Vykas: Your Femme Fatale

Imagine a world where women fully rule. That’s the universe our featured author, Vykas, embodies in most of her creative stories. Even before she stepped into professional writing, she was developing resilient, strong, and brave female characters in her early attempts to create stories. 

Her writing genesis can be traced back to her high school days, when she would experiment on random English-Tagalog series. Drawing inspiration from anime and other Filipino novels (such as the Stallion Riding Club and Isla Fuentabella stories), she developed her writing prowess even as she devoured books from a wide array of genres. “I read across so many genres, but my heart always drifts toward historical settings: medieval castles, Victorian parlors, and the gothic realm where shadows whisper secrets. I find those worlds endlessly fascinating, like stepping into a time machine wrapped in velvet and candlelight.”

Her influences span from the likes of Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) to her obsession with Sidney Sheldon and his characters Tracy Whitney and Sister Lucia. As if that’s not enough, Vykas also pored over the pages of Philippa Gregory and Anne Rice. These pieces, she confesses, are like “constellations in her creative sky,” inspiring femme fatale tones in her own writings.

Vykas considers her hometown as her first love story. Cebu, Philippines, gives her unique experiences that allow for authentic pieces. Women, especially the multihyphenated ones, are her heroines who deeply influence her creations. And her two grandmothers whose wisdom is etched in Vykas’s mind are the ones she carries in every story she writes. 

Vykas, who has dubbed herself a “professional eavesdropper,” has a thing for picking up inspiration from mundane moments. As an accidental collector of people’s emotions, she uses raw events from real life to create scenes in her fiction. The result? Readers become so delighted because they find connection from the story she so beautifully weaves. 

“Inspiration finds me everywhere: social media rabbit holes, the news, conversations overheard in passing, places I’ve traveled to, emotions I probably shouldn’t have held on to as long as I did.”

Writing Hacks and Habits

Vykas plays a certain playlist for hours just to internalize a character before she hits a single letter to start a story—a dedication worth noting.

Though she admits she writes at random and doesn’t really follow a strict rule and schedule, at times, she also uses an outline, albeit in a different way. She tends to reverse her outline, plotting the darkest or most climactic scene first before writing the rest backward. 

Before every writing session, Vykas makes sure her workspace is clutter-free. To her, a clear desk translates to a clear mind. Afterwards, she sips coco water with creatine to perk up her creative energy. 

She writes mercilessly, chaotically, draft after draft. Her golden hours for writing are between 1 to 3 a.m., but she doesn’t negotiate with her need for sleep. Paying high respect to good editors, she admits that “the story deserves that second set of eyes. So do the boots.”

Music is very much part of her writing ritual. Sabrina Carpenter is her go-to whenever she needs to spice up her work’s cutesy and feminine vibe. And whenever she wants to fuel her story’s empowered femme fatale aura, she tunes in to Sofia Isella and Paris Paloma. She also goes for NIKI or Lana Del Rey to inspire an emotive writing experience when she feels melancholic and Cradle of Filth or Behemoth when her piece asks for dark, gothic energy. But at times, she prefers classical instrumentals or even dead silence when the writing calls for it.  

How Her Characters Are Born

Her female leads have to reflect her own persona. Having lived and grown in an environment full of highly opinionated individuals, she learned to value her worth as a person and as a woman. That’s why you wouldn’t find her female lead characters being naive. She wants them to be strong alphas despite their flaws. 

For her male leads, she likes them layered with complexity—to the point where they might be called “red flags.” In her defense though, she doesn’t create abusive characters, but she likes them real. She still believes in creating “green flag” male leads, but she veers away from making them too good to be true. 

The Writer’s Curse

As much as writing is a passion, Vykas has accepted that discipline will always be part of her journey as a writer. At times, she has to set aside her romantic and creative ideals when she has to write technical and what she calls unglamorous works, especially those that involve graphs—basically, words that don’t necessarily have to be music to the audience. She’s realized what every writer has embraced. “Occasionally, I hit submit and immediately think, ‘oh, I could have written that so differently,’ but honestly? That's just the writer’s curse. We’re never fully done. We just decided to stop.”

And when talking about deadlines? Vykas has this interesting thing to say about it: “Inspiration is the spark, discipline is the slow burn, and deadlines are the villain I’ve reluctantly learned to respect.”

After finishing a draft, Vykas rewards herself with a glass of Coke, though she’s trying to avoid it nowadays for health reasons. And after hours of isolation when writing, she makes sure to touch some grass and make human connections offline and in person to remind herself that she’s still in the real world.

Vykas weaves stories on her socials as @TalesByVykas on Inkitt, Wattpad, and TikTok. You can also catch her on Facebook and Instagram.

Vykas’s “Love Unsent” is one of the winning pieces during our “Make It Bitter or Make It Better” Writing Challenge in February. You can read the full story here on Grammary.

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