440 / 1241
Nov 2020

I had to put my main series on hiatus just so I could catch up on writing. Hopefully, I'll be able to start scheduling more chapters come January. I'll give away ink where I can but doing reward levels seems weird if you don't already have material prepared beforehand.

I feel entirely too new to it all to even know where to begin.

I do intend to post some 'behind the scenes' content, like having character art, dress designs, and links to videos I've used as research. I think that would be fun, but so far ahead of where I am right now.

I'm still trying to work my way to the first big moment of the story, where they all attend a gala/dance/ball thingy. It's a lot of fun to get to that point. I'm so particular about it all, I've been doing research on dresses, music, food, and what-not.

I've just been sitting here trying to not get that excited. Like, there's this big red DO NOT TOUCH button, I'm calling the 'drama bomb' and I just wanna push it!

I JUST WANNA PUSH IT, you all!

Hahahahaha this times 1000!! Seriously! I love adding in drama! I had to really hold myself back from going overboard in my series! My original first draft had much, much more drama and my lovely beta reader was like 'tone it down'

I'm lucky that I'll be able to fairly seamlessly add in the NSFW scene after a chapter next week! It all just lined up nicely for me

Awesome-sauce.

I've been nervous about my mature chapters. I'm still not sure how I should mark them, so I'm taking the if it's more than PG-13, to do so.

I write in an R-rated style, generally, solely from the use of curses words and themes, so being here has been some restraint.

Glad the scenes are folding in nicely. Isn't that such a lovely feeling?

I know the feeling, my friend. It's tough. I have this super, wonderfully dramatic/angsty scene in my head that I WANT to write and share with everybody but it doesn't fit in with the current storyline. It's tough because I have to wait... :triumph:

Yeah I have yet to post an explicit sex scene here on Tapas and I'm pretty nervous about that as well. I'm pretty good at writing them (according to the comments I've received on various FFs) but it's still nerve-wracking to post it for the first time to a different audience.

That's the worst.

As I was (and am) working on my baby of a novel, I used to have a separate document where I'd dump all the scenes in my head. If I used them or not, didn't matter, at least they were written down.

So, I say, write it out.

@WillowTree
Yeah, I get that. I think in the end, if you are creating a mood and it's not just some soft-porn, I wouldn't be too worried. If the style and use is consistent in the story, it should be fine. Pretty jarring to have a wildly vivid sex scene when the rest of the story isn't, you know?

edit
There's a lot of substance use in my story, which is where I'm struggling. Like, the overabundance of alcohol should probably get tagged, but they're also ingesting mushrooms and stuff. I marked it for now.

Yeah, I agree with the idea that it has to match the rest of the story. I went back and forth a few times on how much I am showing in the love story culmination, and I am atm inclined to go lighter and not have to use M rating here to just stick to YA. Yes, I know YA allows for sex scenes, but eh, I don’t think I will win anything if I zoom in on full frontal in chapter 50-something, after chapters of heart-longing and stolen kisses.

I mean, there's a reason why trains going into tunnels were a thing in movies for so damn long. LOL.

I think maybe if you focus less on the actual physicality and maybe more of what it emotionally means to them, it could work well and still hit with the same weight.

Pretty much. I don’t want it to be so fuzzy that the impression is, huh, did they do the nasty or didn’t? But overall, yes, feelings are running high, so it is going to be the main focus.

Oh, yeah, I get you.

I go for a few decisive actions of sauciness and passion before lending the rest into metaphor.

If getting pushed into a wall and kissed passionately, and reciprocated, isn't enough, then I think the reader is looking for porn, and not your book. My general stance on it.

Though, I digress. I haven't gotten to that part in this story yet for here, so I could be wrong.

shrugs

I am happy to work my way through a far lengthier and more elaborate bedroom scene, particularly in a romance novel where the sensuality is relevant to the plot, like in the Trapped by the Mafia, but this novel is not so much about sensuality as about running away from solitude and first love with the secondary fantasy subplot, so yeah, I just didn't want to move the rating up. It is just a gentle and romantic story.

Honestly, a lot of Dutch litterature has elaborate sex scenes in it and I don't think here we have a big problem with discussing it in everyday conversation as well, so that may add to my attitude of: "if it's a story about an adult and you wanna include it, go for it." It's a part of life after all, so leaving it out if even if it's relevant never made sense to me.

And... 55K! I am pretty happy about the last scene i am working on. I am leaving the last little bit of it for tomorrow.

I also tweaked the third chapter of Bad Break :innocent: and going to test the waters with releasing a chapter per week. Well, I am starting with 2, because I already shown a draft of the first one as a free preview.

But omg, I dunno if it’s Thanksgiving or NaNo or some school-break or something else, but there is barely any activity atm.

All of the above, I would think.

Whoot on 55k! I just hit 23k! I must be hyper-focusing something fierce, because I just knocked out near 4k words in the last 24 hours.

happy dance

Wow, that’s awesome! I don’t think I ever got that far in on one day! I bet the flow was awesome.

I'm at 98 subs. I'm sooo stinkin' close to unlock ad revenue. I'm so excited. The milestone is so close it feels real now, not some empty pipe dream of making a profitable series.

That add revenue is far from profitable. It’s like a few cents per months. People have to watch adds on your story, so it’s not even proportional to how many views you get per day. Like, you need thousands of clicks per day for it to be relevant.

True. The major money comes with contracted business arrangements, but when you've spent your entire life making nothing on your hobby and now can make even a few cents here and there, it makes a huge difference self-esteem wise