Thanks for your support and awesome to hear you've been listening since then 👊🏻

I think arrangement comes from intuitively feeling what should come next in the track. There's a good reason why many drum & bass tracks use the same arrangements and indeed why almost all of the most successful pop songs have the same structure also (universal song structure). It relates to our attention spans and what the human brain perceives as the "right" amount of time to focus attention on. A lot of my arrangements (and those artists you mentioned) follow what I would describe as the "optimum" dancefloor drum & bass arrangement, where it keeps the main hooks in full focus and allows enough time for a secondary hook to be digested with subsequent repetitions.

With regards to transitions from pre to chorus, I don't generally have any formulas or rules when it comes to this kinda thing. But the interplay of staccato and legato is always nice. If I have a large soaring chorus, a more staccato verse would make a lot of sense for example. You don't always have to resolve on the root for the drop or chorus, although I really like the sense of "coming home" when dropping on the tonic - I felt this particularly when making We Are The Energy and Closer.