Reaching the plot spot

It's about six weeks since I wrote that I'd completed Snowflake Stage 3, and now I've moved on past stages 4 & 5. That's taken a little longer than the method itself estimates, but it's still phenomenal progress in my world. To reach this point in developing a novel took me well over a year the first time round.

Now, it gets harder. Stage 6 requires the expansion of the 1-page synopsis from Stage 4 into a 4-page synopsis that contains all the story elements. As the method puts it: "Figure out the high-level logic of the story & make strategic decisions". So here is where I have to knuckle down and work out exactly what I want to say through these ten characters that populate the worlds I have in my head.

As you might imagine, I'm pretty much down with the main events. The start. The end. What the major "disasters" are, even if their details are a bit vague right now. Each of these ten people has a story too, that needs to be woven in among the main plot, stitched together in the rich tapestry of the story, hopefully in non-obvious and utterly compelling ways (*vbg*). But the main difference between this and War of Nutrition  is in its depth. I want to put more into this story than just the story.

Yes, WoN had a message - messing with yer food: A Bad Thing - but it was an overt, slap-you-round-the-head-with-a-wet-fish kind of message. I'd like my second novel (working title "Touchwood") to have a bit more about it. A little bit allegorical. More thought-provoking. A dollop of "what is he really trying to say here?" And that, I strongly suspect, is going to prove a whole heap harder than last time.