The third step in the snowflake method has to do with characters. The snowflake website says to do this step for each of the main characters, but I do it for all of the named characters in my book who have more than two or three lines of dialogue.

For each character take an hour and write the following:

• The character’s name
• A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline
• The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
• The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
• The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
• The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
• A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

This step, particularly the one paragraph summary of the character’s storyline is really helpful to me, because I have so many moving pieces that it’s important that I know what each character has been doing in the background during all the events of the story. Even if they don’t appear “on screen,” knowing what they’ve been up to, why they’ve been up to it, and what conflicts they’re facing helps flesh them out.

Here’s what step 3 looks like for me in scrivener.