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Walter

 I also need to know if great elders used to be people, since kelarac talks about when he used to be a merchant.

Will Wight

The Great Elders were never people in the sense that you mean. But there is a human origin to them all.

Questioner

Will we see more of the Elder Empire?

Will Wight

Probably not. One of the things I want to do after Cradle is I want to tell different stories. I like telling different stories, I like going to different places, and so we're probably not going back to Elder Empire. If we go back to anything of course it would be Traveler's Gate.

Questioner

Valinhall vs. Elders and Estyr Six

Will Wight

Valinhall vs. the Great Elders is an interesting matchup because it depends entirely on which one they're fighting. Against Nakothi, for instance, a full team of Valinhall Travelers would do even better than the Emperor and the Regents did. They would tear Nakothi apart with minimal losses.

Same goes for Kthanikahr or Othaghor. The Emperor WISHES he had an elite team like the Valinhall Travelers when he was going after Othaghor, because he basically just spawns endless minions.

Against Tharlos, on the other hand, the Valinhall Travelers would just have their minds warped and go insane, or they would be turned into ooze or a lamppost or something. He breaks all the rules. Urg'naut's shadows would be able to kill Simon without him ever being able to resist, and Ach'magut would arrange matters so that it never came to a direct confrontation.

Versus Estyr Six...I guess it depends on how many Valinhall Travelers show up. All thirteen could definitely do it, six would be pushing it, three wouldn't be enough.

Questioner

Metaphysical Great Elders can rip one apart on the molecular level. You said the strongest Cradle character could solo them. Do they have defenses against that?

Will Wight

Yes, they do have a defense against that. At a certain point, your spirit gets strong enough that your madra gives you essentially complete control over your own body. You can resist forces that would affect you directly.

Also, at that level, they have access to powers other than madra that can fight against the Great Elders.

Questioner

I'd like you to make up a 6 or 7 book series about the founding of the elder empire!

Will Wight

I like six or seven books as a series size. Idk about the founding of the Elder Empire--depends on how the main series does after the relaunch.

Jamie D. Woods

If they weren't stuck with the class 1 fiends would the readers and other people with powers of Elder Empire be able to ascend? Has anyone ascended from the world of Elder Empire?

Will Wight

(...class 1 fiends...?) Yes. (...has anyone ascended...?) No, after they were locked there, it was locked down. No one has ascended from that iteration. 

Steve Farmer

I'm very curious about your writing process. How different was the first draft of Unsouled from it's final form?

Will Wight

Funny story about that, Steve. You picked an interesting example because I was intending Unsouled to be released on my blog for free as a series of chapters because I was going "Hey? You know what, I'll just try and do a web serial as my side thing in order to keep people reading the blog and keep people remembering that I am a person that exists while I write the next set of Elder Empire books." But then I rolled out all the short stories over the mailing list, which we used to do, and that got people engaged and I was like "Oh, okay, well I don't need to do that with this but now I have a book, so let's finish it out and put it up and then we'll know what we know how to do and release it on the Kindle store and then maybe that will keep people engaged." And then that got way more engagement than Elder Empire ever did, so I was like "Uh-oh." And then I wrote Soulsmith.

So Unsouled's first draft and it's final form were not very different. Most of my first drafts are really pretty clean in general. Not universally, but in general I write pretty clean first drafts. The final drafts I don't change a whole lot, but what I do change has a lot of impact. It's not like I go through and make a million major changes so the story's completely different. What I do is, it turns out there's a lot of things you can change with just a word or a sentence here and there. Generally if you read my alpha draft and you read my published draft you would be able to see easily where I went from one to the other but they will read very differently. 

chrisisbest197

When Calder first meets Ozriel in OKAK I kind of expected him to be a little more...angry. I mean Ozriel and the Abidan literally imprisoned Calder and all the other humans with these hellish monstrosities for all of eternity, with zero consideration for their suffering. And then on top of that Ozriel threatens to wipe them all out if the Elders escape, which by the way would not permanently kill the elders so the humans still get the short end of the stick.

I just expected Calder to at least be more mad about it. Kinda like how he stood up to the emperor regarding the prison.

Will Wight

You know, I actually wrote a draft of this conversation in which Calder lost his temper and challenged Ozriel more directly.

I changed it because it didn’t feel organic to me, when I read it in context. It felt like he was powerlessly raging against something he had no ability to influence.

I also thought it read more like what the younger version of Calder might have done than the current Calder who’s focused on saving the world from an imminent crisis.

But I did consider it! And I do think getting angry at the injustice could have been consistent with Calder’s character.

I just ultimately decided the reaction in the final version was MORE consistent. But you be the judge! (Or the Judge...)

chrisisbest197

It's not that I think it wasn't consistent, it was actually a very cool headed response to someone who is basically a god, which shows some growth. It's just that I think it would have been interesting.

It could have even been Calder just calmly pointing out how badly the Abidan fucked the people of Asylum lol. Also now that I think about it, it also seems like a similar situation to the incarnations in Travelers gate.

Will Wight

Hahaha yeah, it is similar to the Incarnations. I like that mechanic of people going crazy with power.

I agree that it would have been cool to have Calder point it out to Ozriel’s face, especially since Ozriel basically agrees.

AC Cobble

Hi Will, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. First off, let’s get a quick overview of your books. You have the Cradle series, the Traveler’s Gate trilogy, and the Elder Empire series. Can you tell us a little bit about each series, and where do you recommend someone new to WW starts?

Will Wight

I’ve had nothing but time since you captured me and put me in this cage, but nonetheless it’s great to be here! Traveler’s Gate was my first series, and it’s kind of my standard fantasy action story with swords, monsters, talking dolls, hummingbirds with deep and manly voices, etc. Elder Empire has a unique dual novel structure that causes lots of confusion, but besides that it’s ninjas vs. pirates in a Lovecraftian fantasy setting. Cradle is definitely where I recommend new readers start, because it’s my newest and most popular series, and it’s kind of a martial arts fantasy journey.

Questioner

What is the most powerful awakened item in EE that doesn't have great elder intent in some way

Will Wight

Estyr Six's Soulbound Vessels have no Elder Intent. They're the skulls of ancient, powerful Kameira that she defeated in battle.

The Magisters have sealed away a spear that combined the powers of multiple ice-controlling Kameira, but it was too difficult to use. Their tests blanketed an isolated Magister facility in snow for years.

Questioner

Does the late Elder Serenity of Heaven's Glory have any relation to the Akura clan?

Will Wight

No.  So, Elder Serenity did not have any relations to the Akura clan.  That was before I had decided on Akura clan naming conventions.  And in fact, funny enough, I had already named a few members of the Akura clan at that point, like Malice. But I hadn't thought of it like as a  family trait, like I thought of it just as a trait of the family at the top, not the whole clan.  And then I was just kind of like, why not? So I expanded it to make it pretty much anybody who was directly related, like not everybody in the Akura clan has a virtue name, but the cool ones do.

David Titus

I join your other fans in congratulating you on a huge milestone-300k sold is fantastic. Thank you for your honesty and openness on how KU works. My sense is you regard yourself as well treated by KU, something I had hoped is true but had no info about.

Being somewhat new to you and your blog, I may have missed an estimate of how many volumes you expect Cradle to be. Hearing from you on this, even if it is a rough guess, would be a great way to share with you where all of us are in the Journey, and a nice way to celebrate 300k sold.

Or, maybe you could share with us a tidbit on the creative process. Is there any recurring challenge, and how do you come out on top, or try to? When or how do you know you have a good idea for a series? Really any insight into how you work would really interest us and would be a way your fans could join you in celebrating a major milestone in your literary career.

Oh, and many thanks for this blog, which I am enjoying, while waiting for Blackflame.

Will Wight

I can't speak for anyone else's experience, but I've been VERY well-treated by KU. It's the bulk of my monthly income nowadays.

As for the Cradle volumes...SPOILER WARNING, I guess, although this is so fluid and subject to change that anything I say can't really be much of a spoiler because I haven't made my own mind up yet.

I'm planning 12 volumes actually on Cradle. It could end there...or not. It depends.

The answer to most of those creative process questions you've asked is "I fly by the seat of my pants."

Recurring challenge: getting up every day and going to work. I get paid regardless, there are no deadlines, and no single day is going to matter in the completion of a book. I combat that by putting myself in scenarios where I have no choice but to write--I'm locked in a hotel room without the WiFi password and no books or games. Writing it is.

Recurring challenge #2: demotivation. In every book so far, roughly into the 2/3 - 3/4 mark, I'm convinced that it's a pile of crap, the worst thing I've ever written, and completely broken from stem to stern. I just know that I'm going to have to throw it all out and start over.

It hasn't been true yet, but each time I'm sure that THIS is going to be the time.

And that's where I'm currently at with Blackflame. I am convinced it's garbage. But by this point I'm learning to predict my own issues, and I was ready for this. A week or two from now I'll be saying "Hm, this is better than I remember it being."

Or maybe for the first time it really is crap, and the book will be delayed.

How I know when I have a good idea for a series: when it sells well, because that means people are reading it.

For instance, I thought Elder Empire was a great idea. Much better than the ideas behind Traveler's Gate or Cradle. I crammed too much into the setting, that's true, but the "dueling perspectives" thing and the "epic fantasy with a Lovecraft backdrop" thing are both rich ideas. Plus it's more character-driven by definition, which is a neat change of pace for me.

Then not many people read it, so evidently it was not a great idea. Live and learn. Unsouled has outsold all of the Elder Empire books combined, I think, and if it hasn't yet it will soon.

So apparently that was the better series concept.

Less jaded and cynical answer to the same question:

I choose which new series to write based on what book I think I can enjoy writing AND what I can complete in a reasonable amount of time.

With Cradle, for instance, I'd been reading a lot of translated wuxia and xianxia novels, so I wanted to try writing one. I was passionate about the genre, I had a few twists on the established formula I was excited to include, and it seemed like it would be very possible to write without any hidden obstacles along the way.

That's pretty much it.

Xianxia stories are fairly formulaic to start with, so I knew I could at least write the first 80-90k words of one without much trouble. And initially I'd planned to release Unsouled as a free twice-weekly release here on the blog, but that's another story.

That was a much longer answer than I intended, I'm sorry. The creative process is a big topic--maybe I should talk about HOW I work more.

Problem is, I often feel like the answer is "I just kind of make stuff up until it all fits together." It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but instead of looking for the right piece, you just 3D print one to fit.

Questioner

What is the saddest death you've written?

Will Wight

So that's a spoiler for other books. It is not in Cradle. It's in Traveler's Gate. That's the one I think is the saddest. So I don't want to give that away because it's not a [Reaper] spoiler. But I will say that there is somebody I killed in one of the first books of Elder Empire that I think may be pretty bad. That's a rough death. A lot of people give me crap for that to this day about that one. But I did that one in Elder Empire for a reason. There's  another thing that I think... I don't think killing characters inherently makes a series better. So I don't think killing characters makes a book or series better.

Like, for instance, I don't think Harry Potter needed to kill very many characters. You can kill Cedric Diggory in book four, you can kill Sirius in book five, and then obviously Dumbledore in book six. [Gets yelled at for spoiling book six.] If you haven't read Harry Potter, what are you doing here? Then in book seven she kills a lot of characters that I don't think are necessary. So, I just think that series didn't need that. It makes a more serious tone. Don't think it needed that. So, I'm not always about killing characters but in Sea and Shadow, I killed some characters in the first installment to, first of all because I thought it was tonally appropriate to the series and second of all because they are going to stick around for the next two books in flashbacks. So because I had a major flashback story line and could still use the killed characters I decided to be liberal with the people I killed.

Patrick

Sorry, two more questions: Now that Ozriel is around, what does the wolf division do exactly? Are they actively on the borders of the abidan space attacking threats or are they the one's who dealt with the Elder's before they were bound or ?

Will Wight

We'll get into that much more as the books progress, but the bottom line is that the Wolves fight against rivals of the Abidan. So yes, unbound Elders, yes rival organizations, and yes people who ascend out of their Iterations and don't listen to reason.

Kingtape

Are there any "hidden elders" of the Cradle world, i.e. powerful experts who have secluded themselves , whether it be for cultivation or otherwise? Who is the most interesting of them?

Will Wight

There are hidden elders! The most interesting of them, in my opinion, is a Monarch whose power and crimes were so great that they justified the building of a one-man Monarch prison. It still exists in Cradle, but is it still occupied? Who knows?

Questioner

If sacred beasts only die when they are killed, and never of old age, which Whisper seems to prove, could a very patient sacred beast just cycle and practice in isolation for a few millennia and emerge a Monarch?

Will Wight

No. Some sacred beasts could, like Emriss kind of did that. But she's a tree. Their lifespan gets extended a lot, but they're not literally ageless. 

swiftttyy

1. Will there be bloopers the books? I hope there are bloopers

2. Is this series set in the Willverse?

3. Will there be Abidan/Vrosheer(idk how to spell it) side plot/references in the series, like in Cradle and Elder Empire?

I know most of these are unanswerable, but I wanna ask just in case

Will Wight

1. Yes

2. MAYBE (yes)

3. No

The first book is written mostly as though it’s not connected to the broader multiverse, but it is.

Professional_Topic18

3. Will there be appearances in later books?

Will Wight

MAYBE

Volitant_Anuran

Have you bestowed upon this iteration a portion of your Will power?

Will Wight

Only a portion, lest I destroy everyone in it

SESender

4. where does this place chronologically in book order?

or is that mega spoiler?

Will Wight

It’s a spoiler, idk if it’s a mega spoiler yet. That depends on Future Will and whether he does or does not deviate from my plans.

Future Will loves to deviate. He’s a notorious deviant.

JMacPhoneTime

You dont have to answer, but is it on Fathom?

The descriptions of it in Reaper sound a lot like a reasonable setting for a large scale magic space adventure.

Will Wight

That seems like it would be a cool place to set a space series, for sure.

Questioner

Can you give info on the origin of Simon’s dolls both in the book and IRL? Or anything else. That works too. Excited for the Christmas short story!

Will Wight

I wanted Kai to be crazy, so I needed a prop to show how crazy he was. The first thing I thought of was a girl's doll that he whispered to. But then I asked myself, "Wait a second, is he hallucinating this, or should the dolls talk back?"

Nighgaler

Ok so after rereading Elder Empire (since the finale is coming out) I decided to cave in and read my first xanxia (A will Eternal). So I read 10 chapters and holycrap I realized how much better Will's work is. Jesus, it doesn't even feel like I'm the main character nor does it feel like a story. Zero character development and zero world-building. I can't even picture the scenes that I'm reading properly! Someone please tell me it gets better. Its only saving grace is the fact that it is kinda funny. I guess maybe my expectations were just too high.

P.S. I definitely took Will's work for granted

Will Wight

This is a long con just to make people appreciate my work more by contrast.

 

...to be serious, though, I love A Will Eternal. I think it’s a great example of the genre, and it incorporates parody organically without becoming an out-and-out comedy.

 

Having said that, a few years ago I had a very hard time getting into Chinese web novels. A very hard time.

 

I really enjoyed Japanese light novels, because they’re basically just anime on paper, and I was familiar enough with the basic tropes and with the source language that I could mentally fill in some of the gaps that were lost in translation and catch some of the cultural references and jokes.

 

From there, I moved into Korean novels, which were similar but had a different cultural basis and some tropes that caught me off guard (why is the defining characteristic of so many Korean MCs their greed?), but by and large it wasn’t too much of a jump from Japanese light novels.

 

When I tried to go from there into Chinese cultivation novels, I hit a brick wall.

 

Why do these stories all have the EXACT same plot, with only the names changed? Why do they assume the reader already knows how the magic system works? Why do they use the same cliches over and over, and why do so many DIFFERENT authors use the same phrases? Why is the main character always the most handsome, smartest, AND most morally upright guy in every room, all the time, and his only mistakes are the ones that make the situation better? Why, when he butchers an entire enemy clan as revenge for the equivalent of taking his lunch money, do the survivors wail and blame their own hubris, rather than blaming the guy who just killed their family? Why do people swear eternal revenge on him for doing something perfectly understandable, like competing honorably in a competition? Why are women treated so poorly in so many of these series, even though the magic system has no distinction between female and male practitioners, so there should be no cultural hierarchy between genders in this world

 

And that’s barely touching on the sentence-level writing, which was often straight-up difficult to read.

 

I pushed through because I read some manga adaptations and liked them, and especially liked the concept of a whole world designed around a progression-based magic system.

And in doing so, you know what? I learned to read completely past all that stuff I listed above and to enjoy the stories for the other things they brought to the table.

 

It was a good lesson for me. I’m normally pretty picky, so it took some sheer discipline to push through at first. I thought I would just be tolerating these stories for the few elements I liked. But along the way, I realized I wasn’t just tolerating them, I was genuinely enjoying them. There’s a lot of value that wasn’t apparent to me at first, until I acclimated myself to the differences caused by language, culture, and medium (i.e. being published a chapter a day).

 

Now, I have a much easier time reading translated web novels than most English self-published novels.

 

Having gone through that whole journey, I wanted a story in the same genre that could skip over the hurdles, so that other people could enjoy stories similar to the ones I enjoy. A series written in English, for an audience with primarily Western sensibilities, and told with a more structured and organized plot rather than released as a daily serial.

 

Thus, Cradle was born.

 

Looking back, I’d have tweaked some things about Cradle’s basic formula in order to suit that purpose better, but long story short: the experience you describe is exactly why I wanted to write Cradle in the first place!

True Ruler of None

What are the chances that in the process of writing 7 books of Cradle the conclusion and outline in Will head of OKAK changed ?

Will Wight

Tbh, the scenes with Ozriel are now a lot less elaborate than they were in the original outline.   As I originally envisioned, all the pre-chapter text in Kings was going to be excerpts from a conversation Ozriel was having with Sector 11 Control. Where they had brought him in because the Elders were loose so he was supposed to erase the Iteration, but he kept jerking them around as Sector Control became more and more panicked over the course of the book.   Until they finally appeal to another Judge who basically goes “Idk guys, we can’t control him either.”   And then only at the end does the situation become dire enough for him to actually be willing to do his job, and then the good guys resolve it right before.   I actually wrote out most of that conversation screenplay style.It’s saved on my phone from my original OKAK notes from 2015.My only reluctance for [releasing] that kind of thing is that it wouldn’t be edited at all. It’s literally off-the-cuff dialogue thoughts from 2015. And I know you might say “Oh that’s okay, we don’t care, any content is interesting!” but there will always be that guy who goes through and points out the issues in the comments.   There’s always some guy.