Yesterday I made notes about Chapter 4. Listed--well, scribbled--a bunch of emotional points to make re. each of the three characters in it. There are a lot of points. I don't think I can just sit down and shove them in, even in an organized fashion, because it'll be dead on the page.

Today I quickly scrolled through the previous chapters without reading them, just to see what they were about. My impression is that I'm covering a lot of ground very quickly, and I was faintly concerned about having a breathless, unrelenting pace where the reader is forced to constantly absorb world-building and set-up without getting a break. Then I thought about the bit I worked on the other day, where the characters spend time in a muddy hole. That felt like a nice breather as I wrote it, because they were just standing there and we were getting to know them without a bunch of actions or physical description being thrown in. So I went into today with the idea that I'd come at the ms very loosey-goosey, with the scribble of emotional points in the back of my head, and hope that some of them would naturally come out as I let the characters do and say whatever seem intriguing or fun. There's not a lot going on in this chapter plot-wise or action-wise. Just the characters walking around, er, learning things I need them to learn.

So now I'm sitting back to look at today's work, and I dunno. It's not very compelling so far. I'll have to make sure I understand the main questions that are in the reader's mind at this point.

In a nutshell, that's most of my problem with this ms, the past few weeks (or is it months?). I don't know what main questions to use for each chapter. I also don't know how to figure out which main questions to use for each chapter.