Nyx Nyghtingale
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Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 36 - Reflection
🕑 Added 2025-02-05 18:00:06 +0000 UTCIn Chapter 35 I purposely left a few things pretty vague. I didn't show Amara and Vee coming through the Lysander Circle portal, I didn't show what Vee was up to, stuff like that. Now, on one hand, this was a perfect way to build suspense for Chloé's showdown with the damaged reaper. In my opinion, this book has higher personal stakes for many of our characters, and I've always intended for Chloé to serve as the representative for the average student.
However, by strategically withholding information to create suspense, I also gave myself a perfect setup for this chapter; we get to see the other half of the events.
If you'll recall, a few chapters back I had Vee ask about sending messages through the portal, and that was specifically setup for this chapter. Everything that happens here (which only takes likes, half an hour tops) is pretty chaotic, and I wanted to make sure that as many pieces as possible were laid out ahead of time.
Another advantage of having such a dense series of events is that, in my opinion, in heightens the stress of the situation. In all honesty, if I were forced to draw this book out by a few chapters, I probably could have also written a scene from Nick and Tessa's POV. I can picture it now—them running around campus, narrowly dodging monsters as they try to corral students to the cafeteria. However, since I show both Amara and Vee rescuing a few students, it felt unnecessary to also show Tessa and Nick taking care of everyone else.
Honestly, my initial notes had Vee running around and saving just as many people as Amara, but that didn't feel right in practice. I've established before that Amara is the stronger of the two, and she also has the benefit of fighting the damaged reaper. So, it made sense that Vee was fighting more defensively, and mostly just trying to stall for time while the others got everyone to safety.
Plus, she had to save at least one person. The visual of her calming a panicked Ruby by glowing and floating up in the air was too cool to leave on the cutting room floor.
Tangent time! Have you ever heard of the Conservation of Ninjutsu? It's the name for the trope where the more enemies there are, the less dangerous they'll end up being. If you enter a room and see a single ninja, it's time to prep for a serious opponent. If you enter a field and see a thousand ninjas, chances are they're all going to die in a single hit.
This isn't always a bad thing, and sometimes it's a great way to stress how your heroes are growing and learning. However, it can sometimes lead to situations where the enemies feel underwhelming.
So why bring this up?
It's been on my mind quite a bit as I've written the various fight scenes with the reapers. I'm trying my best to make them feel dangerous, but also consistent. In Purgatory, Amara had a finite amount of energy, but was able to scare one off with Vee's help. On campus, she was able to kill one completely, but it was already damaged and she had a bit more energy in her.
The goal is to make the stakes feel believably high for the final encounter. There are still three more reapers to take out, but also Brandon, who throws a huge wrinkle into things.
Hopefully, whenever I get around to writing the final chapter, it feels suitably climactic.
For now, however, it's finally time to follow Vee as she returns to the cafeteria. She's bought enough time, and there are a bunch of confused students that have all learned some shocking truths today.
I had several big goals for this chapter. First and foremost, I wanted it to feel hectic. There are a bunch of students here, none of them know what's happening, but they know there are monsters outside the cafeteria. It certainly doesn't help that the back wall is a giant window overlooking the quad. A gorgeous view, normally, but now they get to sit and watch as the reapers skulk around.
My second big goal was to give the crowd a realistic texture. I don't want them to feel like generic NPC's that just shout random words, I want them to feel like people. To that end, I put a lot of work into creating a mix of background characters we've seen before as well as brand new characters. We've got the three cultists, Naomi, and Kylie, but there's also the two guys holding hands. They've been in the background before!
However, we also have brand new characters. Ruby is new, as is the girl that helps Naomi to her feet and the guy with the blue hair. Hopefully the campus continues to feel like a real, thriving place, and not simply a vehicle that exists solely to tell Amara's story.
Lastly, there's Chloé. She's not having a great book, is she? I'm really happy Vee had time to check in with her, and I'm happy that the chapter ends with Vee starting to explain everything that's been going on the last few months.
I think I mentioned this is a prior Reflection (I can't be bothered to go looking for it), but I'm really happy with how Chloé's journey in this book mirrors Vee's from Book One. Both of them spend time slowly uncovering a secret about Amara, but they come at it from opposite sides. Vee was looking for a mysterious demon, and Chloé was looking into Amara's strange behavior and disappearance.
If there's one thing I sometimes wish I had more time for, it would be time to flesh out the dynamics between the non-Amara friends. In my head, Vee was very good friends with Chloé and Tessa, and vice-versa, but the stories have been pretty heavily focused on Amara. This makes sense, obviously, and I'm glad that my stories don't feel unnecessarily bloated, but it's definitely something I hope to have time to address in future books.
Plus, like, if this were a sitcom, I would have a bunch of ideas for filler episodes.
It's not, though, for better or for worse. Could you imagine a world where sitcoms are also just casually porn sometimes? That'd be crazy.
I'm gonna stop myself here before I keep losing my train of thought.
Nyx <3
Comments
Nyx Nyghtingale
One thing I've put a lot of thought into is challenging everyone with different types of problems, rather than a constant procession of "Same type of problem but it punches harder." This isn't as obvious in the first few books, where things tend to end dramatically in fights, but I've also but a lot of work into keeping other plot threads going besides the fight. The fight at the end of Book One was, in my opinion, not about who won or lost, it was how they did that. Amara could have won by killing Vee, but that would be a very different book. At the ritual, while there was a lot of fighting, the real climax was seeing if Vee would decide Amara is worth saving. I have *lots* of thoughts about Books Three and onward, but obviously I can't share those ideas. Importantly, I do have a clear picture of where everyone's upper power limits are. Amara continues to grow stronger and stronger, but I know where it ends. One really exciting thing is that her powers are also far more than just "punch hard". She's stealthy, she can shapeshift, she can invade dreams, there's lot of cool storytelling potential to be wrought out of her power set that has nothing to do with explosive fight scenes. I also have a clear picture of what each Arc in the series is meant to do. Arc One (Books One through Four) has a very specific set of goals, and they happen to pair really well with combat. In my current plan, many future books focus on lateral threats that require different types of confrontation. I have several big plot points planned that have absolutely nothing to do with combat, and I'm really excited to get to them. (Some of them I've already started teasing!) Plus, another helpful thing is to know where the series is going to end. I'm like, 75% sure I know what the final conflict is going to be, and what it's general shape is. Regarding weaker characters, I think there are tons of ways to keep them engaged and relevant to the story. I think one of the easiest ways to do this is to keep every main threat as multifaceted as possible, or to have multiple threats in one book. Maybe Amara is busy fighting aliens, but Nick has to convince a federal agent to stop snooping around campus. Not only does this give him something to do, but it also helps the world feel more dynamic and alive—there's always more going on than the one threat Amara is currently dealing with. It's a pretty complex problem, but overall I think my greatest asset is that I love my characters. If I had to spend an entire book without Nick, Chloé, or Tessa, I'd be quite sad. I want them all to have stuff to do because I love them and I want to keep writing them. Hope you wanted a long, rambly answer!
Sturstryk
Also, out of curiosity, have you thought about or made any plans on how to handle power creep (you mentioned conservation of ninjitsu, which is very closely tied) and have you thought about how to keep your lower-powered or non-powered characters relevant and not feeling like they're just spectators, bystanders, or potential damsels (I include Nick or any future male characters in this)? I don't necessarily see the action and battle elements as being the focus of the story, but it's still an important one in its ability to drastically affect ... everything. So I was wondering if you had given thought to how to maintain power balance and character agency and relevance as the story progresses.
Sturstryk
Just an idea, but perhaps a way to show the existence of relationships between "side" characters would be to mention them in natural conversation and actions. For instance, if you wanted to showcase Vee's relationship with Chloe, you could have Vee dip out at the end of a scene by mentioning how she promised to help Chloe study, or how they had made plans to go outfit shopping for an upcoming event. Or you could have Amara walk into a scene where Tessa is bouncing ideas off of Nick about what would make a decent "I'm sorry I was being a bitch to you, and I'm really glad you're alive and also totally fucking Amara too, even if you say you aren't" present (BTW, if you wanna steal that gift idea, go for it!). As much as the saying "if you don't tell the audience about it then it doesn't exist" is true, it's also amazing how much heavy lifting the readers' imagination can do if you only hint at things, and it does wonders for world building and making the world and your characters feel more fleshed out while still being really efficient with your word count, if you do it right.
