Plan your story, but not too much (I)

"If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there," so one could justify in a nutshell why planning a novel is important. The temptation to start writing when you have a new idea is big, it works at first, but in most cases it ends up taking the story to a point from where we don't know how to continue. Since we don't know where we wanted to arrive, we don't know which way to go. Coherence will also be compromised, the chances of making mistakes in the plot, in the characters, the typical thing that can ruin a good story, will increase. All that can be minimized with a basic planning. One of the simplest methods is the snowflake model. The first step is to define the story in a single sentence, then in a paragraph, then on a page. Then the characters are developed and their biographies and evolutionary arcs are detailed. The next step is to extend the summary to four pages. The method proposes to define the story with three tragedies and an ending. So each page should end in one tragedy, and the fourth with the end. Then you can refine the characters and continue extending the plot of the story.