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Carnal Abbey - First Draft
🕑 Added 2022-09-28 01:42:27 +0000 UTCTwo sets of files attached, one is the new content of the final three chapters by itself and the other is a full compile of the whole work's first attempt.
Like last time with Neighborhood Bull, I'll be taking a little mental break over the next few days (excluding some work on Nymph tomorrow) before diving into a revision. Once that's done, if the story is stable enough I'll move on to the ARC version which I'll post here for a few days before taking it down to enroll the book in kindle unlimited. Below, I will discuss how I think things panned out in the story, but I'd recommend reading the ending first. As usual, expect WIP spelling/errors, and as always, I'm happy to hear any feedback in either replies or DMs. Happy reading!
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Now then, last Friday, I sat down, cracked the ol' knuckles, and pulled up my notes for the end of the this story. It was at roughly this point that I realized I detoured from my notes by the third bullet point, and I wound up writing something completely different than what I thought I was writing. That's not super unusual, things always change as I start with an outline, but this story went much further off the rails than I expected or realized.
Which put me in a pickle for an ending. My original treatment had less morally good characters. The Kate character was meant to amass a considerable harvest of souls on her journey, but I backed off that idea because I didn't want to get in the territory of trading one demon for another. At the time I thought it limited the options in the story. Ultimately though, it brought limitations of its own in that I wanted to keep Kate a decent human struggling against corruption and faithful to Bryce and Steph. Which sort of killed my original ending. It got reworked into the cambion cleansing in chapter 17.
So I went with a more action oriented ending. There's no spicy stuff at all really in the last three chapters. The scene with Sofia and Anniseth is the only explicit sex that happens while the rest of the finale plays out in a physical/magical struggle.
Having finished the writing a few hours ago now, I'm generally displeased that I wound up so far from where I wanted to be. That makes me look at what I do have pretty harshly. Some of the stuff here is good and maybe once I have it all lined up in revision, it'll be better as a whole than as I'm remembering it. Right now, there are problems with sudden shifts of characters, random anticlimactic solutions, and some real wobbly rules about how magic works.
So, some work to be done.
Comments
Red Panda Seven
I was so excited for this after the first couple installments and was really looking forward to the ending where evil won or even where good won but at a very hefty price. I was so ready for a Lust Price level of well now the town's fucked vibe and about halfway I had been feeling lost and the story was lacking a direction or wander so far off the path that the first part set up. I kept telling myself he finds a way to pull it back and pay off the corruption in a satisfying end. I don't want to heap more criticism than you've already done on yourself but I would have loved to seen the other path taken instead. Trying to divorce myself from my reaction from the initial read, after a 2nd read it felt like 2 stories mashed together. If the story had been Kate's tale post corruption and her trying to redeem herself ignoring the abbey I think that would have been a great story. Personally the abbey parts just feel like they needed more time to develop the mythos or some time to breath. The swapping between didn't help me enjoy the journey and made the abbey story fall flat with me. I was drawn in with world building of a secret order of nuns protecting the world from a demon and could have had an entire story set in that abbey captivating me as priests and nuns began to be indoctrinated into that world they knew nothing about prior to entering the abbey to realize they couldn't leave in the end either trapped or needed to continue the fight. A bottle story entirely set inside the wall of the abbey getting to know every room and hallways and the centuries old struggle against corruption that has taken its toll. [The first couple of chapters made me want that] An eternal struggle between nuns and demon really draws me in. Once Kate was sent away, and the story followed her I lost hope of the story having a great ending where it is left open for the reader to decide if she was out helping the nuns or condemning the world for her new Mistress.
