Your protagonist needs to react internally to everything that happens, in the moment, as he struggles to make sense of it and so bend it to his advantage. This means he thinks about what is happening. Not in the abstract. Not in long, rambling stream-of-consciousness musings. But with urgency, in service of a decision that must be made right now. The rule is this: he can’t notice or comment on anything—even if it’s just a description of what someone is wearing—unless he then draws a strategic conclusion that affects what he’s doing or how he interprets what’s happening. And he must do this
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