I have found that I have to go back and add stuff to prior chapters to make the later chapters relate to them better. For example in my WIP, I never established that John Dunn, even at a young age, had acquired a good amount of money through trading cattle. He would buy a team of trained oxen and then trade them for two "unbroken" teams and then he would train them, himself and repeat the process. Two separate sources have confirmed that he used this method to become a wealthy man.
So now I am in chapter six, and he has taken his first Zulu wives, and of course must pay the lobolo, which is a dowrie. But I never established that he had the means to do that. So now I will go back and find the best place to insert that with some dialogue where it makes sense for the subject to be broached. This way, the reader won't be thinking something like, 'since when did he have all that cattle to pay as lobolo?"
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