Recent content by Prince of Spires

Just a note, you don't have to start a 1-person company (in the Netherlands) to (self) publish. You can get royalties paid to you as a person just as easily. Tax-wise, you just add them to your income once you start making a serious amount. And before then, it's treated as a hobby. So you can...

It's good to remember that no matter what you do, there will be a reader somewhere who will be confused. That's just because people will be people (if only because there's bound to be a reader who read the first 6 chapters, then put the book down for a month and opened to chapter 7 wondering who...

Thanks for sharing! It's a nice swordfight. And the second person POV works. Though I'm not sure a whole novel of it is for me.

That's what the second draft is for. You can always add in the details when editing the story. Also, keep in mind that every writer is different. Some give loads of descriptions while others give just enough to set the scene, and you find everything in between. If you're unsure, give the story...

Congrats on getting the stories finished! Unfortunately I don't have any time at the moment to beta-read. I'm intrigued though by second person POV. I don't think I've ever read any. Would you want to post a small snippet here to give an idea what it reads like?

There's an idea for a horror novel. Have the tattoo artist collect the tattoos because he doesn't want them to rot...

You should charge the idiots rent. See if they stick around. It's your head after all, even if it's a shared space.

By all means, go ahead. It's not really mine to begin with I guess. So use it all you want.

Funny thing is that this is also a very western view on masculine warrior culture, and you could easily have the reverse be true. In ancient Greece, you had places like Sparta and the Sacred Band of Thebes where homosexuality was common and / or encouraged to some degree.

I read IT, and it didn't work for me. It's too long and meandering. It feels like a case of the editors no longer daring to tell a succesful author they need to cut 25% of the novel. (Which happens to many, the later Harry Potter novels being great examples, but that's a different rabbit...

One thing to keep in mind is that not everyone in your society will keep the same views. Just looking at the Netherlands (where I live), the overal stance is liberal and accepting towards the LGBTQ+ society (though some parts of it more than others). However, within the Netherlands, different...

The most recent first draft I completed took ages and was a big struggle. Looking back, the main reason for that is that I didn't think the story through enough. I thought I had when I started, but I ended up pantsing large parts of the story. Which doesn't work for me. I can get 1k words per...

The question reminds me of the Hitchcock quote on the difference between surprise and suspence: The reader should know something's off about the situation. They don't necessarily need to know exactly what. They don't need to know it's a bomb to stick with the quote, but if you know something...

It's genre tropes. They're everywhere, and if you start noticing and think about them too much, it can ruin stories for you. In police movies, it usually anoys me that in a chase scene, the policeman always knows which way to run. Arrives at a random crossroads, doesn't know where the bad guy...