Today is a day to talk about what’s kept my brain occupied for the most part: writing Asmodaios as much as I can manage. I have no one to talk to about this stuff regularly, and definitely not in detail, so y’all can suffer through it.
While writing Asmodaios, I made it a habit to write at least 1 chapter ahead, for continuity’s sake. It made sense, since there was often overlap between Asmodaios’ and Azarias’ POVs. And with all the time I (originally) had while working overnight, that kind of flew out the window. For a while, I was on a bit of a writing spree. I mostly blocked myself off from people, save from one person I reconnected with from my roleplay days on Twitter, and wrote away. And edited, a lot of editing and adding to things I already had written from years ago (Amaimon).
Despite still working, at first it was mostly night shift, so I was able to do what I found excessively difficult, brainstormed some different ideas, and wound up with the end result I wanted despite the “how” changing: a comatose nephilim and a banished demon. And let’s face it, I’m not one for writing epic battles yet, and it’s not something I think would have worked here anyway. Teenage me imagined a battle of swords and shields and feathers flying all over the place. Angel versus demon battle to near death! Medieval fantasy battle in a modern setting because at the end of the day I played way too much Final Fantasy as a kid. (And as an adult but hey, I’m an adult, who cares?) I’m certain I didn’t imagine much past one brief image of the scene, because nothing ever came to mind. And so I sat on it, and sat on it, and sat on it. I edited every chapter of Amaimon I have written already, brainstormed Asmodaios’ next chapter, and spent most of my time imagining what could happen in this scene. The idea of Azarias being killed and continuing the story was given to me by a friend of mine, which actually helped. There was no way I was going to do that, but the idea of him not really being saved, and instead more like salvaged from death, worked quite well. Over a few nights, I played with the idea (also read as agonized over it) and moved back and forth between chapters.
And then I agonized over Asmodaios’ POV, because those chapters have always been difficult for me for some reason. I didn’t know how I wanted him to react. I didn’t know how he should feel. This is a chapter that ran off on its own luckily and I just followed it. While I had the idea of him being banished, I never thought beyond that; it was likely never a thing that was supposed to happen “on screen” after Azarias’ fight. Again, it was definitely not something I thought through beforehand. I began to wonder, what would be so bad about being banished other than being away from Azarias? What would make this worse for Asmodaios? Do I need to make it worse for him? He’s already spent a lot of time with mild nuisances that he can escape. Banishment should be something that he can’t escape easily, regardless of if it’s painful or not.
Once I decided that banishment would fling him to a random corner of hell rather than anywhere he found familiar, I tossed around the idea of being tortured by Belial in his weakened state, and it bored me. I liked Belial as a toy when I was younger, but felt pointless somehow now that I’m older. His original role has definitely been diminished, to the point I’m not sure he’ll show up again at all. And instead I found myself more interested in Paimon, consequences of mixed use of pronouns be damned. Paimon was never meant to be more than a background character that was briefly mentioned. Eventually Paimon was used when I wanted more plot, and again, I found myself using him here. I opened myself up to more of his characterization, and wound up writing a snippet of him in Amaimon which I might use.
As things stand now, I’m thinking two to three more chapters for Asmodaios before an epilogue, if I decide to do that separately. And then I can pick up the reigns of writing Amaimon and Kyun and their pitfalls. I truly have no idea what my original thoughts were in writing those two, and only remember it was nonsense that came to mind while I had no electricity for 3 or so days. I scribbled a few ideas, and I’ve settled, for now, on a not-so happy ending. No spoilers, of course, especially since nothing is set in stone. Anyway, back to work!
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