Stregoni Benefici, Ch. 13: Intended
Chapter Thirteen: Intended
London, England, 1667
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Not so long ago a friend of mine, kittandchips, commented, "I generally consider a fic on hiatus if it hasn't updated in a month."
She then added, "Unless it's yours."
I think there's a fine line between writing extraordinarily slowly and hiatusing a fic, and I know it's a line I tend to walk. Thank you for continuing to read.
On to the chapter.
So, Stregoni is, in addition to being my baby, the fic I started writing the day after I posted my first Twilight fic (it was then entitled Absolution and I planned to just mow through Carlisle's history from birth through Breaking Dawn), a bit of an exercise for me. I've tended, as a writer, to be more of a "pantser" than an outliner, one who writes as things show up. Over the decades, it lead to a lot of fragments of novels (sometimes even longer than novels themselves--one of my abandoned works is well over 100,000 words), and it wasn't until the last six years or so that I started learning to stick a plot from beginning to end.
SB is plotted in a relatively tight three-act structure, which is a bit of a new challenge for me. Although all my fics and novels adhere to that structure in some form, this is the first where the acts are nearly mathematical. SB will, at its finish, be approximately 27 chapters, with three chapters in each timeline in each act. Chapters 13, 14, and 15 are, therefore, the middle of Act II for all three plotlines, the point where the conflict for all the characters in all the arcs is intensified, where they get extra stuff thrown at them. I confess, it is taking me a little time to wrangle them.
My beta readers aren't great testers of this, because they both know exactly where the plot of SB is headed (I refuse to have people beta blind, because continuity and foreshadowing is one thing I like feedback on). But I will say that the one person who pre-read chapter 13 didn't quite see where the story is headed just yet, which is kind of exactly what I'd like at this point. So I'll be curious who has guesses as to where the 1667 plot is headed after this chapter.
As always, I am deeply indebted to my beta readers, Openhome and Julie, whose feedback on everything from style to language to reactions of individual characters makes this story so much stronger than it is when it first comes out of my fingers.
And if you find yourself in a void and would like some more vampire writing, check out the New Moon round of The Canon Tour. As it happens, I was struck by inspiration and wrote a short piece for it…keep an eye out, and enjoy all that you read.
Happy reading!