For step six of the snowflake method, you return to the one page plot synopsis and expand it into a four page synopsis. To do that, take each paragraph in your one page synopsis and expand it to one page. This is a great place to let all the frustration you might have felt trying to boil the novel down to one page release. Here you can add many of the details.

I’m not going to post my four page summary for Persephone here, because spoilers, and hello, space. But since I’ve already shown how I expanded one line into one paragraph, I can show that one paragraph’s expanse into a page. I’m going to be doing the second sentence/paragraph because paragraph/page one would basically be background and set up, and that’s a bit easier to come by.

Spoiler warning for Persephone ahead.

Sentence 2 from one paragraph summary: When Boreas, the god of Winter, attempts to whisk her away to a not so winter wonderland, she’s rescued by Hades and offered refuge in the Underworld.

Paragraph 2 from one page summary: Persephone thinks her mom has lost her mind. She runs away to her friends house only to discover that her best friend is also in on the secret. Before Persephone can process that they might actually be telling the truth, she’s attacked by a season. Boreas, the god of winter, has his eye on Persephone and now he wants to whisk her away to a not so winter wonderland. She’s rescued from the serial rapist by Hades, Lord of the Underworld, and offered refuge in the Underworld until the end of winter. The catch? He has to marry her to take her there.

So now, do the same thing. Break this paragraph down into sentences and turn each of those sentences into a paragraph. So let’s do that with Persephone thinks her mom has lost her mind.

Persephone’s mom starts spouting off insanity about being the goddess Demeter and Persephone herself being a daughter of Zeus. Assuming her mom is hysterical, Persephone plays along by asking logical questions to get her mom to realize how crazy she sounds so she’ll snap out of it. But when her mother answers her questions with a deadly certainty, Persephone realizes her mother legitimately believes they are gods. Persephone is considering googling the local mental hospital when her mother starts talking about taking Persephone’s priestess and best friend and skipping town. That’s when Persephone realizes her mother’s delusions could turn dangerous.

This progresses neatly into paragraph two. Persephone runs away to Melissa’s house to warn her, and discovers Melissa was already in on the secret. Now could the above sentence be better? Absolutely. I could use the word when about a billion times less. The construction isn’t great. If I ever sent that paragraph as part of an expanded synopsis in a query package, I’d absolutely go over it and smooth it out. But for my drafting purposes it tells me Persephone’s feelings and the events that are happening sequentially. Writing a scene from the information in that paragraph would be easy. It’s just more expanding.

Tune in next week for more of the snowflake!