The Snowball of Misbelief

Most writers don’t understand how important it is to merge your plot with your character arc, but this is the secret to writing a powerful novel.

If you can master this skill, you’ll be well on your way to a book that is unputdownable AND punches your readers in the heart.

Let me introduce you to my favorite tool for illustrating this concept.

The Snowball has four parts:

1. Conflict

In each scene, the protagonist experiences a conflict. A conflict can be huge, like a literal battle, or small, like whether to brush their teeth.

2. Misbelief 

The protagonist references their misbelief to make sense of that conflict. We are constantly referencing previous experiences and beliefs to determine how to deal with our present. 

3. Choice

Based on their belief in that moment, the protagonist decides how to respond to the conflict. This is where writers often go astray—they don’t base the protagonist’s choices in their beliefs. Grounding the character’s choice in their belief allows you to show how they change as the story progresses.

4. Consequence

The character’s choice creates a consequence, which causes the next conflict. This consequence begins the next turn of the snowball. In this way, the snowball grows larger and larger until—SMACK!—it slams into the protagonist during the conflict.

Snowball can give meaning to every scene of your book, create internal logic, and establish a clear cause-and-effect trajectory. 

Check out this five-minute video to see the Snowball in action.