Blood & Chlorophyll Ch. 19 - Reflection

So, fun little secret about this story. I've kinda been dreading the moment where everyone finally starts tackling the Dungeon, because it's such a foreign concept to me. I love writing romance and character drama, but Dungeon crawls? I've been scratching my head for months trying to find the best way to approach this part of the story.

I'm sure there's some alternate version of this story where the delving is happening throughout the entire book. Like, we do a tiny bit of delving, and then at night there's a scene where Alicia has to tend Kat's wounds but they haven't confessed their feelings for each other yet.

Then they get a little further and realize they need help, so they find Tabitha. Maybe there's a scene when Tab gets hurt in the Dungeon, and Kat almost loses control, which leads to the request for Kat to do the bite show.

Honestly, typing all that out, I bet it would be a pretty enjoyable book. I think it certainly would have been more economical from a meta standpoint. However, that's not the book I'm writing, so here we are.

To be clear, I have nothing against dungeon crawls. I just tend to be more enthusiastic about character relationships, and I've never been all that enthused about stories that focus on entirely mechanical problems. I think, in some ways, I've slightly made my life a little harder by putting all the Dungeon stuff at the end, but it's not like it's all bad.

I do think that spending so long preparing for the dungeon helps set the stage. There's nearly twenty chapters of anticipation and build up, and now that we care about the characters, hopefully the fights feel more tense.

That being said, it was still exciting figuring out all the little details. What does the dungeon look like? What kind of monsters are there? What do they need to do to progress? I've put a lot of effort into making these last chapters just as interesting as the earlier relationship drama, so hopefully the quality doesn't drop off a cliff once the delving starts XD

I've actually been thinking recently about the circumstances that led me to starting Blood & Chlorophyll. I'm pretty sure I've gone over them before, but there were a few big ones. First and foremost, I loved the idea of a Vampire/Dryad romance, and I couldn't think of a way to make it work in my own world. Secondly, I really wanted a second writing project, as I wanted a chance to flex my writing muscles and get in practice with a different type of story. I'm always scared of stagnation, and I would hate it if Suddenly A Succubus ends up being the only thing I do. Like, don't get me wrong, I love writing it, but I want to be able to engage with a wide variety of stories.

So, from the train of thought that I'm looking to train different kinds of writing muscles, it's kinda perfect that B&C is putting me in a situation where I need to engage with lots of fights and mechanical story problems. I honestly think that I've already become better at writing fights thanks to this story, and I'm sure that will only continue as the dungeon delving grows more intense.

In this chapter, I finally get a chance to show our three leads working together in combat. I'm really happy with the different abilities I've given them all, I think they're an exciting party, and I hope that came across in the chapter.

Alicia's class in particular is one I really love. I'm a big fan of magic that's used for more than damage, and I love playing games that let me reshape the battlefield to my advantage. Since Alicia's class is all about making barriers, it's a perfect fit!

My main goal for this fight was to show that all the training helped out, but they're still not perfect delvers. The fight is pretty hectic, and while there are no major injuries, I tried to show through Alicia's thoughts that she's pretty panicked in her own way.

And of course, we get to end the chapter with Alicia leveling up, which gives her another fun toy to play with. I'm really excited to give her barriers more flexibility in combat, and I like to think that it's a natural (pun intended) evolution of her core class abilities. Plus, I get to show off the random research I did about exploding tree fruits! Woo!

All in all, I have a feeling that some of these later chapters might have shorter reflections on average. It's weird being so out of my element, but I'm trusting my loyal readers to tell me if the story suddenly gets super boring :P

Nyx <3