Justitia and the Snowflake Method
It was probably about ten years ago, possibly fifteen, when I first heard about the snowflake method. I've been writing since I was first able to pick up a pen (and writing much faster since I first learned how to type), but for the longest time, I didn't really ever finish anything. I could start things easily, and I could push myself through the middle of a narrative, and I could even finish an installment of a larger narrative... but I never seemed able to actually make it all the way to the end of something. At the time, I thought it was a matter of perhaps inexperience or too easily losing interest in things or something else like that; in retrospect, it was that I was improving so quickly through practice that I was getting easily discouraged by the vast gap in quality between the beginning of whatever I was working on and wherever I presently was. I'd see how horrible the opening of my story now seemed in comparison to what I was currently doing in the middle of the very same story, and I'd be hit with the crippling discouragement of the overwhelming urge to tear the whole thing down and start again now that I knew better. And then, when I inevitably learned even more about how to tell a good story, I'd go through the same process over again.
But for the longest time, I didn't really understand that that's what was happening to me. I thought I just had a problem finishing things. I'd heard enough about how hard middles and endings could be in comparison to those oh-so-easy beginnings, and I'd assumed that learning how to beat those middle-of-a-story doldrums was just something that every writer had to do eventually. And in trying to do that, I started looking desperately for tips and tricks. I read all kinds of books and blogs about writing, tried every free (or pirateable) writing software I could get my fingertips on, and eventually came across the snowflake method.
The snowflake method, for those that don't know, is the personal process of an author named Randy Ingermanson. You can read about his original take on the snowflake method here, and of course there's also a million different books you can buy about it (including Ingermanson's own), blog posts you can check out, and even worksheets and software you can use. But the gist of the whole thing is this:
That, apparently, is the Koch snowflake. When applied to fiction writing, the idea is literally that you start with the metaphorical triangle (the bare bones of your story), and slowly via various iterations of outlines, you fill in all the various fractal points until you have a pretty little snowflake of a story.
Now, when I first tried the snowflake method, it didn't at all work for me. I can be a very literal, rule-following nerd of a person sometimes, and it was even more rigidly true when I was younger that when I'm trying something new, I want to follow the guidelines of a set of instructions until the point that I'm sure I fully understand what I'm doing - and, more importantly, that I can see where they need to be tweaked to better fit my brain.
You need to understand the rules before you can break them and all that.
To be honest, I did not ever successfully follow Ingermanson's ten-step writing process. I've never strictly followed "the snowflake method," to the point where I don't say that I use it. (Rather, that I use something like it or based on it, or else that I just use "a series of outlines".) But the idea at the core of the snowflake method - the idea of using multiple stages of outlining to fill in the flesh-and-bone of a story - stayed with me. And over the years, I did always keep the concept of the snowflake method in mind as I wrote my stories and shaped my process.
Nowadays, I like to think that my process is optimized. I'm sure in another ten years, I'll call my 2023 self a moron for thinking that could possibly be the case, but for now, I've got a method that works and I've stuck to it for a few years now. And it's definitely snowflake-ish. Throughout Slytherin's Legacy Behind the Scenes, I've posted a number of different outlines for To Dwell on Dreams and Enemies of the Heir. I've also got a pretty in-depth outline going for A Rat in the Dark, a slightly less in-depth outline for Blood of the Enemy, and some vaguely snowflakey triangle collections for House of Black, Very Dark Indeed, and Like Flesh in Flame. Those vaguest outlines tend to be broken into parts; such-and-such is the focus of part one of the story, so-and-so is the focus of part two, and this-and-that will be the focus of part three. Once outlines grow from there, they start getting rearranged into specific chapters, with plot events getting shuffled around to wherever they fit the narrative and its themes most neatly; then, with the concept of chapters completed, I go and fill in more details - and will continue filling in details until I'm finished writing the entire story. Outlines will always be a work in progress for me until after I've completed the thing that they outline.
But sometimes those chapter outlines just don't cut it. Sometimes just telling myself that chapter two is going to include scene a, scene b, scene c, and scene d isn't enough to actually get me through it. Sometimes I end up with something that I suppose could be called writer's block, even if I don't really particularly like that term. And when that happens, that's when I start really thinking about the snowflake method again. Just because I can usually jump from scene-level outlining straight to a first draft doesn't mean that my outlines can't get more detailed; sometimes, when I'm really stuck, I find myself needing to outline so minutely that the outline literally just becomes beat-by-beats of dialogue and actions and feelings that I know I really should be able to just write like normal... but for some reason can only seem to force out in the form of an outline instead of actual prose.
And that happened with Justitia (the planned chapter two of A Rat in the Dark). In retrospect, the problem was two-fold: I was trying to fit too much into one chapter (ultimately, I had to break the ~26k Justitia up into the ~13k Justitia/Prudentia and the ~13k Justitia/Ultio) and trying to work through a lowkey depressing chapter while being seriously depressed IRL. And both of those things merged into one big road block of feeling overwhelmed, which turned into days and then weeks of trying to force myself through a scene that should've taken a couple afternoons. I honestly didn't even want to think about the chapter at all for a few weeks there because of how much anxiety had started building up.
To get out of it, eventually I just had to outline deeper. The only way out, in my experience, always through, and sometimes the only way through is to just force it. And this time, "forcing it" meant that I had to write myself an extremely detailed outline of exactly all the events and lines of dialogue and difficult-to-write emotions that I was having such a hard time diving into and combing through. To be frank, I think the difference is this: outlining is more detached than actually writing. Writing is an emotional experience; outlining is a logical one. Honestly, I find outlining more fun than literally writing; working through the logic of a scene feels invigorating, while working through the emotional experience of it can be cripplingly draining. At the same time, though, writing truly does demand emotional investment; I suspect actors in particular will understand what I'm saying here. (I think, in particular, of that story about the Angel set having to briefly shut down during the filming of I Will Remember You because Sarah Michelle Gellar started genuinely sobbing while trying to act out her character's tearful begging in the climactic scene.) If you want the art to be good, you have to actually understand what you're creating, and in order to fully understand it, you have to in some sense feel what you're putting your characters through.
And sometimes that's really fucking hard. Impossible, actually. But for me, at least, I've found that those extremely-in-depth outlines can help to soften the blow.
Anyway! I'm going to actually share the Justitia outline here, if anyone would like to read it. It's an ungrammatical mess, which might make it hard for some people to read, but I do think it's pretty interesting from a writing perspective. If nothing else, I'd like to preserve it for my own reference; it's very different from the chapter at certain points, and I honestly find that fascinating. No matter how much detail I put into an outline and no matter how strictly I intend to adhere to my plans, outlining and writing are ultimately different things; what makes sense in the outline sometimes just isn't the way the story unfolds when it's drafted. The emotions of a scene turn out slightly different than what I thought they'd be in the outline; a line of dialogue might make something go in a different direction than I'd planned; sometimes, I've just got a better idea in the moment than what I'd come up with before.
So with that said, here it is. It begins in the middle of the scene at Madam Smith's house in Justitia/Prudentia and continues through the end of Justitia/Ultio.
the elf scene
delphi awkwardly asks "what's your name?" and the elf answers "ruth"
with no idea what she should be asking about in particular, delphi just says something along the lines of "tell me a little bit about yourself???"
and ruth's like "ruth is the elf you want to take home with you, miss. ruth is the perfect elf."
and delphi's kinda stunned? she's like "the perfect elf? what do you mean, perfect?" cause, like, what the fuck is a 'perfect' house elf? what does that actually mean in her pov?
and ruth's like yeah, dude. "ruth is everything a house elf should be, miss. ruth is devoted to her masters. ruth is very quiet and quick and clean and smart. ruth does not let herself make any mistakes. ruth knows that the master is always right, and ruth is very good about following orders before they're even given to her. a good house elf knows her household and can maintain it even without strict orders."
and delphi's like, "isn't that a bit presumptive?"
and ruth's like hell no, "ruth never does anything her master does not want her to do. ruth always follows orders."
and delphi's like "isn't that contradictory? what if you try to do something without being explicitly ordered to do it, and it turns out that it was the wrong thing?" and then, a bit wary-- "what if you do something that warrants punishment."
and the sense that delphi gets is that ruth doesn't really understand the gravity of the question because she's all, "the master is always right, and a good house elf does not ever question her master. ruth should be punished if ruth makes a mistake. ruth will gladly be punished if ruth ever makes a mistake. ruth will never make a mistake."
and it's like super contradictory and very naively overconfident and also a tacit endorsement of elf abuse, and delphi's just entirely thrown by what she should be thinking about this very strange little elf so she moves on for now
she turns to the next elf, who at last looks up when delphi speaks to her directly. "what's your name?" delphi asks, and the elf answers "whimsy"
and delphi asks her to answer the same/similar question as ruth: "why should we bring you home?"
and whimsy's response is lowkey an argument she's having with ruth. she's all "whimsy always tries to be a very good elf, miss, but whimsy knows that there is no such thing as perfect. whimsy always does what she's told, but she never assumes. she just follows her master's orders, that's it."
and at first, delphi likes the sound of that better. there's no delusional overconfidence there. except... "so you think you wouldn't get punished?"
"oh, whimsy would be eventually, miss. whimsy is only an elf. whimsy makes mistakes like anyone else. whimsy knows this, and she accepts it. whimsy isn't perfect, but she is very, very good. whimsy is always the best elf that she can be."
and delphi's kind of disappointed by that answer, because while ruth thinks she's never going to be punished, whimsy is just fully prepared to be punished (without realizing how bad the malfoy's idea of punishment is really going to be for her)
so delphi puts whimsy on a mental backburner, too, and moves onto the next girl
and this little elf can barely bring herself to raise her eyes to delphi at all. "what's your name?" delphi asks, already writing this one off as too delicate and frightened to survive the malfoy household.
and the elf answers "violet," in a shaky voice, and delphi thinks the name is terribly apt. she's a little shrinking violet, isn't she? delphi wonders momentarily about how the elves were named. was violet given her name after it became clear that she was especially shy, or did she get the name first and it just so happened to fit?
anyway, delphi knows right away that violet isn't going to be right for the malfoys, but she's also kind of scared that if she makes it clear that she doesn't want to bring violet home, lucius might change his mind about letting her pick and/or force her to pick violet just to heighten this punishment
so she asks violet the same question: "why should i pick you today?"
and violet kind of lamely stumbles over her answer: "because violet will always try to do her best, miss."
and delphi, more than ready to move on, moves on
the last little elf is the only one that appears to be visibly male, and delphi asks him his name
he says, "Sage," but almost as soon as delphi meets his eye, she realizes that he's not right for the malfoys, either; she can tell just from a glance that he's (barely) trying to pretend he doesn't hate all of them--her and lucius and madam smith, too
but lucius might enjoy the thought of trying to beat that out of him, so delphi treats him just the same as everyone else: "why should we choose you?"
and sage's answer isn't doing him any favors. he's literally like, "you shouldn't." and miss smith is all horrified, scolding him immediately, like, "sage! is that any way to act toward our guests? toward a possible forever home!?"
and as delphi cringes at the language ("forever" might sound innocuous and cutesy, but it's giving a distinct undercurrent of "until your die"), sage (barely) pretends to be apologetic
he clarifies: "sage only meant, miss, that sage is not the best elf here. sage knows that he is not as smart or as good as his sisters. sage does not deserve to go to such a good home."
and delphi sees through him in a heartbeat, because she sees something of her own lies in his. she wonders if he realizes that he isn't a very convincing liar (or if maybe he honestly doesn't care that he's not convincing them). she also thinks there’s some similarity between sage and dobby; delphi doesn't know if dobby started out disinterested in a house elf's typical lot or if he started entertaining ideas of freedom after the awful life the malfoys subjected him to, but it hardly matters because sage is clearly already where dobby was by the end: sage does not want to come home with them because sage does not believe in the future that society prescribes for him as a house elf; the thing that sage is very carefully dancing around is that he has aspirations of being a free elf, too--and delphi is not going to take him home to the manor's nightmare, knowing that
so delphi rolls her decision back around to ruth and winds up settling on the notion that if ruth thinks she's so perfect and attuned to her potential master's every whim, delphi might as well let her give it a go. ruth is almost certainly wrong about her own ability, yes... but the other options are all much worse and maaaayyyyyyybe ruth isn't just talking out of her ass, sooooooooo
it's ruth. delphi chooses ruth. and it's a decision that she will very shortly rue.
pleased with how this punishment as worked out, lucius signs the paperwork for ruth and performs some kind of a covenant spell/ritual to cement her as the new elf, and delphi is devastated by what she’s done but desperately clinging to the thought that maybe she's managed to make the choice that'll have the least damage and that maybe she can fix it in the future
delphi gets caught
to try to take her mind off what happened with ruth (and maybe to confide in her friends about it… if she can muster up the courage to break the bad news to hermione), delphi settles down in the evening to talk to her friends via the linked journals
ron is currently in egypt because his father won “the annual Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw” and the whole family went to visit Bill
hermione learned about sirius’s breakout from the muggle news this morning, which shocks delphi (and this is the first ron’s hearing of the breakout at all, given that he’s currently on a whole other continent), but it makes sense—twelve of the thirteen murders Black committed were muggle victims, and it’s quite possible that he’ll go after muggles again
neville is the one to ask about delphi specifically—how is she feeling about sirius breaking out right after she met him? is she scared? does she think it has anything to do with her? (she goes for no and no, but neither is especially true)
none of them have heard from harry for a few days; his abusive uncle’s even worse sister is visiting, and he’s walking on eggshells with little to no free time (but ron insists it’s worth it worth it if it’s the only way he can get his hogsmeade permission slip signed because who wants to be the only third year that’s not allowed to go?)
she chats with ron, who’s in egypt, and with neville and hermione; none of them have talked to harry much the past few days because his awful muggle aunt is visiting
but then all of a sudden harry’s in the conversation, too, and he’s got awful news—he’s just (wandlessly, which is impressive) magically turned his aunt into a goddamn blimp and run away from home over it, meaning that he’s a sitting duck on the kerb somewhere in surrey
delphi panics—sirius black might literally be on the way to him right now—and tells harry to stay right where he is because she’ll be there in a second
and delphi makes a terrible mistake: in spite of the promises she made last year, she immediately discounts the idea of sending an owl to dumbledore (because it’ll take too long) or even stealing a broom and flying to harry (again, it’ll take too long). she decides instead that she’ll simply have to make sure to order ruth to help her rescue harry and then have ruth swear to ironclad silence
so she snaps her journal closed (meaning that she fails to see the much better advice that ron, hermione, and neville give harry about sending hedwig to dumbledore and getting a ride to diagon alley via the knight bus) and throws some things in a bag, determined to spend the rest of the summer on the lam with her boyfriend and fantasizing her heart out about how great it’s gonna be
but when delphi speaks to ruth, she finds that her orders are entirely ignored; she orders ruth not to repeat what delphi’s about to tell her and never tell anyone about what they’re going to do. then she tells ruth to take her where harry’s waiting (though she doesn’t say why she wants to go). ruth asks why, though, which has delphi pull a double-take because house elves aren’t allowed to talk back or to question their masters… and it clicks in the split second before ruth disapparates what’s going on: ruth, unlike dobby, does not consider delphi to be one of her masters
delphi impulsively tries to grab her—and will later reflect on just what the heck she would’ve done if she’d managed to stop ruth disapparating—but fails, and so she sprints for the front door before ruth can pop back in with lucius
except she doesn’t make it anywhere near the door; she crashes into draco, and then ruth and lucius pop in and she knows she’s absolutely fucked
Delphi’s only tactic is to try to deflect; she demands to know why Ruth doesn't listen to or obey her, and lucius condescending explains that delphi’s behavior has grown increasingly untrustworthy since she went to hogwarts, so ruth has been instructed to report delphi’s requests to lucius or narcissa before acting upon them. this, too, delphi tries to turn around on him: if he’d done that with dobby, delphi would be dead now, does he want that? but lucius’s response to that one is to essentially say that she wouldn’t have been in any danger in the first place if she hadn’t been hanging out with potter and mudbloods and blood traitors, so how about she makes better choices instead of relying on a fucking elf of all things to save her?
to that point—lucius demands to know why delphi was trying to leave, and delphi lies that she just wanted to go meet up with her friends and she would’ve been back by morning.
but lucius says that he doesn’t believe her. he proposes an alternate theory that’s actually pretty close to the truth. he seems to think that she was running away to go be with harry because she thinks sirius is coming after him, and he tells her that she’s not going to be allowed to do that. in fact, she’s just proven that she’s even more untrustworthy than he realized; if she’s thinking about running away, it’s his job as her guardian to make sure that she can’t do that.
so he makes sure that she can’t. he takes the bag she was going to run away with (which had her linked journal and her network book in it); he takes all of her school books from her, locking them up until it’s time to head to the train on september first; he takes her school robes and all of her other school materials, including her (completed) homework… and then he holds out his hand expectantly. it doesn’t click immediately what he wants—and then she’s horrified to realize that he’s asking her to hand over her wand
for a split second, all the different ways that this could play out flash through her head—fighting back would probably be the right move, but she’d never be able to come back from it. if she raises her wand to lucius now, their relationship will be beyond repair. and it would almost certainly backfire; if she did beat him, magically speaking, she’d probably end up in a bunch of legal trouble (or killed or kidnapped or worse by various other loose Death Eaters), and if he beat her, he might ship her off to durmstrang or lock her up in the basement or imperius her or kill her
which is the point at which draco interrupts in her favor. and this little idiot, bless him, swings for the fences: instead of the same old “my father will hear about this,” draco tries for a “her father will hear about this” (”you can’t take her wand away from her!” “can’t i?” “of course not! her father wouldn’t want—”) which is when it dawns on lucius for the first time that draco also knows the truth about delphi’s parents and he isn’t smart enough to pretend he doesn’t. and lucius is of course horrified (as well as a bit confused by how the fuck draco found out because why would delphi tell him?) and sends draco to his room in a panic (to have a serious conversation with him after he’s through with delphi) and then rounds on delphi to demand to know why the fuck she would tell draco
and delphi tries to play it off with a “tell him what? i didn’t tell him anything.” that he doesn’t let her get away with for a heartbeat. He calls her an idiot and insists that she's put Draco in danger, which she thinks is rich considering that lucius nearly got her killed last year
But lucius is calling her out on that one too now: who exactly tried to kill her last year? Delphi says the dark lord did. So lucius pushes it: is she really trying to tell him that the dark lord took her into the chamber of Secrets to kill her? Because the dark lord isn't stupid. He wouldn't try to kill her unless he was absolutely sure that she was a lost cause. So he asks her point-blank: “are you a lost cause?”
And it's not at all lost on Delphi that he's threatening to kill her.
So, with every fiber of her being all but begging her to confirm that she is, Delphi backs down because she knows this is a fight she can't even hope to win. She says “no” and lucius again asks that she hand over her wand and this time she does it and he sends her to her room
And when Delphi gets there, she fucking explodes. She is absolutely furious with lucius and with Draco and even with herself, and she just starts smashing shit. But it's not the catharsis that she's after; she doesn't want to break her own stuff. She wants to break Harry’s muggles and her death Eater family into pieces, and she's enjoying the violent fantasy of it until her thoughts swing around to getting payback for ruth’s betrayal, and that particular violent fantasy is cut short when she realizes just what the fuck she's actually doing. None of this is ruth’s fault, and delphi’s a horrible monster for blaming her for even a heartbeat.
forcing herself to calm down, delphi falls asleep brainstorming ways to at least get her linked journals back so she can check on harry and tell the others what’s happened to her
aftermath
the next day, delphi refuses to leave her room when the house elf tries to get her to come down for breakfast. then she refuses to come down for lunch. then, before she has a concrete plan on how to get her bag/journal back, she gets an unexpected knock on her bedroom door.
to her surprise, it’s draco; to her complete and utter shock, he’s brought her bag back for her. he said he can’t get her wand back for her, much though he’d like to, but he was able to get this without lucius noticing he’d swiped it. and delphi is extraordinarily suspicious because since the hell when does draco do favors for her unprompted? (in reality, draco hasn’t pulled one over on lucius so much as he’s taken lucius’s advice on how to try to win delphi over; lucius having to play bad cop right now gives draco the perfect opportunity to play good)
now that she’s got her book back, though, she honestly doesn’t really give much of a fuck about draco at all. she tells him to leave and settles down to write to her friends… and draco refuses to go. he says that she’s going to be stuck alone in here for the foreseeable future, so she might as well get used to his company because he’s absolutely all she’s got until school starts back up. delphi tries a few more tactics to try to get rid of him… but when he makes it clear that he’s not going anywhere, she decides to just ignore him and write to her friends anyway. she can’t bring herself to put it off any longer.
so she gets to writing, trying to pretend that draco isn’t watching her. she’s careful to make sure that he can’t glimpse what she’s writing though; she definitely doesn’t want him to see that anyone’s actually writing back. and she’s extraordinarily relieved to find out that harry’s entirely okay. he’s better than okay, really. after delphi logged off (so to speak), he got some much better advice from ron, hermione, and neville; they told him to take the knight bus to the leaky cauldron, and he’s still there now. he even met up with minister fudge, who told him that he’s not in any trouble for what happened with marge and he doesn’t have to go back to the dursleys until next summer (though he refused to sign the hogsmeade form)
and while delphi’s definitely happy for him, she’s pretty devastated and furious that she didn’t get to rescue him and that she can’t spend the rest of the summer in diagon alley with him… which is the headspace she’s in as she begins telling her friends her side of last night’s events
and though her friends are all outraged upon her behalf… they’re not as interested in entertaining notions of revenge as she is. ron and harry are on board with getting payback against the malfoys, and ron’s on board with daydreaming about doing something to fuck up the dursleys, but hermione and neville are a pair of level-headed spoilsports raining reason on delphi’s vengeful parade. hermione preaches a bit about the concept of “justice versus vengeance,” and delphi bemoans that the dursley literally can’t face justice for their crimes because dumbledore said harry has no choice but to rely on them for lily’s blood sacrifice to protect him until he comes of age. and the malfoys aren’t going to face any justice for their crimes; lucius is too rich, powerful, and connected, and he’s already wriggled out of accusations once, and to get him credibly this time would demand outing herself (which she’s not going to do)
…and, like, justice would be far less satisfying than just punishing them all somehow. and maybe delphi should be ashamed of feeling that way, but she’s surprised to find that she quite simply isn’t. she’s not ashamed of it at all.
so delphi says ttfn to her friends and closes her little book, feeling… odd about this apparent disconnect between herself and her friends. and draco doesn’t seem at all interested in getting the hell out of there anytime soon, so she kind of accidentally ends up talking to him about it.
see, draco doesn’t really think that delphi was running away last night to go see her friends. because he knows something that his parents don’t: she already pulled this shit last summer, when he accidentally wound up tagging along for the ride during delphi’s little attempt to save harry from the dursleys. so he’s pretty sure that she wasn’t just going out for a little meet-up; he’s pretty sure that either she panicked because of sirius black being on the loose… or else something actually did happen to harry yesterday that she wanted to play heroine over. and he pushes her for an answer until she finally gives one.
she says that, yeah, it was harry’s muggles again. harry ran away from home after they pushed him too far, and delphi was on her way to go help him. and draco fishes for details; he’s genuinely delighted to hear that harry “attacked” (as he sees it) his aunt, which delphi now has to argue against. harry didn’t attack anyone; harry was just defending himself. except that’s not quite accurate, is it? harry’s bitch aunt wasn’t hurting him, so hurting her wasn’t self-defense; perfect harry potter lost control of his magic and lashed out to hurt a muggle, and isn’t that an interesting little bit of information? and delphi’s pissed at the implication behind why draco’s so delighted: harry’s not some kind of vengeful person, and he doesn’t have a muggle-hating bone in his body. delphi insists it: harry doesn’t even want to get revenge on the dursleys, no matter how much delphi has made it clear that she absolutely wants to fuck them up on his behalf.
which draco, inexplicably, seems to find extraordinarily frustrating. delphi’s not quite sure why he suddenly seems so ticked. but he tells her that harry must be even stupider than he looks; not wanting to get revenge is stupid, and not letting delphi get revenge for him is even dumber. something something “he won’t even let his own girlfriend defend him. he clearly doesn’t realize just how good he’s got it.”
and delphi’s all affronted and flustered because what the hell does draco mean “girlfriend” (she definitely has not confirmed that to him), but draco just rolls his eyes and insists that he isn’t stupid. he saw them holding hands at the end of last year—which delphi finds kind of strange, because she and harry were definitely not particularly PDA at any point. (how closely must draco have been watching them, for him to pick up on something like that?)
delphi tells him to get out again, and at last he listens… for now. he tells her that he’ll be back to see her again tomorrow—and she’d better be grateful for the company, because he’s all she’s got until school starts back up.
and delphi is very grateful that she’s got her notebook back, because if he hadn’t given it back to her, that genuinely would be true.