Another characteristic of many fractals is that they can be created by following an iterative or repetitive process. 

For example, the Koch snowflake is created by starting with an equilateral triangle and then placing a smaller triangle into each of the three sides. This gives you a shape with twelve sides. Now repeat by adding smaller triangles to each of those twelve sides. You can see the first four steps of the process in the pictures on the right. Now imagine continuing this for ever. The resultant picture would be the Koch snowflake.