Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 15 - Reflection

If Chapter 14 was essentially a way to set the mood for Book 2, Chapter 15 is where we really start digging into things. People react to trauma in very different ways, and it often serves as great insight into their character. Amara is taking things very personally, and it was really interesting seeing how she chooses to process her thoughts about what happened. Last chapter we saw her shut down, try to hide away from everything, but now she's back in the game. Trauma doesn't just vanish overnight, though, and it was important to show how her actions evolve moving forward.

This gave me a golden opportunity to do a couple things. First, it allowed me to shine a light on Amara's photography, which ended up being a crucial tool to help Amara work through her thoughts. Second, it lets me pull Chloé into the narrative, as she's the person giving Amara this opportunity to make things better. The entire opening scene was a blast to write, even if I struggled to find the right words to describe a building ravaged by hellfire. It took a while to settle on what the outcome of the fire was, if I'm being honest. Obviously it's going to be just a pile of ash, but what survived? Where did the fire hit hardest, and what were the emergency resonders able to save? I'm happy with how it turned out, and it gave Amara a chance to begin accepting what happened.

Once we leave the Palace, we jump into one of Amara's classes. This is something I do pretty infrequently, but I'm always happy when I get the chance. It's easy to forget that these character are in school, especially when 95% of the interesting stuff happens outside of class. It was a fun visual to paint, however; Amara struggling to stay awake because she's bored in a lecture. One thing that keeps coming up in my writing is how life keeps going, no matter the circumstances, and sometimes you have to just figure out how to keep up with it. I wanted to focus on some of the more mundane aspects of Amara's life, especially because she's in the middle of reconnecting with "Human Amara", as she's keen to call it.

Importantly, I wanted to really push the idea that Amara isn't giving up. She's all in on taking action, helping with the charity, and trying to find a way to move forward. In the past, Tessa has been the one leading the charge on finding magic circles, but I got to flip the script this time. Plus, I got to have some more text conversations! They're one of my guilty pleasures, as they're so much fun to write. I've heard a lot of advice about how to differentiate characters in your story, and how having people speak differently can be a huge tool, but it's something I struggle with. In my opinion, a lot of people have fairly similar speaking patterns, at least in terms of the words being said. Sure, you can give people different accents or dialects, but sometimes people just use similar words because they hang out a lot. Through texting? All bets are off. Word choice matters, because it shows what someone is willing to type out. Do they say "On my way!" or "omw"? Do they care about spelling? Do they draft long, detailed messages, or send out 5 short texts in a row? It's SO much more evocative than the spoken word, at least in my opinion. Not that I ignore the words my characters say, I certainly stress about it often enough.

Tangent aside, this scene also brings the exciting reintroduction of Brandon. He played a pretty small part in Book 1, but I left that plot thread dangling for a reason. He's certainly good at pushing Amara's buttons, and this exchange was interesting because Amara has changed quite a bit since they last met. Plus she gets to slam him against a wall! Great catharsis for me, and the perfect way to tease that she's still prone to getting angry. Most importantly, Brandon brings up a pretty heavy point that I've been somewhat avoiding: Souls. Amara hasn't given it much thought, I feel she has a tendency to focus on what she can tangibly interact with, but the question was bound to come up eventually. This is actually a point that originally was going to come up before her fight with Vee. It ended up being cut, as it didn't fit right, and I'm much happier with it being a plot point that comes from Brandon, of all people.

For all her bluster, though, his words stick with Amara. She finally asks Tessa about souls, about if she's scared, which was a great chance to dig a litttle deeper into our witchy friend. Fun writer's tip, if you want a way to learn more about characters, have them ponder their own mortality! What could go wrong? Anyways, this whole conversation was fun, and it let me dive deeper into more of the fallout from Amara's big fight with Vee. Tessa clearly thinks Vee is entirely at fault, and I'll admit I'd be curious to see how many people agree with her. I've seen a lot of people place the blame solely on Vee's shoulders, which I'll admit surprised me a little.

That conversation is cut short, however, by the exciting introduction of another big plot point. We finally get our first look at who might be messing with all these magic circles, even if it's just a glimpse. It's enough to confirm quite a few things, though, and it gives some tangibility to everything Tessa has been looking into these last few weeks. This also confirms that a circle is nearby, which gives Tessa another chance to show off some of her magic. I realize I'm a little shy when it comes to her abilities, but I promise I've given them a lot of thought. Now that she's found another circle, though, it's time for Amara to wander around and be bored!

This Book is giving me a great chance to explore Amara's complicated feelings about her transformation. She's said she wants to start ignoring her fire powers, but she's still willing to play around with her shapeshifting, which I'm aware might come across as inconsistent. There's a morbid curiousity there, but it's also interested to see how she's distributing the blame when it comes to her own abilities. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to do my favorite thing and explore her powers further! She's been messing around with her strange, bony, chitinous exoskeleton thing for a bit now, and it's an ability I'm really excited to start developing. It has a lot of potential, and Amara is clearly aware of that. I almost pushed the 'morbid' part of 'morbid curiousity' more than I did, to be honest. I thought about having her test her healing factor, pushing the knife deeper to see what it feels like, but I didn't like the tone that created. It felt too much like I would be depicting Amara as someone who self-harms as a trauma response, and that's simply not her. Self-harm is something that I'm, unfortunately, rather familiar with, and I didn't want to bring it into this story.

The scene with Tessa ends somewhat quickly, and with a rather poignant moment. She goes from joking around with Demon puns to breaking down in her dorm room, and it was important to me that I show this moment. Trauma doesn't disappear, it's something you struggle with over time, and it comes and goes in waves.

We end the chapter with some more mysterious dreams, but this time it's a lot more detailed. Honestly, this was a pretty quick scene to write, and I don't have a lot of interesting things to say about it. Whenever I write scenes that exist primarily to set up a mystery, it feels easier to let them stand on their own. I hope you're intrigued! I put a lot of thought into phrasing these typse of mystery teases, so I hope it all pays off appropriately when the time comes.

That's about all I've got this time around. I apologize profusely for any spelling errors in this Reflection; I'm writing on my tablet, which for some reason has no spellcheck, and I've got to start getting ready for work. That being said, the whole point of these Reflection pieces is to be a little more personal, so let's pretend those spelling errors are just bits of character flair.

Nyx <3