Fixing a Major Plot Hole

So up until today, my thinking was that Felicia had kidnapped Janis in order to get Thomas to kill Ian. And then, while she had her, decided to use her in the experiments. Since then I've not had much luck coming up with ways to get her motivations to make sense.

Today it occurred to me that it should be the other way around. Felicia kidnapped Janis (on Ashley's advice, because Ashley hates the Eenin) in order to use her in the experiments. Then she finds out later that Thomas cares about her, and tries to bargain Janis's life for Ian's.

I didn't get much in the way of words today, while I was reorienting my worldview around that idea. My revised outline now looks like:

Ashley and Felicia: we need some victims that are going to stand up tougher to our experiments. What about the Eenin?

Ashley: I'll capture an Eenin that no one will miss. There's one sitting near the edge eating a sandwich. I'm sure she's not important.

Ashley and Felicia: experiments going better! yay!

Thomas: Oh noes! Where's Janis?

Felicia: I'll give her back to you if you kill Ian Wormon

Thomas: No.

Eenin: Oh noes! Where's our Speaker?

Eenin: hey wait, there's that stranger woman that was at the culture center at around when Janis disappeared. Let's interrogate.

Ashley: uh. oh all right, the mages have her.

It was all because Jacob asked the Eenin warchief how they found out that Janis was with the mages, and I didn't have an actual answer anymore because the original reason from the first draft no longer applies. Ashley made the most sense to have been the one to tell them, though it would've been under duress. It does mean that I have a whole series of scenes that need to be written from Ashley's point of view now.

26,459 words at the moment. It's about 200 short of today's goal. I'll have to catch that up tomorrow.