A beta reader suggested that there should be some hint that the truck Chris and his father live out of is unreliable before it has trouble starting up in chapter two. So I went back to chapter one, found where Chris first gets in the truck, and tried to come up with some telling detail that would lay that foundation. Let's see . . . Chris is reading . . . it's dark . . . how about if I mention that he can't use the dome light because it hasn't worked in years. Perfect! Except . . . late in the book, he does just that. He reads by dome light and drains the battery. Oops. Thank goodness I caught that. It's so easy to make a mistake of that sort. People who read a book generally finish it in a matter of days, if not less. But when you spend a year working on writing and revising it, it's so easy to forget stuff. It's like looking at a painting from across the room, versus being an ant crawling on the painting. The ant is too close to it to really take it all in.
Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
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