The Shadow Walker - Jacob Carl Novak

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

"...He is interested in facts in his reports..."  It may enhance the character for you occasionally do get him bogged-down
with trivia, useless gossip and dead-ends outside of his usual atmosphere. It fleshes him out to show the reader Jacob
he is just like us and has fallibilities.

Most certainly, we can't have him gain ground without a struggle. Also, Jake is seriously flawed in a number of ways, but he wouldn't be so focused on his mission to validate his late uncle's work if he was just a normal guy. Dead ends will cause some good tension with Jake by re-enforcing his rational mind until the unexplained happens and he can't resolve that with the evidence. In fact, his first encounter with the paranormal is a dead end that supports his skepticism. It will take a particularly strange event to get him to begin to believe that some things are beyond reasonable explanation.

I want to get into my other character's personalities and the way they influence Jake as well. That could be tough if I'm only using Jake's perspective to flesh those characters out. However, though their actions and words, I should be able to get the reader to see what those characters are all about. Spoiler, not many of those characters are making it past one chapter. That will be tricky as well, to build up a character, make them interesting and then kill them off.