While researching, I remembered this one plotty-idea I'd been toying with for a while, but had set aside because it didn't seem to have a place in the story. Now I think I might be able to use it as a, um, seed kind of thing. To plant a seed of plot-suspense, I mean.

The story starts off, then it slowly loses steam, and I don't know if the second-kind-of-suspense questions (who's this character? what kind of trouble has he brought with him?) are enough to carry the reader through to the middle of the book. I'm now thinking that mentioning the plotty-thing (MC finds an unmarked potentially crippling pig-sticker trap* in the woods) at the right place in the story, combined with the second-kind-of-suspense questions, may be able to carry the reader through till stuff starts happening again.

However, no time to think more about it right now. If I don't set this ms aside other obligations are going to start piling up in an unacceptable and unprofessional manner.



*When I first thought of this, it was a pit-trap, and that didn't resonate with the story, but then while double checking other snare-related info, I read about a pig-sticker trap, which is pretty horrific; a bent sapling has a sharpened blade attached to the end and it's pulled back so that when the line is tripped, the blade whips around and sinks into the prey. Then I was like, Oh yeah, that makes sense and ties to some of the other stuff I've got going on. The pit-trap didn't. So...we'll see.