Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 43 - Reflection

Hoo boy, this was a long chapter, wasn't it?

At 11,363 words, I'm pretty sure this is the second longest chapter I've ever written, with Chapter 26 (The finale of Book Two) taking first place. Unlike with Ch. 26, however, I didn't know in advance that this chapter was going to end up so long.

See, the end of Book Two had so much going on. It had my longest and most involved sex scene, and then an entire fight scene from multiple POVs after that. It had an incredible amount of ground to cover, and I'm super happy that it's length ended up making it feel suitably dramatic.

This chapter, however, slowly grew longer as I continued to study my outline.

See, when I'm plotting out my books, I always plan the biggest events first. If we look at Book One, the biggest moments would be: 1) Revealing that Vee is an angel in Chapter Seven, 2) Vee learns Amara is the succubus in Chapter Eleven, and 3) Vee and Amara fight on Halloween in Chapter 13.

I also need to look at where the Book Starts to understand how things need to be paced. If we continue using Book One as an example, Chapter One ends with Amara learning she's a succubus. The next few chapters are focused almost entirely on her transformation, with her acquiring a collection of new abilities and limbs as time progress. However, when we learn Vee is an angel, we do it because she sees Amara shapeshifted into her. This means that Amara needs to have shapeshifting, but not now how to control it, in Chapter Seven.

That gives me a goal to keep in mind. By Chapter Seven, we need to have spent several scenes from the angel's POV so that the reveal feels weighty and dramatic. We also need to explore Amara's transformation enough so that shapeshifting, which is a much less concrete power, feels like a natural evolution. This means we need to get the easy stuff out the way earlier: wings, tail, horns, all that jazz.

This also means that between Chapter Seven and Chapter Thirteen, I need to show Vee slowly growing more and more distant so that her ultimate choice to attack Amara feels in character.

Now, sadly, I can't give any spoilers about where Book Four is going. However, I can tell you that I've plotted it out the same way I do all my books, and I know exactly which important events are going to be happening in which chapter.

This chapter had a shockingly short outline, which I'll post below. (Edited slightly to remove personal notes and spoilers.)

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The Coven meets with the students. We learn random details about things they are attempting to cover up.

Vee talks with Nick about trying to cheer Amara up. He says that he always tried to change what she associates with things, like with the cooking.

Amara practices dreamwalking again, manages to find Nick and sleep with him. As she returns to her body, when she's still not sure if she's awake or not, she sees Chloé screaming in pain.

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Personally, I think it's pretty funny that such a bare bones outline turned into such a long chapter. You may also notice that one scene is completely missing from the outline: Tessa showing the Coven Heads all the circles.

Book Four has a lot going on. We've got Amara dealing with her anger, Vee attempting to hold the group together and prevent Amara from spiraling out of control, and Tessa dealing with the Coven. All these plot lines weave together in different ways, and I'm having a blast so far. However, my initial outline completely ignored all the details about the Coven, as I mentally filed that under "Busywork I'll figure out when it's time to write the chapter." As such, this meant that I recently had to examine my outline, specifically looking at upcoming big plot points, and begin to work out how to get there.

When I started looking ahead, it became obvious that a LOT of plot would need to happen, and I didn't exactly have a bunch of time. After all, this is the fourth chapter of the Book, which means we're basically a third of the way through it already.

Another funny consequence of the Coven plot line is that they're a pretty dense cast of characters. I'm not sure how much of my behind-the-scenes work will translate to the story, but I've given every member of the Coven a distinct personality and set of goals. Even if they present a united front in public, there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and it's taking quite a bit of work to figure out how to portray that in my writing.

Then, on top of all their complicated dynamics, I also need the actual main plot to advance itself. This means we need to learn about all the Coven Heads while they're learning about the circles and putting together their plan to fix everything, AND we need to learn about Tessa's complicated history with them, which I'm purposely avoiding talking about because I'm trying to only hint at it through small pieces of dialogue and context clues. It's so much work!

So, now that I've got that big rant off my chant, I might as well reset and start tackling this chapter from the beginning.

We open with Vee going to Nick and complaining about her attempt to cheer Amara up. This was a refreshing scene because Nick and Vee have barely had any screen time together. They had an awkward date in Book One, and then Vee confronted him about Amara once in Book Two. Their dynamic could have been a lot more complicated, but I purposely avoided throwing in any unnecessary drama just for its own sake. If this were a CW show, Nick would probably have bad feelings about being sidelined with nary a second thought, but I personally think he's just way too chill for that.

Plus, like, they went out on one date. That's not that much.

I also envision Nick as someone who's happy to not be super involved with all the supernatural nonsense. Like, he's certainly in the middle of a lot of it, but he's always on the sidelines giving advice and moral support. I like to think that, once he learned about all the Halloween drama, he was just like, "Yeah, that's a bit much."

This scene is pretty special because it gives Nick a way to support Amara even though she's been giving him the cold shoulder. He's always been somewhat of a rock for her, as we've seen throughout earlier books, but her current emotional turmoil has grown far beyond his area of expertise. He can still offer advice, but he no longer has equal standing with Amara, which seems to be affecting her ability to relate to what he says.

Their conversation is also a great chance to dig a little deeper into Vee and what her deal is, at least for this Book. She's gone through a lot, and all her appearances in earlier books were defined by her strict religious upbringing. First she tried to kill Amara, then she was reluctantly helping, then they were awkwardly talking through their differences in Purgatory. I don't think Vee has fully worked through all her feelings about the Church yet, but she's definitely made a lot of progress, and I'm hoping this book gives us a chance to see who she really is now that we've stripped away some of her trauma.

I say "we" but I obviously mean Amara. To me, the most notably thing about Vee's behavior in this book is that it's a direct result of Amara trying over and over to extend an olive branch. As Vee says in this scene, she's got some feelings about the dedication Amara showed her back then, and now she wants to return the favor.

I'm incredibly happy to be writing this version of Vee finally. I always knew this was the heart of the character, but I had to start by showing her at her worst, which was a bit of a bummer at times. Especially when so many of my readers seemed to heavily dislike her. Every time I got a nasty comment about Vee, my gut reaction was always "Look, just give me some time, and I promise you'll like her in due time."

Vee's conversation with Nick thankfully gives them a bit of a chance to unpack all the revelations about Evelyn, too, which I had fun with.

Moving on, we get to switch to Amara's POV as the Coven prepares to meet with the student body. The first half of this scene serves a pretty mechanical purpose; we need to understand what the Coven's goals are. Sure, we know a bit from their conversation with Tessa, but I thought it would be helpful to have them explain everything to the students. Plus, it let me sneak in some worldbuilding, and that's always fun.

Since we're rooted in Amara's POV, however, I don't think it's surprising that things get heated pretty quickly. I'm really trying my best to showcase exactly how Amara is feeling, but I'm also trying to use her emotionality as a tool to show us more about other characters whenever I can.

Case in point: Imani. We know pretty much nothing about her, and I'm trying to change that. The hope was that we learn a bit about who she is by the way she reacts to Amara's outburst. We'll obviously have more time with Imani in the future, but I think I'm laying down some pretty solid ground for her.

The third scene, which I've already indirectly ranted about at the start of this Reflection, has a lot going on. Much like the previous scene, it starts with much more of a mechanical bent. I needed to show the Coven as they first approached the magic circles on campus, and thankfully I was able to use those events to spend more time with a couple of the coven members.

First we get Elijah Jun, and I had a blast writing out his introductory scene. I'm purposely putting a little bit of quirkiness into him, and I think it's working well. I've never really written a "funny" character before, and honestly I'm not sure I ever will, but Elijah is definitely someone that I'd consider a little close to the label than most.

This scene also gave more more great opportunities to showcase little bits of Coven politics, which was great.

Most importantly, though, we get to spend some time with Miss Bishop.

To talk about her, however, I'm afraid I've got another little tangent/rant prepared.

I'm sure you've all heard the saying "Show, don't tell" when it comes to media. Personally, I always heard this phrase the most during discussion of visual media like movies and television, but it can apply to everything. The basic premise is that you want to keep your audience engaged by not directly telling them information, and instead giving them clues to piece together information on their own.

I could say "The stove was hot" or I could say "The air over the glowing coils shimmered with a faint haze."

Both sentences tell you the same information, but the second paints a more vivid picture and, ideally, is more engaging to read because I'm encouraging you to piece together the reality of the story on your own.

Now, it's easy to put together a quick example to get my point across, but it's another thing altogether to apply this idea to apply this to everything I write. After all, I'm writing a chapter a week, and sometimes those chapters end up being 10,000+ words long! I've had quite a few times where I've stressed that I'm doing too much telling and not enough showing.

Personally, I think I'm doing a really great job at this with Book Four, although, honestly, I think I've always done this well with Tessa. She did finally open up a bit in Book Three, but there's still a LOT she never said. She's never sat Nick down and said "Hey, my Coven is pretty abusive and I have a lot of unresolved trauma from my time with them" but, hopefully, that rough idea has been somewhat obvious by the way she's been acting around them.

In a similar vein, I'm extremely happy of how this short conversation with Miss Bishop turned out. I think I did a great job of showing off their dynamic without having Miss Bishop turn to the camera and go "Tessa, as you know, I'm incredibly protective of you because I saved you from a rabid bear when you were ten." There's a chance we never fully understand what their exact dynamic is, and how it came to be, and I'm really happy with that. I think leaving certain things unexplored makes the world of the story feel more alive and three dimensional.

I did bury some little clues about Tessa's past in that scene, though. I haven't seen anyone talk about them, but I'm happy with my word choice in a few places.

And then, at long last, we finally get to our last scene. If you refer back to the outline I posted earlier in the Reflection, you'll notice that the final chapter deviates a bit. In my outline, Amara wanders over to Nick's dream and fucks him, but in the final chapter, that never ends up happening. She certainly enters the dream with the intention of doing so, but she gets sidetracked when she finds Ruby's dream instead.

Now, part of the reason this happened is that I didn't want to chapter to go even longer than it was already shaping up to be. Secondly, every point I wanted to hit with this scene worked just as well, if not better, by sticking with Ruby's dream instead of leaving to go to Nick's.

For one thing, I didn't think it would be entirely realistic for Amara to find the exact dream she was looking for instantly after entering the Dreamscape. I felt a bit more spontaneous and exploratory to have her start looking for Nick, then get sidetracked with other things. I also had more interesting ideas for Ruby's dream. Actually, I never even thought of any ideas for what Nick might be dreaming about; as soon as I started writing Ruby's section, I realized I didn't want to leave it.

I knew I wanted a sex scene here. However, unlike with many of my past sex scenes, it didn't have to be with any particular person. In the past, especially in Book Two, I need Amara to be with Nick for various plot reasons (often that other conversations needed to happen, like when he pushed her into using her fire to cook).

This time, thankfully, the narrative called for a different flavor of spicy. See, I've made it clear in the past that Ruby is attracted to Amara. She's had small aura pulses in previous chapters, and here in the dream, it's her who brings up the idea that Amara can heal if she has sex. That being said, as someone who's constantly hyper aware when it comes to consent, I'd say there are some pretty sketchy implications to Ruby's actions in this scene. After all, when people are dreaming, they often aren't in their right mind, and they certainly aren't expecting that the people in their dreams are real people that have invaded using dream magic.

This scene, above all else, is another data point that hints towards Amara's shifting demeanor. I purposely tried to write this scene as somewhat ambiguous, and I wouldn't be surprised if different readers come out of this chapter with differing feelings about how consensual this intimacy truly was.

Ambiguity is the name of the game, for better or for worse. I have a lot of feelings about what Amara is going through this book and, sadly, I won't be able to delve into them until we're at the end of it all.

Once she's finished finishing Ruby, she pops out of the dream and starts wandering around some more. I had a lot of fun thinking of strange dreams to give other students, but my real stroke of genius was also using this as a way to sneak in more information about Tessa's Coven.

After all, Evelyn told us that illusion magic comes from the dreamscape, right? And who was it that was talking about illusions earlier?

Well, it seems Miss Bishop has done her homework. This is another scene that, in my opinion, does a great job at showing instead of telling. We clearly missed a bunch of earlier conversation, but there were still some interesting facts sprinkled into the conversation we did overhear. Palesa is the Coven Head that, up until now, has gotten the least characterization, and I'm really glad I found a way to sneak some in for her. At this point, I think I've put out a few different examples for everyone in the Coven, and I can't wait to show you where it's all going.

And that's the end of the chapter! Amara just goes home and falls asleep.

Right?

I'm not forgetting anything, am I?

Eh, if I am, I doubt it's important.

Nyx ♥