Interview with Randy Ingermanson “The Snowflake Guy”

I am happy to post a few questions from man who has been helping teach people how to write. His Name is Randy Ingermanson also known as The Snowflake Guy for his method on how to write called the Snowflake method. I have been getting Randy’s free ezine for nearly 2-3 years now and look forward to each one every month. I also check his blog everyday to see what he is talking about on it to see what I can pick up or contribute in the discussion. You can check out Randy’s website Here. Let’s get to those questions. Before I do just want to thank Randy again for being willing to answer these questions for me to post. He is every busy guy as you will see.

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1. You have a PhD in Physics, specializing in elementary particle theory, but you now write, why write instead of doing something in the field thatyou got your education in?

Because there is really one one kind of job in that field–teaching in a university. I don’t want to be an academic physicist, so there is no way for me to work in that field. Academic physicists are very focused on physics.

I have a wide range of interests, including physics, philosophy, history, theology, archaeology, and fiction. I also have a special talent for software development, including both numerical computation and object-oriented design.

Tragically, there just isn’t any job in the world that includes all of those in the job description. So I just do what I like doing, which is a mix of them all. My fiction actually includes all of my other interests. I still work half-time as a scientist. I’m director of software engineering at Vala Sciences, a biotech company in San Diego and I oversee the development of our flagship product,CyteSeer, which automates the analysis of biological images taken on microscopes. Modern microscopes can acquire terabytes of images per day, which is too much for humans to view, much less analyze. CyteSeer can look at all that data and figure out what it all means.

2. How many books do you currently have published?

7. The first was nonfiction and the other six are all novels. I have a new book coming out soon which is nonfiction again: WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, to be published by John Wiley, the publisher who does all the Dummies guides.

3. Could you tell us your thoughts on writers and wannabe writers, those who have a good idea but that is all. They don’t do anything with the idea.

If somebody has a great idea for a story but they do nothing with it, then they’re not a writer. The minute they sit down to write the story, they’re a writer. It’s not complicated. Writers write.

4. You are know as the Snowflake guy, because you game up with this way of how to write fiction, when did you come up with this idea and why do you give it away for others to us?

I learned the basic idea in 7th grade English class–you start with a core thing that you want to say and expand out from there.

That’s how I’ve always written everything. I used the Snowflake method to write my Ph.D. thesis and all my scientific papers. When I started writing fiction, I added some of the fiction techniques, such as character analyses and scene lists, but those are just
embellishments.

In the summer of 2002, I got into an online discussion of how you write a novel and I wrote out the main steps of the Snowflake method. It was around then that I gave it the name, using an analogy to the famous “snowflake fractal” from math. One of my writer friends, Janelle Schneider, got interested in it and asked me a lot of questions and got some other writers interested. I finally put together a writeup and posted it on my web site, because people kept emailing me to ask about it and I got tired of typing it up every time. I never expected that so many people would get interested in it, nor did I ever intend to make any money from it. I gave it away because I thought it would be useful to people. It only took me an hour to write it up and post it on my web site.

As of now, the Snowflake page on my site has been viewed more than a million times, and I’m getting over 1200 page views per day this month. So interest in the Snowflake is accelerating. You can view the page Here

5. You’re currently finishing up a Snowflake Pro software version for people that might want to use instead of just doing themselves in a word file. Tells why you decided to take your snowflake model and make it into software?

The Snowflake method is the way I design my novel before I write it and it works perfectly for me. But I found it tedious to constantly be creating fresh documents in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel to do the various steps. Those are fine programs, but they aren’t well suited to Snowflaking. So I decided to write software that wouldmake it all as fast as possible. I’ve really sped up the workflow by having the computer handle all the data and just let me handle the creative parts. Every novel I ever write in the future is going to be designed first using this software. And it also generates the core of a book proposal when the Snowflake process is all done, so it’ll give me a running start on that.

6. When do you plan to release the software for purchase?

I’m polishing it now after collecting a list of glitches this summer from my alpha testing team. I’ll release it as soon as it’s ready.

7. How many years have you been helping people who love to write and hope to get publish someday through your Advancewritingfiction.com website?

Almost as soon as I got published, I started getting invitations to teach at writing conferences, and I’ve almost always accepted those invitations. So I’ve been teaching for about 9 years. 5 years ago, I created my AdvancedFictionWriting.com web site because it was clear that a lot of people wanted to know what I had to say about fiction writing, so I wanted a web site that was clearly distinguished from my personal web site, which is about a lot of other things.

8. When did you decide that you wanted to start a website that people could come to buy products that talk about how to write better?

At the end of 2004.

9. You talk about having fresh content on your site and blogging is one way of doing that, how long after you started your website did you start blogging?

I started blogging in April of 2007. It’s a nice way to keep in touch with writers so I know what they’re really interested in hearing about.

10. You teach at a few writing conferences a year, how many do you teach at and when did you start and what convinced you that you were at stage that you could teach others to write better?

I teach at 4 or 5 conferences per year. My first one was in 2000. My local writing group in San Diego ran an annual conference, and they asked me to teach, so I agreed. It was that simple. I never really thought I’d get so heavily involved in teaching. I don’t really pursue it, but I most always say yes if someone asks me to teach. (Unless it won’t fit my schedule.)

11. You mentor people in writing that attend the conferences you teach at, can you tell us a little about what goes on with some of the people you mentor?

Every writer is different. So I always ask myself two questions: “What’s the one thing this writer does really well? What’s the one thing this writer really doesn’t do well?” Then I try to show them how to improve in both of those areas–their major strength and their major weakness. Publishers say yes because of your strength. They say no because of your weakness.

12. Your newest book Writing Fiction for Dummies is due out this December, what can you tell us about this book, and who is the audience you are focusing on.

We designed the book primarily for the first-time novelist. We want this to be the first book that somebody buys on the craft of writing fiction. It’ll walk writers through the complete career path from what I call the “Freshman” stage to what I call the “Senior” stage. Freshmen are new writers. Seniors are those just about to get published.

I tried to give a fresh take on most of the core topics in fiction writing, so I suspect that even published novelists are going to learn a few things from the book. (I learned a few things while writing the book.) But the primary target reader is new to writing and needs to know all the fundamentals. I focus on those fundamentals–research, story world, characters (including backstory, values, ambitions, and story goals), structure (including storyline, three act structure, synopsis, scene list, scene structure, and motivation-reaction units), theme, self-editing, and working with agents and editors. Those are the core topics. If you’ve got everyone of those nailed, then you are Xtremely likely to get published. If you don’t, then you probably won’t get published.

13. How did you go about getting involved in writing for Dummies? Did they seek you out because they knew about you or did they put the word out and you responded and had to go through a process?

They decided to do a book titled WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. They contacted Peter Economy, who’s done a number of Dummies books for them. Peter went looking on the web for a co-author who specializes in teaching fiction, and he found me through my web site. We discussed the idea and agreed that we’d make a good team. Then Peter and I worked with the acquisitions editor to put together a proposal that would get through the publication committee.

14. What is the main focus of Writing Fiction for Dummies?

The craft of fiction. If you have great craft, 90% of your marketing is done. So learn the craft and everything else will follow.

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Writing Fiction for Dummies comes out December 2, 2009. I am looking forward to reading this book. Preorders are now being taken on Amazon Click Here

I would once more like to thank Randy for his time to answer these questions, and if you would like to learn more about writing I would recommend checking out his website and blog and sign up for is monthly Newsletter.

D.J. MacHale Interview:

Well I am glad to be posting today a few questions answered by an author I have spent the last 3 years reading in his 10 book series Pendragon Adventure: Journal of an Adventure through Space and Time. D.J. MacHale, is a writer, director, and executive producer. He has been affiliated with shows such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Flight 29 Down, Tower of Terror the Movie, and Seasonal Differences. I am excited that D.J. was welling to answer few questions to post on this blog so lets get started.

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1. How many years have you worked in the TV Production?

I started making films and videos in junior high. After going to film school, I worked for several years making commercials and industrial films. I started getting TV scripts sold around 1987. So I guess I’ve been in broadcast TV, professionally, for about twenty years.

2. D.J. Before you literal smashed into publishing with your bestseller Pendragon, you were into TV Broadcast; do you think the years you spent making some great shows, some of my favorites Are You Afraid of the Dark, Ghost Writer, did that helped you in writing novels?

Absolutely. A good story is a good story, no matter what the form. I’ve written multiple hundreds of them, and gathered more experience with each one.

3. Are you fully done with TV or are you just doing novels for right now? I would hope you would not give up TV, especially if you did another Are you Afraid of the Dark series or Movie.

I’ll never say never to anything. The only reason I say that I’m not doing TV anymore is because I’m not creating new shows. I’m not the kind of guy who people hire to direct or write an episode of their show. I’m not in that loop. Most everything I’ve done, I’ve created. And right now, I’m too busy writing my new books series. (I’ve got two other series that I’m working on besides Morpheus Road)

4. As a writer I have heard and read many authors say a good villain is someone who is not evil, but someone who thinks what they are doing is write. It is clear from reading you agree with that, so tell us a little with how you came up with Saint Dane as well your thoughts about how Villains should come across in stories.

To write a good character, any character, you have to get into their heads and see things the way they do. In my opinion, the least interesting villains are guys who are evil for evil’s sake. That’s very one-dimensional and boring. So when creating Saint Dane, I had to get in to his head and fully understand why he was doing what he was doing. And a good answer to that isn’t: “I’m doing this just because I can! And I’m bad! Muhahahahaha!” That’s pretty lame. I had to create a villain who, in his mind, was doing the absolute right thing because it made all sorts of sense to him and couldn’t happen any other way.

5. Some may not know that you came up with the idea for Pendragon while you were waiting to hear back on one of you TV projects, but from what I have read or watched you never really went into where the idea for Pendragon really came from. Could you tell us about how the idea came to you?

The Pendragon idea actually sprang from multiple ideas. I couldn’t decide which one to write, so I decided to write them all…and string them together into an adventure that a young guy goes on. So, the original ideas for many of the adventures that Bobby goes on started out as stand alone, individual stories.

6. Now I heard you say in an interview that it was because of Pendragon that New York Times Bestsellers list had to add an new category because your books were bestsellers, but because Harry Potter had five the spots you never got on the list so they created Bestselling Series. How does that fell about that? Do you think that was better for other authors whose books were selling out as well future authors?

Ha! That’s not exactly what happened. It had nothing to do with my books, but from what I understand it had everything to do with Harry Potter. Believe me, the NYT wasn’t thinking about Pendragon when they created that new list! From what I heard, and this is only anecdotal, because Harry Potter was such a phenomenon and took up so many spaces on their children’s list, somebody came up with the idea for a “series” list so that other books had a better chance to be on the list as well. So sure, Pendragon benefitted from it…along with every other kid’s book like mine. But by no means was it because of Pendragon.

7. You wrote all ten outlines for the whole series for Pendragon in about a week, was the idea that strong that you knew where the story was going. Or was it more just bullets of ideas for the book, but knew as you wrote it things would be added?

Like I said, many of the adventures I already had in my head. What the outline did was to create the overall story arc of Halla and how the four main characters of Bobby, Saint Dane, Mark, and Courtney played in to it. So many of the big story moments that came out over the course of the many books, I planned from the very beginning. (Like revealing Andy Mitchell’s, true identity, the creation of Forge technology and how it would lead to the invention of the dados, Bobby quitting, etc.)

8. You and I are similar in our writing styles as we are both outliners, you knew as you said at your intro in Soldiers of Halla (Spoiler Alert) that you always knew that it was going to be Uncle Press say “Hey, having a bad day”, did you ever think that you should change that or add new ideas that could have caused some major effects to the story?

The only downside of writing outlines comes when you become too wedded to it. As helpful as they are, you also have to be open to new ideas that spring up along the way, and be willing to change things accordingly. So yes, I change my outlines all the time. That’s the beauty of an outline…it’s easily changeable. (The one example you mentioned happened to be one I didn’t change, though. That was always planned exactly as it played out) My analogy is that when you’re writing a murder mystery, you have to know the Butler did it from the get go so that you can then go back and put in all the clues. But along the way you might decide that, for whatever reason, it would work better if the Maid actually did it. If that happens, you have to change it.

9. As sad as I am that Bobby’s story is over, I happy because one I finished such a long series but also I get to look forward to your new books that will be coming out. Could you tell us a little about Morpheus Road?

Very little. It’s a spooky trilogy about a guy being hunted by ghosts. I’ve always loved scary stories. Not horror stories per se, but spooky stories. It’s why I enjoyed making “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” for so long. I just love the form and the possibilities. So, I’m taking my love and experience in writing that form and creating the new series. Beyond that, I’m not giving anything else up.

10. Have you thought about writing young adults series?

Depending on whom you talk to, Pendragon is a YA series. Many adults read it as well. From what I can tell, the difference between a YA series and a Middle Reader series is the level of angst and reality. In YA series, one person dies. In a Middle Reader series, entire worlds explode! (Figure THAT one out!) I think the real difference is that true YA series deal with teenage angst in a very real way…and that’s not all that interesting to me. I’d rather write adventure stories.

11. Now I know you get asked this all the time about a movie, and in a recent interview you said you had a lot of offers but they were from people who you did not think could do it right, you’re still trying to get those who you think could do it right interested. Is there any progress on that you could say? Also, if you got the right people interested would you direct, write the screenplay, produce? Or would you do similar to J. K. Rowling did with Harry Potter movies, you get approval but let the people see what they come up with?

Nothing definitive to report.

12. With Soldiers of Halla finally out, looking back at the whole series would you do anything-different change anything? Also, out of all the books which one is your favorite?

I would change everything…and nothing. I can’t read a book of mine after it’s been printed because I always cringe and want to re-write things. But that’s on the micro level. On the grand scale, I think the story plays out exactly as it should have. I don’t have a favorite because my favorite book always seems to be the one I’m writing at the time. The most fun book to write was “The Never War” because it dealt with real history and a time period and location that I’m fascinated with. My LEAST favorite to write was The Quillan Games because it was tough coming up with all those games, creating the rules, and then describing the action. That was hard.

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I would again thank D.J. MacHale for being willing to answer my questions, If you are interested in learning more about Pendragon you can check out the official site Here. I recommend the Pendragon Series to anyone interested in a great adventure.

Tim