So the Snowflake Method indicates the writer should create a one page plot synopsis for each character. I think I’m going to pass on that. I have two reasons. First, it’s a lot of freaking work! Work which I don’t feel would help move this particular project forward. It might be useful to find each character’s voice, but I prefer to do that in the writing of the work itself. If I were a full-time writer, I could follow this method and it would likely yield up some interesting results. Given that writing isn’t even part-time for me, I’m going to skate across the surface and see what I find.
Second, I fear for you, the audience, this would be hella redundant. The one pager I’ve got for Alex is pretty redundant, following the plot synopsis as it does. Do you really want to read six of these? Didn’t think so.
So here’s the plot synopsis based on Alex’s character and what happens to him. Anything which Alex doesn’t know about or witness isn’t included.
Alexander Scott had retired, had left the world of black ops, secret missions, and covert actions. Then a young but talented spec war operator, Rebbecca Kim, came looking for him. His old friend and her old mentor had disappeared. Boyle, who had stayed in the world of black book operations when Alex had left it, had gone dark. Then he was implicated in the murder of a man known only as the Bedouin–some kind of shadowy fixer, a ghost of the intelligence community.
Against his better judgement, Alex joined Becca. He still had contacts, still had friends and allies in the business that placed Boyle with TANGIBLE STREAM, a unit so dark no one even knew who ran it. Something had happened in Nepal. The Chinese might have been involved. Boyle had been in the middle of it. Since then, he had run silent. Everyone had orders to bag him–either bring him in alive or bring proof of his demise.
Alex’s contacts put he and Becca in a room with Jack and Sarah, two civilians who had connections with the Bedouin. Sarah has some kind of paranormal powers, which she does not explain. Becca confides in Alex that she believes Sarah has been trained in sorcery. The kicker comes when Becca reveals the Bedouin was some kind of master wizard, who trained those he found able to access magic.
While picking up Boyle’s trail in Nepal, the group barely survive an attack by a team of ex-Spetsnaz freelance assassins. They track the team back to their roost, and documentation there indicates that Becca is considered a rogue. Both the CIA and Chinese Ministry of State Security have put a bounty on her head, linking her to Boyle, and possibly TANGIBLE STREAM. Alex doesn’t believe this. Things just aren’t adding up.
Rather than finding Boyle, Boyle finds them. He had thought the Spetsnaz team was after him. A confrontation ensues since Sarah believes that Boyle killed the Bedouin. A standoff ensues, until Alex talks Sarah into giving Boyle a chance to prove his innocence. Boyle believes the Spetsnaz team’s financier will put them a step closer to the Bedouin’s real killer, so they follow the money.
Boyle reveals that TANGIBLE STREAM is black ops team tasked to eliminating paranormal threats. Unfortunately, Boyle’s team uncovered an attempt to start a hot war between Western and Chinese intelligence agencies, possibly to remove their paranormal assets. Now Alex and the rest will be targets as well, linked to the TANGIBLE STREAM “conspiracy.” Whoever is pulling the strings is trying to weaken the big players on the board, but Boyle doesn’t know why.
The money leads to the eastern European nation of Turveria. The team plans to infiltrate the banks and recover the information on the assassins’ payments. Before they set their plan in motion, a special operations group led by agents out of the CIA’s ESPer unit, Narcissus, intercept them. The ESPer, Dylan Lincoln, is powerful, but Sarah’s magic gives her the upper hand. With the tables turned, Alex and Becca bring the Narcissus agents on side by providing them all the information uncovered.
Dylan has been tracking an unbelievably powerful parapsyche. No one can accept this as a coincidence, and the team decides to take this parapsyche down. If he is not the Bedouin’s killer, the team can continue the hunt with Narcissus’ help.
The team covertly infiltrates the castle location which Dylan pinpoints as the parapsyche’s location. The parapsyche detects them just before they can strike, and bedlam unfolds. But the team proves more than a match for the parapsyche–who calls himself St. Martin–and the Turverian special forces that protect him. Though St. Martin is rendered braindead, the Turverian forces within the castle lair are alerted, and it looks like the team will go down fighting. And unexpected ally allows a hasty retreat out of Turveria, and an international incident is avoided.
Next on the drawing board is a four-page plot synopsis that is supposed to add a lot more meat to the plot bones. This should be interesting!