Chapter 3 has several purposes. The first is to get a little more of the scenery established. I provided very little information about the island in the first two chapters. In this chapter, Drew and Jordan are interacting with the scenery while they walk the shoreline searching for her missing mask.
We also need to be exposed to Jordan's tendency to steal things that don’t belong to her. It's her biggest flaw-- the one that will ultimately get her in trouble throughout the entire series of books. I show her to be tempted but Drew calling her out on it, so we know that he knows she does it.
The most important goal of the chapter is to get the theme of the story stated. What are we doing here? What does our hero need to learn in order to conclude their journey? I used Drew to state the theme. He actually clarifies both the theme for the series and for this book. The series theme is that we all have baggage from our childhoods but at some point, we have to let it go, and as Drew says, "…just be who we are."
The theme for this book's story is that people are rarely who or what we think they are. There is always a deeper story. Drew covers that with one sentence, "When are you gonna figure out that people are never what they seem to be?"
We see more of his patience with Jordan, regardless of her flaws. But it was time to hint that Drew might not be perfect, so we added a tiny bit about him polishing off a bottle of wine alone on the couch before joining Jordan in bed.
Chapter 4 is a short one because it doesn't need to be long. It's nothing more than setting up the dominoes. We need to show Jordan as a bit more flawed. We need to hear her whine about her lost writing gigs, her inability to travel because of the pandemic, and her broken shoulder.
She does this with the universal complaint these days, "I want my life back."
In the next chapter, the dominoes begin to fall when we give her a "you just thought you had problems" re-check.
We also get a tiny glimpse of why we might have a reason to like her-- she is not the stereotypical brainless travel blogger. She feels deeply about her work.
That's it for these chapters. Please let me know what you think. I am always open to criticism.