Almost breaking my brain

I had never written a whodunnit before, so everything about the plotting process was new. In the end, what worked for me was to plot backwards. I figured out who the dead guy was and why he was dead, then I figured out who the killer was, and after that, I plodded backwards one step at a time while reminding myself: "Okay, so the killer was X, what would X have done to cover their tracks?" It was such a complicated and confusing process.

Worse still, having five different points of view meant that I had to juggle a lot of stuff - every character had to have their own arc and couldn't be off-screen for too long. For example, while adding to my chapter outline, I would suddenly realise that Character B wouldn't have had a POV chapter for quite a while. So I'd have to go back and rearrange everything to make sure that Character B got a fair share of screen time.