Category: General Topics

The Snowflake Method For Designing A Novel

I don’t usually use an outline when writing my books but I found this really neat method I’d like to try. While I can’t say I’ll stick to it like glue, it looks like something that will help me to organize my thoughts without the confusion. For my next project I’ll be using The Snowflake Method. Click Here to check it out. After your reading, research, and daydreaming is done (when you have an idea of what the story is about), here is Step #1 from the article:

Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: “A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul.” (This is the summary for my first novel, Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.

When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal. It’s the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

  • Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.
  • No character names, please! Better to say “a handicapped trapeze artist” than “Jane Doe”.
  • Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.
  • Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.

Another important point: It doesn’t have to be perfect. The purpose of each step in the design process is to advance you to the next step. Keep your forward momentum! You can always come back later and fix it when you understand the story better. You will do this too, unless you’re a lot smarter than I am.

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Sounds exciting! There is also a book which you can find here. Are you writing a book? Share the method to your madness! How do you stay organized?

I Just Got SICKER!

You may remember the review I wrote last year on Christa Wojo’s debut psychological suspense horror series SICK. In Book One, we peered into the life of Susan Branch, a woman struggling to take care of a very sick husband with a number of diseases plaguing his body. Well, I am happy to inform you that part two, SICKER is now available for pre-order! So, I am not ill but I did just preorder SICKER. The ending of SICK was so sick I cannot wait to continue reading. Click the book cover below to pre-order SICKER and welcome to the mind of John Branch.

SICKER

Interpreting Me – Sunday Thought

My name is posted all over this blog (and on other people’s blogs). My name is also all over my social media sites and one of the first things you see on my author site. Google Yecheilyah and my name is all over there too.

When I say my name is Yecheilyah (e-see-lee-yah) Ysrayl, I do not mean Yecheilya Israel. I do not mean Yecheilia Ysrael or Yeceilia. I am not highly sensitive about the misspellings of names. I’m just not petty like that. My name is unique and it is understandable if people spell it wrong. But, to try and interpret how you think my name should be spelled is disrespectful. I just want the research police to know that I’m not Jewish and Yecheilyah Ysrayl is not a typo or grammatical mistake.

Additionally, when I started Literary Korner Publishing I intentionally spelled “Korner” with a “K”. I do not mean Literary Corner Publishing. This is not the name of my online book store. Literary Korner is also not a typo or grammatical error. Korner is actually what I intended for it to be. Grammar police, this means that you too can calm down. All is well.

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As for the Sunday Thought thing? Yea, I think I’ve just found another blog feature “Sunday Thought”. What do you think? Yay or nay?

Underground

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The season premiere of Underground aired this pasted Wednesday, March 9, 2016. The TV series stars Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Aldis Hodge and is about a group of slaves planning to escape a large plantation and will be helped by an abolitionist couple along the way. Underground is short for the Underground railroad, a system of secret routes and safe houses used to help slaves to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. Below is a synopsis of the show:

“Early in the premiere of WGN America’s slave-revolt drama Underground, a captured runaway named Noah (Aldis Hodge) is shoved into a decrepit shed on a plantation in rural Georgia. The year is 1857; the Civil War is still four long years away. The camera whips around 360 degrees from Noah’s point of view, catching glimpses of sick, malnourished black men and women, all of them shivering in makeshift bunks and slumped against unforgiving walls. And though he does not say a word, the sequence immediately establishes Noah as the show’s determined protagonist. At the risk of sounding crass given the historical atrocity the show unflinchingly deals with, it feels like the moment when this slave resolves to be something of a superhero.”

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I started looking into this show about a month before its premiere, watching interviews of the actors and the making of the show itself. I also follow Smollett on Twitter and she’s been very excited about it. My opinion of the show? So far so good. The premiere has a nice set up or rather introduction into how the show will play itself out. We can already see who the people are who will help the slaves to escape, those who will possibly create safe houses for them for instance, and those, both black and white, who will be their stumbling block. I love the determination of Noah to recruit others in their attempt to escape the plantation, that he has a plan and that, as he says it, escaping is not just about running but will require the slaves to work together in a strategic way. In short, I am so far enjoying the coming together of the crew and I look forward to the rest of the series.