Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 24 - Reflection

This was an interesting Chapter to write. Initially, it was supposed to be the penultimate chapter, and my first draft had over twelve thousand words. So what happened? Why did the original Chapter 24 get split into two chapters, now being Chapters 24 AND 25?

Well, last week, I was writing up a storm. I had some really productive days, which I really needed; I was away at a wedding all weekend, and didn't have Friday to finish up my writing like I normally do. Anyways, I finished the chapter, and was really happy with it. It was a little longer than usual, but Literotica loves long chapters, so I figured that was a good thing. Then, I switch tabs to my Tessa story and start working on it, ready to keep the words flowing. I realize as I'm writing that I need to figure out a timeline, exact dates for everything that's happened during Suddenly A Succubus. I was having trouble planning on some of the events of Tessa's story, and I wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally cause any continuity errors.

So I spend a BUNCH of time combing through old chapters, finding all the times I set concrete time frames (claiming it's a Tuesday, or a weekend, for example). I put it all on a list, assign dates, then rinse and repeat as I continue to find new information that forces me to change everything. When I'm all finished, I have a nice clean timeline, and one thing immediately sticks out to me.

The chapter I had just finished, Chapter 24, took place on Thanksgiving weekend.

Well, shit.

With that realization in mind, I had to make some snap decisions about how Aurelius University schedules their holiday breaks. I'd initially planned Thanksgiving break to be about a week, but due to this development, students now only get a slightly longer weekend. However, they get a longer Christmas break to make up for this.

In addition to the school's schedule, I decided I needed to rework Chapter 24. After all, I can't just completely skip Thanksgiving, can I? So I go back in, start writing more, and the chapter becomes even longer. This is when it hit 12k words, by the way. When the rough draft finally posts, a few people pointed out that parts of the chapter felt as if they could use a bit more depth, and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed.

There was an incredibly stopping point, right after Vee decides to no longer hide the truth about her abilities. We've gotten a bunch of interesting developments from her POV, and she reaches an important decision, why wouldn't I end the chapter there?

All in all, I ended up changing very little about this chapter when compared to the first draft. I honestly think the pacing was pretty good, and I couldn't find any areas that I wanted to flesh out. the next chapter, however, won't be in the same boat. I'll go into more details when I write the Reflection for Chapter 25, but it'll be getting more changes overall.

Wow, all this time and I haven't even talked about the content of the chapter yet. The opening scene is actually really short, but it serves it's purpose. Nick has a habit of fading into the background, especially with how chaotic Amara's life has been, and it's always fun to give him time to push back a little. As supportive as he is, he's still worried about Amara, and he's stuck in the awkward position of not being able to do anything. To me, this is one reason why he tries to help out so much in other ways; it's the only chance he has to do something helpful amongst all the demonic chaos that's recently exploded on campus.

The second scene is just the girls eating lunch. Again, it's not a super long scene, but it's incredibly important to the story. It's the first time Amara and Vee have spent a considerable amount of time together in a mundane situation, and we get a hint at what their dynamic might be like moving forward. Personally, I think it's great fun that Vee is so weirded out by Amara's tail. It gives Amara a chance to explain a bit about herself, and it gives Tessa yet another chance to be a rambunctious little horndog. While there's still contention, the group is kinda back together again. Still, it's a very tentative peace, and there's no knowing how things might turn out once the threat is over.

Finally arriving at the meat of the story, we get another special treat; it's all from Vee's POV. She's in a very particular headspace right now, and I desperately wanted a chance to see everything going on inside her head. I think it's pretty easy to view her actions in recent days as somewhat mean, possibly even cruel, but hopefully this section helps create some context. She's still horribly conflicted about Amara, and has two distinct voices battling for dominance inside her. If I've played my cards right, she comes off as someone that's incredibly conflicted, and that conflict is driving her to be a bit crass.

After her opening monologue thing, we arrive at the cult's headquarters. This scene actually got rewritten a few times, probably more than I've ever rewritten anything before. Originally, there was going to be a much bigger fight, and it was going to start the instant they arrived. Eventually, I decided I didn't like how that felt. It was like I had dropped a pointless action scene into my book, with too much happening for no real reason.

I'm much happier with the current version, there's more of a story to what happens in this scene. First, intrigue; why is the place empty? Shouldn't they be guarding the circle? Then, we get a bit of action. Amara starts dealing with the demons, but when Vee tries to put her considerable angelic power to use, she ends up attack Amara accidentally. Finally, we get the twist of the scene; the circle is fake. Suddenly, the plan needs to change, they need to find a way to escape without using the elevator, and while Amara is injured. There's an arc in this scene, it's so much more than just pointless spectacle action.

One problem I had with Book Two is figuring out why the final chapter took place on the night of the ritual. This is very common in stories, and for good reason; you want the exciting climax of the book to happen at the most dramatic part. What I don't like is when heroes stand around for ages doing nothing when they could be attacking sooner. Why wait? Why do they have to attack only at the last possible second? Sometimes this happens with like, cosmic alignments or something, but I've seen all sorts of reasons. For my story, I settled on the reason we see here; the circle they're trying to disrupt isn't here, and they have no way to gain access to it.

For a long time, I couldn't figure out a good reason for Amara, Vee, and Tessa to not storm the circle earlier. Why wouldn't they? I'm always trying my best to portray all my characters as realistic as I can, both the heroes and the villains. It was important to see them attack the circle and fail, just as it's important to see Sebastian Wellington in the Dean's office. Why was he there? No idea! But it shows that he has plans, he's taking steps to further them, and he's not a passive villain. Hopefully, I haven't strayed too far from my intended path, and everyone feels like they're giving their all to try and achieve their goals.

After the fight, and a chaotic run through the strange underground tunnels, we get some more alone time with Vee. This serves as a great counterweight to earlier in the scene; I love how, in her mind, she sees both her old friend and the demon she tried to kill once. There's still some separation in her head, even though she's trying to fight it, and she's combing over every interaction she has with Amara as she attempts to make up her mind.

We also see genuine remorse. She didn't mean to attack Amara, but Amara doesn't know that. Amara also doesn't know if the wards at Vee's apartment were intended to attack her. This is another moment that hopefully shows how neither side is fully in the right, and neither side has all the information. We've seen in the past that Enochian pushes Amara to be pretty angry, and it was interesting to see that come out after the fight in the cult's headquarters. If nothing else, I hope both these girls feel like real, messy people. I don't want either of them to come off as morally correct, even though we've been following Amara's POV for much longer, and thus are conditioned to side with her more easily.

After Amara recovers her strength, we get a fascinating little scene between Vee and Tessa. These two have a really interesting dynamic that, honestly, I'm sad we don't get to see more of. Tessa is very similar to Nick, at least on a meta level. She's around for a lot of the story, but we don't know much about her. She serves a distinct mechanical purpose, for sure, but what does she want? Who is she? I know that answer, obviously, but you all don't. My hope is that, when she does take action, it at least feels in character. That's one reason I like this brief interaction; we don't know much about Tessa, but would she be willing to kill Vee if Amara got hurt? Personally, I think the answer is pretty obvious. Tessa has desires, as muted as they can be, and I love showing off hints of her personality in ways other than "see how many sex jokes she can make."

In the end, we finish the chapter on somewhat of a high note. Vee is willing to be more open about her abilities, and she believes that Amara isn't associated with the cult. Sure, there's not forgiveness yet, but everything has to start somewhere, right? I'm really excited about the next chapter, and I hope you're all just as psyched as I am for the big finale of this book. (Which isn't the next chapter, but you know what I mean.)

Nyx <3