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.