Recent content by TheDylanDrakes

Probably no amount? I have waking fantasies of living on a beach in Thailand and writing full time. But I probably wouldn't ever do it. I am fine with the consistency of wage slavery and doing this as an enthusiast. For now... :blob_whistle:

Don't have them push the plot forward -- have them push the MC forward. IMO, some of the best side characters have nothing to do with the big bad or saving the princess. They don't show up for the final fight. They don't get some heart-rending death scene. Instead, in some quiet, subtle way...

Thanks, Ai-chan for the feedback! The Sacred Band of Thebes was definitely an inspiration, and if I ever get around to writing sequels, that will feature a lot more prominently. My reflection on the 'strangeness' of the story is because of the mix of everything, including the gay and lesbian...

Unhelpfully, Amazon doesn't have a glossary to its terminology :ROFLMAO:. But on the pricing page of Kindle Direct Publishing (here), which explains their forcible price-match policy, it doesn't actually refer to 'ebooks', it refers to 'digital books'. Now, I might be cynical, but that seems...

I'm relatively new, so correct me if I am wrong, but Smut is a genre tag, not a content warning. To give people an appropriate warning that your story has sexual content, you just need to click the sexual content warning, which I have already done. Or is that not how the community uses those two...

Hi there, fellow scribblers! I am a relatively new writer (of novels, at least; I have written poetry since I was five). If anyone gets bored or desperate, I would love to hear your thoughts on the start of my first book, Our Dark Prince. It is only ten chapters deep ATM, but I am putting up...

I'm gay? That helps, I guess? :ROFLMAO:

I feel you on horror, mate. I think you have to have to be pretty connected to primal fear to do horror well. And for me, I think it would be mystery. You have to be so smart and so deliberate about all your clues and the setup and the twists and turns. I would have to plot so hard to write a...

The average of Our Dark Prince is apparently 1.3k. Part of that though is that I'm a pretty ruthless editor. I went from 190K to 118K from the first to the second draft. I think that 1K is about as small as you can go to reliably include a setup, build and payoff in story increments, without...

Soooooo I decided to do science -- inspired by another forum post about seductive covers vs non-seductive covers. Now that I have done ten chapters with the old cover, I am going to swap it for the sexier one for ten chapters, and see if that has any impact on clicks or follows. For science...

Thanks! The power of Canva and $7. ?

I am a native English speaker (Australia counts, right? :-P). I was also an English language teacher for five years, mostly to Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese students. So grammar and me are fairly tight. I have huge respect for anyone who attempts creative writing in a second (or third)...

Whatever this sexy thing is called ~

This was totally me before getting medicated (inattentive ADHD). That helped a ton with focus. But even still, the only way I was able to finish a 120K novel was to timetable the living hell out of my writing. The idea of writing being 'art' and just letting it happen when the muse takes you is...

Usually, a mangled stack of paper notes found in the bottom of my bag. That, and banging my head on the pillow before bed saying 'remember to put that twist in, loser.' :-P I also started writing in Scrivener, which works well, cause I can keep notes in the same app I write in!