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IntotheWayVerse

Hi Will, interested in hearing a bit about your writing process. Maybe this sort of thing is proprietary/confidential for authors, so apologies if overstepping.How do you go about structuring the actual writing of your books? Do you write linearly, one chapter at a time, or do you jump around, writing scenes from future places in the book before filling in the gaps? (or, none of the above).How often do you change what you've originally written? I'm sure there is a lot of editing that goes on, but do you often read back over sentences/paragraphs/chapters and change everything that's there? I guess I'm wondering what % of your writing you end up keeping after it's first put down on paper.

Will Wight

It changes. what they tell you a lot is they tell you to sit down and write a certain amount per day, write 2 hours a day, write 1500 words per day, write from 8 to 10 am and make sure you....whatever whatever whatever. I can't do that, I'm not very good a writing to a schedule, so instead of trying that, is I write in blocks of time, so I isolate myself for 3 or 5 days or a week, as much time as I can and I just write all day. So I write all day, I sprint rather than marathon basically. For me, that helps me to stay more productive, and helps me keep more focussed, because as I'm writing for those 3 days, I am completely in that world, I'm in Cradle, I'm not thinking of anything else, I don't take phone calls, I don't do anything else, I just write. So that's the way I actually write.

So what I normally do, is a write a brief idea of what the book is going to be about first. So I try to come up with enough minimum information that I can start working, so I try to start working as soon as possible in the process. When its a series it's a lot easier because I don't have to, for instance, outline who Lindon is and where he was up 'til this point, because I know who Lindon is and I know exactly where he's been up 'til this point because I've written six books about it. So that part gets easier as the series progresses. So I write that basic idea, I write down any ideas of what I think is going to be cool, what do I want to include in the book, and so on and so forth, but not a real detailed like chapter by chapter break down of what's going to happen. Then I try to start writing ASAP. I get to start writing and I usually write sequentially, so I start at the beginning and I continue. However, what I tried this last time, and I'm probably going to do something like this moving forward, was I knew there were certain key scenes, and in this case they were the rounds of the tournament, but there were key scenes that I was definitely going to be including, and I knew how they would go and I knew all that stuff. So I decided to write those first. I went through an wrote all Lindon's rounds, and I wrote those one at a time, I wrote the first round and then the second round but I skipped all the stuff in between the rounds. That allowed me to really nail down the bigger structure of the book so it doesn't change, because a lot of times as I'm writing the book I get halfway through and I'm like "oh man I have this cool idea, and it'd be so neat", and then I start changing what I'd originally planned, and that's what ends up taking a lot longer in the books. Then I afterwards went in and I was like "okay so I know now what needs to go between rounds". 

So that's what I did this last time. I'm probably going to do that again. The reason I did that is so that I don't start changing my mind halfway through and end up taking too long.

Questioner

You have said in the past when you get stuck, just keep writing. My question is this: HOW? If I could keep writing, I wouldn't be stuck. Do you have any tips on how to work past those points?

Will Wight

Yes and no.  I think what you are trying to get me to tell you is how to feel like you are not stuck, and how to know what the next thing to do is, because that's when you feel like you are stuck, right?  That makes sense.  I understand that emotion extremely well.  But you're probably not going to like what I have to say, which is: it's just keep writing.  That is the answer.  That is the full answer.  You're saying how, there is no how.  Just keep moving your fingers until words come out.  So you're like, "If I knew what was coming next, I wouldn't be stuck.  If I knew what to write, I wouldn't be stuck."  It's not a know what to write.  It's a write something.  Just write anything.  Just put something on the page.

There's a great scene with Sean Connery in Finding Forrester where he's sitting down at a type writer, and he's talking to a student.  And he just sits down and starts writing.  And the kid goes, "What are you doing?"  And he says "Writing." I can't do it.  "Writing! I'm writing like you will be doing when you start punching those keys." (Will *attempted* a Sean Connery accent here.)  So the answer is just punch the keys.  So the kid sits down at his typewriter, and he's not typing, and Sean Connery asks him "What are you doing?" and he says "Thinking."  And Sean Connery goes, "No, that comes later."  So first you write, then you think.  That's the answer.  That is it.  I don't know what to tell you.  That's the trick, that's the answer.  

Now, long term, there are a lot of things you can do to help it come out better.  One thing is the more you know about your story, usually when you are stuck it means there is something you don't know about your story.  So, one of the methods to find out is just by writing things and figuring it out, you can change it later.  But another one is going through and answering questions for yourself.  So, taking notes and answering questions.  I don't recommend you do that; I recommend you do that later after you've gotten you're writing done for the day.  But that is something that over time, oh, OK, I know the answer to the question, or I know the material, or I know the characters really well, so you can make up better answers.  That's really the point of doing background information.

Questioner

What would have happened if Suriel’s marble had fallen into the cracks in Ghostwater, which I believe lead into the void?

Will Wight

It would have not fallen into the cracks. So if he had dropped it in there, it would have avoided the cracks. If he really intentionally threw it into the void, it would have come back. It is conceptually linked to Lindon, so he cannot lose it under any circumstances barring the intervention of a truly powerful individual. If the Mad King wants to take this marble he's gonna get it, but that would be beneath him. I don't know why he'd want that. It'd be a weird thing for him to do, just descend and rob some random dude instead of just annihilating everything.

The_Bloody_Nine

I've had this deep suspicion since BF, that the reason we got gems such as "Fierce River of Fierce Flowing Breath" was that Will came up empty on more epic names like "Void Dragons Dance", and decided to throw some humor in.

Will Wight

It’s honestly because epic names like Void Dragon’s Dance can sometimes be a little TOO serious to be taken seriously, so making some jokes about technique names helps to lighten the mood and kind of hang a lampshade on the edgier names.

There can only be so many Sword of Annihilation or Hellfire Sun Descends before they start to feel a little too grandiose.

Questioner

Is void aura a thing?

Will Wight

No void aura is not a thing. There is no elemental attachment to aura in cradle's energy system.

Danillo

Who was the hardest Monarch to create?

Will Wight

I don't really know how to answer that to be honest. The eight man empire probably because there are 8 of them. Oh! I went back and forth on Reigan Shen for a long time. That's probably it, that's probably the answer. I went back and forth on Reigan Shen for a long time; he's obviously an antagonist figure. So, who he was and what his powers were, that changed alot. I ended up on the Path of the King's Key, which I like as a Path and we are going to get to explore that a little bit at some point, but I had also had him be like a plague, toxic venom Path as well. There's a lot of things I went back and forth on him about. But also, I kind of had him as a character, he didn't look like this, but a character who's kind of like Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay Night, where he is this arrogant King where he believes everything belongs to him. So I had him do that, and that's again The Path of the King's Key, so that even fit, so it fit his powers, not his physical description. And that would have been cool, but it didn't really work for me, so I ended up coming up with a different personality and there also weren't enough sacred beasts on the Monarchs, so he's now a white lion. That's why he is the emperor of lions. He is an emperor who ascended as a rare white lion.

Questioner

Who is your favorite Judge or Abidan member and why?

Will Wight

Hm. Favorite Judge or Abidan member? Just for pure fun either the Ghost or the Fox. They're just fun characters to mess with, to think about. They kind of have fun personalities and they both are... so the Ghost and the Fox both have a tendency of popping up on people and, as you know, I really like characters who just pop up unexpectedly on people. So because of that they are probably my favorites. More fun to write. I obviously have a soft spot for Suriel but I kind of like them all.

I had a, I answered this earlier today, but I had a whole story line planned as like a heavenly/Abidan story line and it was about a person who was a new recruit to the Abidan and he was going to end up using both the power of the Void and the Way. And he had a dragon companion, a black dragon companion, that gave him destructive powers aligned with Void and he had a little tiny blue sort of river fairy spirit who gave him water aura powers. So you can kind of see where this is going.

And he was going to end up being a new Judge. He was going to replace one of the Judges but that was a long time before Cradle. So what happened was I was writing a cultivation knockoff, I knew I needed a heavenly realm, I needed a kind of a pantheon and a heavenly realm story line. So I went back to that book and I repurposed the Abidan from there pretty much wholesale. So, yeah. At that point, by the way, Mercy was the Ghost. So there you go.

Diego

I re-read Unsouled and noticed that in case of complete system collapse a few worlds would still be protected including Asylum. I'm going on on the obvious and thinking the Elders are scary even to the Court of seven and could possibly play the same role as the Court does but for chaos.

Will Wight

Yes, that's why Asylum is a protected world. If they get out, they're scary.

The Abidan intended it to be a temporary holding cell to imprison the Elders until they had fully corrupted the world, at which point Ozriel could destroy it.

Which wouldn't kill the Elders, but would drive them back into the void. So it was really just keeping them off the streets for a while.

Then the Emperor came along, and humanity has prospered beyond what the Abidan ever expected. That tethers the world more strongly to the Way and strengthens the prison, weakening the Elders. So Asylum has held on much longer than anyone anticipated.

The Elders, by the way, don't want to be trapped there OR cast back into the void. They want to escape into other Iterations, which is exactly what the Abidan don't want.

Back in the day, the Elders could have depopulated humanity. They didn't; they kept just enough alive to make sure the Abidan wouldn't obliterate the place while the Elders looked for a way out.

Questioner

Who does all of the farming in Cradle? In a society so focused on martial martial abilities. Who would waste time on farming? We know the population of Cradle is many times greater then Earth. So tens of billion of people need to eat. The only real solution I could think of is if there are Paths that happen to both greatly help agriculture and has combat potential. Or as we saw in book two slavery.

Will Wight

There are Paths that are used for agriculture and irrigation, they're just usually low-key. There's a (very) brief reference in Blackflame to the Redflower family, who are in charge of feeding the Empire. By law, they are neutral in every conflict, and anybody who starts a fight with them or tries to pressure them will soon regret it.

Will Wight

Iteration: Any universe that the Abidan recognize as capable of sustaining human existence and living out a complete life-cycle.

Every Iteration has a destined progression. A world is born, it lives out its existence, and then it quietly dies, breaking into fragments. These fragments float through the void, crashing and combining randomly until they form into a new universe.

They are called "Iterations" because the thousands of universes currently in existence are thought to be different versions of the same original world or worlds, spun out in different combinations again and again for eternity. Even the Abidan Judges do not know when this cycle began.

On its own, an Iteration should exist for billions of years, except for a certain underlying requirement: each Iteration is anchored to the Way by sentient consciousness. As long as humans* are around, the world is tethered to the natural law and order of the Way. The fewer humans there are, the looser that connection becomes.

When humanity dies, the world dissolves.

*(The Abidan definition of "human" is pretty loose, but never too far removed from the humanity we know. When a new Iteration forms that may be able to support life, the Abidan select a new population of human pioneers and send them to inhabit a suitable planet.)

Carl

Can you tell us what some of your favorite books are? So we know what to read when we're done with Uncrowned and wish to fill in the void it left behind.

Will Wight

I have a lot of favorites books, it's difficult to narrow it down. But, like I said earlier, I usually like to know what the person enjoys reading before I recommend things because there's very few things that I recommend without caveats. So, there's always something that I'm like 'if you like this, then you will like this, if you don't you're not going to, pretty much.' That is a common occurrence. So, my favorite books; I love the Wheel of Time series, I love the Dresden Files series, I love a lot of these web novels I've mentioned many times tonight. All of those, I stand by those. Funny enough, a lot of what I read, I read comics. Someone mentioned Solo Leveling earlier, that's absolutely one of my favorite ongoing comics right now. Solo Leveling, really good stuff, its a Korean webtoon, the art is maximum hype. So, Brent Weeks Night Angel trilogy, that used to be one of my favorites, its still probably up there, its close. I really like it. It's got some problems that have become more important to me as I've gotten, I don't know, older, or whatever but it still has place in my heart. That's a very great action magic series which I really enjoy, as you know.

Anything by Brandon Sanderson is a solid bet. My favorite of his, I love Mistborn, the first book is just one of my favorites, the rest of the series is good too, but the first book is like a fantasy heist novel and I just love that. I would love to write one someday, that'd be amazing. Mistborn does it so well, it's hard to try and compete with that. The Stormlight Archives are fantastic and, of course, he wrote the later editions of Wheel of Time, so, Brandon Sanderson, great stuff. And, that's it off the top of my head. There's a lot of other comics I read, but, I don't know, there's way too many of those to list.

Oh! Spy x Family, if anybody is interested in what comics to read, man, Japanese Manga Spy x Family, it is fantastic. The idea is that is a fantasy East Germany/West Germany kind of thing, so they are not real countries, but its basically East Germany, West Germany and one of them, the man, is a spy, and he, as a cover, needs to have a family, so he gets a woman to act as his wife. Secretly, unbeknownst to him, she's an assassin and she also needed a cover, so she was also looking for a fake family, which is why it worked out so well. And together, they adopt a daughter, who unbeknownst to either of them, is psychic and can read both of their minds and they are both keeping a secret from each other. And its a Mr. and Mrs. Smith kind of setup, except the daughter can read both of their minds and knows all their secrets and thinks its awesome because they are basically like characters from a TV Show. So, it is hilarious and heartwarming and it's adorable. I really really like it. Spy x Family, that's the name. It's like Hunter x Hunter; There's an x in the middle, but you don't say it.

Questioner

Did you always intend for Eithan to be Ozriel?

Will Wight

Yes! That's one of the things I've addressed a lot in comments this week. I think if you go back over the other books now knowing the revelation you'll see that it was in place the whole time. And this brings me to the story that I'm going to tell. So buckle up because I'm going to spend a few minutes answer a question from me. A lot of people were asking what the journey was with Eithan, when did I decide he's Ozriel? When did I decide to make this part of the books? The funny part is, I've answered this a little bit on Reddit and Discord, but I'll go into it a in a little bit more detail here.

Back in college, in 2011 I want to say, I had a couple of ideas for a story that I thought would be really good. A couple different stories. One of them was a story about magic kind of coming into a world and therefore just the existence of magic in the world, a world like ours but not ours because I am against writing in the actual real world, it merges with other dimensions that have magic. So other iterations. And therefore it develops a magic system, but it's not a magic system that anybody's familiar with. It's a new magic system, so it causes an apocalypse. That was one. And I was like, "Oh, I really like that idea but I don't think I'm good enough to write that." The other one was a system where there are a set of guardians that guard over the multiverse, and they use the way. And the way between worlds is the source of all order, and there is the void, the source of all chaos and destruction. And the guardians are called the Abidan, and they wear white armor, and they gather a bunch of different multiverses together to protect them.

So that was the other general plotline, and the idea there would have been that we would have followed a character who was going to the Abidan to be apprenticed to them.  And he had risen from a mortal world, and once he joins the Abidan he is taken under the wing of Suriel. Who in this case, was The Ghost. So she was originally intended to be The Ghost, and her personal name was Mercy. So she was The Ghost, and she would take this guy under her wing, and start training him. Well as he went on these assignments, he also got mentored by a guy who popped out of nowhere, and had long blonde hair, and was dressed as a janitor. And he had a pristine janitor's uniform on. I wrote this scene years ago. And his name was Eithan, and he could apparently see everything that was going on around him at any time. So this guy remains mysterious, and he keeps popping up at different points in the story dressed in whatever uniform is necessary. So one time he'll be dressed as a mechanic, another time he'll be dressed as a librarian or whatever. And then the main character starts to wonder who this guy is, and he starts to investigate his background. And he finds that in every persona, his background checks out. So, he has been working for the janitor all the time, he has been working as a mechanic the whole time. And what the main character eventually kind of figures out by the fact that he can detect everything everywhere, is that this guy's gotta be The Spider. He's gotta be the Judge of the Spider division. And he confronts Eithan about this, and Eithan is like, "Oh yeah! That's totally me!" and of course it isn't. And it ends up that he is actually Ozriel, the Judge and solo member of the Reaper division. And he's out looking for people to join his division.

So that was the original idea. Also this main character, his whole powerset was that he could bind people to contracts. So he would help people or he would go on adventures and do things for people, and then he would cash in their favors. So he would collect all these things he would do for people, and then he would make them pay him back. And so he would cash these favors in and gain power. And his primary power set was the fact that he could tap into both order and chaos. So he wasn't as good at order as any of the Abidan were, but he could do both thanks to contracts with a small blue water spirit and a black dragon chaos spirit. And their names were Melusine and Oerthon, so those were the names I had for them. And the main character had both these powers, and was apprenticed under both these Judges.

So you can see how close that ended up actually aligning to what ended up coming out. It's kind of funny. When it came time to write Cradle, my primary inspiration were the Chinese cultivation novels. And a lot of other cultures as well, Korean and Japanese, but primarily these Chinese cultivation novels. And I knew that usually, there is a higher world or higher realm that you are ascending toward. So I repurposed the elements from this other story to Cradle. To be a layer over. So I had come up with Eithan's character years before. Now, this Mercy/Suriel character became several different characters, obviously it became Suriel and Mercy. And then, funnily enough, while she was The Ghost, one of her things was that she would pop up everywhere because you couldn't notice her. She was unnoticeable all the time unless she chose not to be. And the only person who could always her, of course, was Eithan. So she was always sneaking around everywhere and popping up out of nowhere, unless Eithan was around. Then he was aware of her the entire time. And then he was popping up everywhere because he could evade just like Eithan actually does. So you had two characters that could pop up in different ways. So that was the original inspiration behind Cradle. So not only did I know this from the beginning, I knew this years before I even started writing Cradle.

Questioner

Will, How many peopel have reached the same stage Northstrider has on Cradle. Currently we only know of 3, or is it 10?

Depends on whether all members of 8-Man Empires have reached the same rank, or if the woman Suriel singled out, who managed to get to Low-Gold when she was only 6 years old, exceeds the rank of her friends.

Will Wight

Hm. I don't think I can answer this with a worldbuilding story.

Therefore, I will sidestep with a story that sort of answers your question:

Reigan Shen is the creator and sole practitioner of the Path of the King's Key. Centuries ago, he consulted an oracle and grew to believe that he was destined to rule the world. He seeks to make that vision a reality.

He fought the Eight-Man Empire to a standstill, though they eventually drove him off. He has stolen Northstrider's prey. He is considered one of the Ninecloud Court's greatest enemies, though everyone below the Queen is instructed to treat him as an honored guest, should he arrive.

Only about six years ago, he finally slew his longtime rival. Though Lindon didn't know it, he felt the aftereffects of that battle in Sacred Valley.

extreme-jannie

I just started writing my first book, please let me know which one works.

Will Wight

If you’re writing your first book, then your ONLY goal is to get to the end of the first draft. “Finish the draft” is your new tattoo.

It doesn’t matter how bad you think it is, don’t stop or start over. Finish the draft.

The strategy that works for you is the one that gets you to finish the draft.

First make a book, THEN make a good book.

I’m working to improve my process because I’m on book 17. This would have been a bad thing for me to try on my first book.

Godspeed, soldier! Keep punching those keys!

Decadakon

How would someone bind ghostwater into a new territory? Very carefully?

Will Wight

If you were in the void outside of Amalgam, you could travel through the Way to Cradle, seize fragments of GW as it shattered, and then travel back to Amalgam and attach them to the world with the strength of your will. However, to make it stick, you would also need people from the Amalgam side to enter it and start living there, so you’d need to create a way for that to happen.

Kidpen

Are there multiple Ways throughout the Void?

Will Wight

Potentially, but even the Abidan don't know for sure.

Garoob

 You mentioned you were recently coming up with some magic systems. How do you start coming up with magic system ideas?

Will Wight

I have a little form I fill out when I'm making a magic system; what are the limitations of the system, what are the actual powers of the system, which sometimes when people are designing magic systems, they forget to have what the system can do, because they've talked about what the system can't do. I have what kinda what makes it work, what are the costs and limitations, what the history of it is, and I have all these little things that I fill in. Usually what happens, what I have to do is narrow down, because of course a generic magic system can do anything right? its magic. So I'm usually picking one narrow theme or set of abilities that it can do. Which means I'm really choosing a set of things it can't do, so usually when I'm working on a magic system I then am thinking about all the things it can't do which then suggests another magic system. That's how I actually did it when I came up with a bunch of magic systems in a row. It normally gives me inspiration for what any other magic system could do.

one of the other things I do, interestingly enough, I come back to D&D because there's a lot of stuff you can think about in D&D, like wizards are just better than non spellcasters in D&D, so the problem that some people refer to is, linear fighter and quadratic wizards, so wizards improve exponentially and fighters improve linearly, because of course wizards can stop time and fighters can swing they're sword a little harder. There's kind of an inherent issue with having magic users and non magic users, that issue being, one of them can use magic, and the other one is inherently bound by the rules of physics, and I don't like that. So I've tried to develop a lot of magic systems, kinda like in Cradle, but in Cradle, everyone is a magic user, and that's the obvious answer right? you have everything be an extension of the magic system, that's the easiest way to solve that.

One of the things I've thought of, is I've been trying to do different expressions of a D&D system, even one that would fit in a real table-top RPG, where the martial characters are not inherently outclassed by the arcane characters, because they can do such supernaturally amazing stuff thats its effectively magic but it's just martial magic. It becomes magical. I've done various approaches to that, there's a lot of ways to solve that problem, so I have that problem in my head, and that set of criteria, so then I try to design systems that have the things I want and dont have the things I don't want, so I've approached that many different times.

Questioner

Is that process how you came up with a whole bunch of magic systems along side each other in the Traveler's Gate series?

Will Wight

Actually, no. The Traveler's Gate series really is one magic system. The gates work the same way, every territory requires the key, something to open the gate. But then I just added another set of restrictions onto each one. So this is a unique thing. So yeah, Tarturus travelers open gates quicker, Endross travelers, their gates slowly grow and grow and grow but they also get harder to control, Helgard travelers have to know the names of things they summon, so on and so forth. And I did that just to kind of-each one is a little unique, in addition to being thematically unique. And that was just a way of distinguishing each Territory from one another. I did not really design 12 magic systems. I designed 1 magic system with 12 different expressions.

Questioner

In how much detail have you outlined the future of the cradle series, and possibly travellers gate series if that is to continue?

Will Wight

I've outlined a lot of the key events and players in Cradle, but idk when or how I'm going to get to them. Traveler's Blade I just have a bunch of ideas, very little of which I would call an outline.

Devin

Do the inhabitants of the territories fit the definition of human? The ape from Lirial (whose name escapes me), the Avernus bird-men, the Nye, Marakos/the gnomes from Elysia, the lizard creatures from Naraka Kai kills? Or are those humans who were affected by the time they spent on a fragment drifting through the void?

Follow up. Assuming that the Territories are fragments that haven't fully combined with the Traveler's Gate World, what happens to travelers when the territories do fully combine?

Will Wight

They do count, but not fully. They're either humans who were warped by their time in a fragment or the descendants of humans like that. OR they could be non-humans that achieved sentience and became more human.

Either way, they count, just not as much as a full human would. Just like how Valinhall held together for a long time without humans in it regularly--it was populated by the Nye and a bunch of other sentient beings, but humans are a much better anchor (so to speak).

The Traveler's Gate world, Amalgam, is unique in that it has formed a stable relationship with the fragments "orbiting" it. The Way between the main world and the fragmentary worlds is thin, so their realities tend to bleed together (showing up primarily as natural Gates--randomly occurring portals to a Territory that weren't created by a Traveler).

However, normally when one world bleeds into another, the bleeding gets faster and faster until they collide. Like what happened with Limit and Harrow, the two worlds that Suriel is trying to euthanize.

Amalgam is unique because it has formed an equilibrium with its extra fragments. They're free to exist and grow without accelerating into existential destruction.

Questioner

What would have happened to the house of blades or any other terrioty fragment if humans didnt discover it?Would it break apart and be consumed by the unamed world or would it just reach an all time low of power and sit there?

Will Wight

A fragment would slowly dissolve into the void if not bound to the Way by human will. This is true even for corrupted fragments, which is the preferred outcome: they drift off into nothingness until they dissolve.