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I like "rival/minor enemy who catches Feelings partway through the story and is really grumpy about it"

I recently finished the Zero Escape series, and boy was that a ride. I love me a good series full of twists, puzzles and maths.

The actual tail is wrapped around their hips under their clothes, and that's a fake tail for aesthetics.

I'm working on the last book of the Curse Words series while I upload book 1, the Cursed Heart, here. I expect to finish the last book by the end of this year and be able to move on to a new story.

People overlook the importance a strong voice a lot. Pacing, plot and character are important for a quality story, but people will forgive a lot of garbage in something that's just plain entertaining to read. Douglas Adams isn't remembered because of his playfully chaotic plots, he's remembered...

Derin Edala has been my pen name for years because I just like the sound. My avatar is a slightly doctored version of the symbol for my book's Discord server.

I'm interested. I write The Cursed Heart, here.

You're going to want some kind of plot to wrap your Journey of Discovery around. There's not much anyone can do to help you until you know what your plot and main conflict are going to be. If you want to keep it close to your life experience, I'd recommend checking out some real world...

I like "it was time to burn some bridges and dance in the flames".

A little too addicted to twists and red herrings.

I don't look at the list of chapter titles unless I want to see how much I have to go. I pay no attention to this.

I'm a post-extinction author. I write in a genre that's sparsely populated because it was so incredibly popular that everyone got sick of it and left.

People would get SO TIRED of random biology facts...

I wouldn't write a prologue unless you have to. If you have to, start it wherever you need to to get to the point of the prologue as quickly as possible. Whether that involves waking up in bed depends on how you're telling the story.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on The Cursed Heart. Kayden is a trans boy with a curse in his heart. When he loses control of it and almost kills someone, a prestigious magical academy offers him free legal representation in exchange for him agreeing to attend the school for six month to...

Hi, I'm Derin. I like to garden, play computer games, and write about magical teens making terrible life decisions. I'm importing my magical school fantasy adventure here, and will probably write about either aliens or lesbian dragons next, I haven't decided.

I don't write fillers. Ask yourself why you want to write this festival bit. Is it to develop these side characters? Then it's not filler, it's character development for them. Is it a 'beach episode', giving your audience a bit of a breather between tense scenes? That's not filler, it's mood...

Self-critique is useful for improving skills, but if doubt is causing problems for you and affecting you negatively, you can straightup just decide not to care for a bit. You can just be like, "eh, maybe it's garbage, maybe it isn't, who knows? The audience clearly like reading it." This kind of...

I don't write every day. I have a monthly word goal that is a) well within my capabilities without making writing into a chore and b) generates more words than I publish in a month, so that my buffer keeps growing. I don't start posting a story until I have a really big emergency buffer...

Unsympathetic protagonists are a lot harder for readers to get invested in than sympathetic ones. "Chaotic" protagonists are a lot harder for readers to get invested in than consistent ones. It can be done, and has been successfully done many times. It's just much harder to do well.