Our one sentence summary for Angelic Possession

The snowflake method isn't by any means perfect.  It is, however, pretty damn good at putting the character into your novel.  I haven't found it too helpful in world building for my novel.  That's where I careen from one method to another as the mood strikes me.  In this case, we've got a simple mind-map laid out with a number of interesting characters and ideas we want to explore, but not right now.

If you recall, our novel is about the war between heaven and hell fought in the real (sort of) world.  Somehow, the fair realms got sucked into this in the mind map.  Guess I've got fairies on the brain.  In any case, on with the snowflake method.

What we need here is a short, rather pithy sentence to hang our novel on.  Go read the New York Time best Sellers lists and you will find a number of these sentences.  This is an art form.  I'm going to start with the first sentence that pops into my head and we'll tweak it from there.

Here goes.

"A martial arts using father is possessed by an angel bent on stopping one of the fallen from bringing about the end of the world and the fey get mixed up in all of this."

Wow.  Thirty-five words.  Randy says you should strive for fifteen.  I've got some pruning to do.  Let's begin.  Well, I know I can trim "end of the world" down to "apocalypse".  "Bringing about" can go down to "starting".  I think I can trim 'get mixed up in all of this" down to 'are involved".  Let's see it and recount.

"A martial arts using father is possessed by an angel bent stopping one of the fallen from starting the apocalypse and the fey are involved."

Okay, down to twenty-five words.  Not too bad.  Let's drop the leading 'A', it's pretty weak and the sentence can stand alone without it. Let's also drop the 'is' and replace it with a comma.  The last phrase is weak too, we can drop the 'and' and use a comma there, and maybe re-write it 'leads the fey to war'.  That only nets us one additional word, but gains in strength.

"Martial arts using father, possessed by an angel bent on stopping one of the fallen from starting the apocalypse, leads the fey to war."

Twenty four words now.  We can change "one of the fallen" to "a demon".  We should also strengthen angenl to archangel.  Wow, just noticed if we change 'art' to 'artist' we can drop 'using'.  Let's see what that looks like:

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel bent on stopping a demon from starting the apocalypse, leads the fey to war."

Twenty-one words now.  Let's bring the fey more to the center stage.  We can drop "bent on stopping" with "against" then.  Let's do that.

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads the fey to war against an apocalypse starting demon."

Halfway through that, I realized I also had to re-word the demon and the apocalypse plans.  Got it down to seventeen words.  I don't think this is focused enough on the father,  What is his reason for all of this.  It is his kids.  Let's bring in sacrificing the kids and drop the apocalypse.

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads the fey against the demon that took his kids."

Still at seventeen, but a much better sentence, I think.  We can drop "the" from the sentence, giving us:

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads fey against demon that stole his children."

Fifteen words, but I don't think were are done. Unfortunately, we need "the" in front of "demon".  The sentence reads better with it.

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads fey against the demon that stole his children."

Sixteen words, but hold on to your horses!  I can drop "father" since I have "children" at the end of the sentence!

"Martial artist, possessed by an archangel, leads fey against the demon that stole his children."