Jigsaws and snowflakes - how to write a novel

Around Christmas last year I'd given up on my writing ambitions. I'd run out of ideas and decided that the whole writing thing was a colossal waste of time and effort and I had better things to do. We went on a holiday to Vietnam and Cambodia, came home sick and spluttered and coughed our way through Christmas and New Year.

And then the little writing course I'd signed up for before I'd abandoned my writing 'career' waved its hand. "Hi there. Remember me? Course starts in a couple of days."

Oh, what the hell? I'd paid my money and I didn't have anything better to do. The course, run through Savvy Authors, was called The Jigsaw Effect – Beyond the Snowflake Method. So, in between writing blogs for our Asia trip I read the articles and did the homework.

So what is the Jigsaw effect? And how does it expand the Snowflake method, where you accumulate pieces of a novel (snowflakes) into a whole book?

Essentially, the idea is that you come up with a theme. I know you're thinking that's the last thing you do. Themes kinda happen as you write and there they are. But okay, I went with the flow. This story would follow up from where FOR THE GREATER GOOD left off and I'd known for a long time the sequel was going to be about justice and revenge. That was one of the themes in FTGG, after all.

But what happened from there is the difference. I'd had an idea for a plot that never got past an unconvincing first chapter however hard I tried. Finally, I gave up and decided my writing 'career' was over.

In this course, the tutor asked some searching questions. What was this book going to be about?

Here's what I came up with:

"What is justice? Is it different from revenge? Is 'payback' (killing a killer) justice or is it revenge? Or is it both? Does the concept of justice vary between cultures or in this case, species? Yrmak justice is likely to be different from Human justice. Moving on from there, who determines what constitutes justice? In our society, it is the courts. In Australian indigenous society it is the clans.

Does the desire for revenge come from an attempt to avoid the real issue? What I mean is that blaming someone else and seeking revenge on that person might be a way of avoiding a confrontation with unpalatable facts."

And as I wrote that I thought of threads and scenes and possibilities and what-ifs. And whereas the snowflake method is a linear progression where you start at the beginning and keep going until you get to the end, the jigsaw effect encourages you to write scenes when you have the inspiration. After that, you fir the scenes in where they need to go. Actually, I used to use that approach earlier in my writing journey. I've no idea why I stopped doing it that way.

I realised I could write a book about the big issues of justice - but my original idea of making the plot a very personal conflict HAD to be included.

So… RETRIBUTION has been completed and is out there. Although it's not really a romance in its own right, it is a third chapter in Brent and Tian's on-going relationship. And of course, there's Puss the auralfang, who plays a very important role in the story.

Tensions simmer on a world where Humans blame Yrmaks for their defeat in a recent war. It's a perfect environment for Celia Whitley, former head of Imperial Security and director of Humans First, to stir the pot. All it takes to brew an interspecies war is money and weapons – and she can organize both. Revenge over Yrmaks, who murdered her husband, will be hers.

Imperial agent Tian Axmar wants Whitley dead – but her boss insists the woman be brought back to face justice. Whitley's trail had gone cold until Tian, partner Brent Walker, and auralfang, Puss, learn of a stolen cargo of heavy weapons.

Tian and Brent scramble to prevent a war on one world from spilling over to engulf the Empire. But interspecies war is not the only vengeance Whitley wants. Tian, Brent and Puss will need all of their cyborg abilities to prevent the cruelest blow of all.

This is the third Brent and Tian Imperial agents book. Like the other two, EYE OF THE MOTHER and FOR THE GREATER GOOD, it's a stand-alone story, but it helps if you've read the other two because it provides background. RETRIBUTION starts off pretty much after FOR THE GREATER GOOD finished.

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