges, he steps out in faith and asks the woman to marry him.

And, y’all, that’s it. Yep, that is step 3. What is crazy, is I actually think I have the bones of a real good story, here. Right now, it looks like this story line will work.

Disclaimer; I’m going on 3 hours of sleep and very little food, because I was too busy to eat today. LOL Too busy on purpose. It’s called, editing a 109,000 manuscript. Ha! That’s right. The WIP I’ve been working on is written. Ready for you to read? Not so much. :) Let the hours of editing continue and the word smithing begin. A writer’s life is nothing if not interesting.

Your challenge: Go work on your own story idea. Go to Ingermanson’s site and check out his method for yourself. Above all, have fun and give God the glory.

Be sure to come back next week when I will attempt step 4 in the snowflake method.

Happy Tuesday and be blessed.