I had a realisation last night on the train home that my plot had a major flaw. Basically the murders that prompt Roger’s investigations are pretty much solved by the beginning of Act 2, the rest of the book being taken up by how Roger can save Margery and himself from false accusations. Although that might mean revealing the real killer at the end, the mystery of who the killer is should be maintained until a climax in Act 3 as well. I hadn’t really considered that before. This prompted me to change the last couple of parts of the main plot. I also added in a major upheaval in the town and action sequences that allow Margery to take a larger part in the narrative, rather than just giving advice from her prison cell. I think overall this makes for a stronger plot now. 

As far as the snowflake methodology is going, I can definitely see how this is benefitting the story. As I write each individual characters plot-line more complexity and intensity is added to the main plot itself. Before I leave this character stage I will need to go through each one and sort out inconsistencies between each and also between them and the main plot. The next stage of snowflake, stage 4, which is to expand the five sentence plot to 5 paragraphs, should actually be fairly straightforward to put together as a first draft as most of the material is in each character plotline now. However, I think I will then need to spend time reading through this synopsis to see how the plot as a whole hangs together.