When I mentioned that I was revising my Edinburgh series, and that book one took place in twenty-four hours, a friend said, “It must have a lot of flashbacks.” It doesn’t have any, but that might be a way to go deeper in this novel. I noticed that while I like happy novels, a little bit of darkness helps, so maybe the flashbacks could help with that.
After two readers commented that the second chapter had a sudden shift in location and point of view character, I swapped the third and second chapters. It required some revising, but that way the point of view characters followed naturally from one to the next. As the author, I could see a strong connection the way I had it, but the reader might not understand so early.
It makes sense that I know more about the characters than I can tell the reader this early in the book. So I listen to readers when they’re confused.