Poker players have a term for flustered, irrational thinking and behavior in a game. They say the player is on tilt. This is usually happens after the player suffers a bad beat. I don’t play poker. I write. But I regularly go on tilt after a bad critique.
A bad beat is when the player thought his hand was a sure winner, and probably was early in the hand, but not in the end when it counts. A bad critique is when you think you’ve got all your little ducky words in a row, but someone points out there’s a frog and a rabbit and—oh, lord—a fox in the line, too. That’s when I run around screaming for a while.
Eventually, I calm down and take a closer look. Turns out that frog just wandered into the line, got quite embarrassed when you pointed it out, and hopped away. And that rabbit was just duck #3 in his Halloween costume … we’ve had a talk, it won’t happen again. And the fox? Well, sometimes a fox is just in the eye of the beholder.
I’m not quite level again, but I’m getting there. Then I’ll have something to blog about.
Linda Cassidy Lewis 
On the other hand, my writing teacher suggested (she heard it from a well-known author, although I’ve forgotten which one), that when a scene is dragging, you should introduce a fox.
Perhaps you want those foxes to linger.
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I fully understand your teacher’s analogy … introduce a little danger to spice things up.
My analogy is awkward. My fox is an illusion, a cry of “danger” when I don’t believe any exists. That’s not to say, I’m not looking over my shoulder. 😕
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Count your blessings no sloths were found. That could really throw the monkey into the pond. OMG. I am so bad at that animal analogy; I hope that’s no reflection on my writing. 🙂
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Well, conjuring up a sloth IS a reflection on your writing because sloths are funny creatures! 🙂
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