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Ben

What would a fire and dream path be like? Burn the body and mind? 

Will Wight

Yeah, burn the body and mind, burn the psyche, burn memories away. That sort of thing.

TristanLN

Will, Can you name and describe a sword path we have not seen yet in the books, Thank you, big fan

Will Wight

I dunno if i can name a sword path, because I wanna make sure that, naming is one of the things I spend the most time on and its very difficult, and so there could be some that I have named and theyre in my notes and there could be some that I know about but i havent named yet, so naming it is harder than describing it.

But, i actually was thinking today about some of the things that we haven't seen in the books, and some of the things we haven't seen are some weird sword paths, because there are some! There are sword and life paths, where there is this like laser thin green light that cuts through your life line and severs you, and that kind of thing. There are sword and fire paths where you fight with kind of like lightsabers. There would be alot of really neat fun flexible sword paths.

Now of course the most common thing are sword and blood paths, so plain sword paths are common, sword and blood paths are common. There are sword and earth paths, which I think was what Kiro was on, he might have been force, I don't remember off the top of my head, but they're similar, thats why I get those confused. 

So those are some of the kinda things that you can do with a sword path. There are also of course sword and wind paths that kind of duplicate what you see in anime where the wind user sends the razor sharp gust of wind at his opponent, the "kamaitachi" kind of thing, thats a path. So there are definitely things like that, pretty much any combination. I wanted to do a sword and dream path, because I just thought that would be fun, just to kind of see what it did, like does it cut your mind and your memories?  But I haven't developed that out yet.

SomeWhoCallMe... Tim

Will, do you write because you're good at it, you like it, or a mix of both? Like, is it a way for you to pay the bills, or did you dream of being a writer when you were a wee lad?

Will Wight

There's a combination of factors, but the main thing is that I love stories. I always have. I'm just very passionate about storytelling. And this is the storytelling medium I'm best at, because I've always been skilled at writing.

I never expected to be able to write full time. I thought I would be scraping by for a publishing contract that would, someday, if I worked very hard, eventually land me a full-time writing position.

MountainKing

Do cores convert a Sacred Artist's physical mass into madra, to create more madra?

Will Wight

Pure madra is actually generated by the way the human body processes life aura and blood aura. It really is the interaction of body, mind, and spirit, in a sense.

MountainKing

So a sacred artist's body is naturally consuming blood, dream, and life aura? 

Will Wight

Basically, yeah.

MountainKing

What kind of benefits do Cradlites get for doing that?

Will Wight

The ability to use madra.

nighthawk7890 (paraphrased)

we need an anime

Will Wight (paraphrased)

When I looked into how much it cost to develop an anime series, it takes 1.5 to 2 million dollars for one season of anime and I don't have 1.5 to 2 million dollars, but over time, potentially, we could generate that, 'cause I do put most of the money that I make back into hidden gnome. I pay myself a salary out of the money that goes into the business. What we do with the money is when we get the check at the end of the month what happens is amazon cuts us a check two months after the royalties come in. When we get the money, we immediatly put 10 to 15 percent into an account to giveaway, or no, the minimum we do is I think 12 percent. We range it between 12 and 20 depending where the check comes from. That's the first thing we do and after that we pay taxes. Of course, the whole amount, I'm not cheating anybody out of taxes. We also save and pay expenses and employees and that kind of thing. I'm one of the employees we pay, so, I get my salary. Then, after that most of it goes into the business account - we save it or we invest it in the business. So, we're saving up quite a bit of money. My personal preference would be that someday we have enough stocked up that we could someday do an anime. That'd be amazing. Those are my nerd dreams.

Questioner

Can new types of madra be made artificially? Like if somebody invented the computer on Cradle would it collect computer madra?

Will Wight

All aspects of madra are essentially human interpretations of aura. You might notice a unique blend of aura around a computer, and you could break it down into storm aura and dream aura or what have you, or perhaps you could find a way to cycle it into your own madra and create what you called a "computer Path." What would you be able to do? I'm not sure. That sounds like a confusing blend of madra.

Questioner

Are there any betting organizations? To bet on the outcome of a duel for instancethere probably is but how advanced is it? Do they manage to show the fights live using dream madra?!

Will Wight

Are there any betting organizations? Yes, and if I have my way they'll show up in book six.

Charles

What is Will Wight's middle name?

Will Wight

You met my parents earlier. My dad's name is William Laurence Wight Junior. My grandfather's name is William Laurence Wight. So my name is also William Laurence Wight, it is William Laurence Wight the third. I think that name is awesome. I think it's super cool, I've always really liked my name. The one thing that I would change if I could go back in time and change my grandfather's name, I would change my middle name to Wallace. Because then not only would I be William Wallace, I would also have the initials WWW, and since I was growing up when the internet was becoming a thing, that just would've been really cool in elementary and middle school. It's a dream of mine, so don't give me a time machine. If you have one, I can't be trusted with it.

Jonathan

Do you plan on writing a LitRPG style book at any point?

Will Wight

That is something that I've always kind of wanted to do, honestly. I love video games, I love fantasy novels, and I feel like a fantasy novel about video games is my dream, it's the bread and butter. But I don't like LitRPG. I've read a lot of it, I've read all the staples of the genre, I don't like it. It always feels to me like I could go play a videogame right now, why am I reading about someone else playing a video game. So if I were to write a LitRPG style novel I would be writing someone in a real world with a game-like system. But then I go, okay, so I'm gonna take this game-like system and then I'm gonna go within this real world, what would they call these things? What would their terminology be and how would that shape their culture. Then when I pad that out and plan it out I end up with something that doesn't look like a video game at all, it just looks like a fantasy series, so I've removed the LitRPG components. I don't know how to write a LitRPG that is a LitRPG and is something I would enjoy. I just don't know how to do it. I'm just avoiding it for now. Just kinda dodging it. 

I'm not saying the genres bad, it's just not for me. It doesn't resonate with me, I know sometimes people crap on the genre or whatever, I think there's definitely some good LitRPG. Obviously there's a lot of people interested in it. I think even there are some stories I have read that I think are good stories, they're just not my thing. I don't get it. I haven't cracked the code. I don't have it.

RxBriggs

How often do you read LitRPG books? Opinions on the future of the genre or of the progression fantasy genre as a whole? This includes Xianxia and Wuxia as well as LitRPG and some Manga iseka stuff. Just a fad or here to stay?

Will Wight

So the overlap, that people have noticed, between these Chinese cultivation novels and LitRPG is that they are more systematized, supposably they have a more harder magic system, but in reality they just have more rules and they have more specific things to know, a lot of times their magic systems are not hard at all. They have a focus on progression, on leveling up, they have that fantasy of getting stronger as part of the system, as part of the story. That's the overlap.

So what progression fantasy is, is what Andrew Rowe and I started calling, mostly Andrew Rowe, full credit to Andrew, he came up with this term, which is a good term, but what we started calling what we write, which has that progression built in, and it has those systems of progression, but its not LitRPG 'cos its not in a video game and it's not exactly cultivation, it's kind of an in between. So its more of a blanket term for fantasy that focuses on cultivation as a primary method of advancement. Wheel of Time for instance shows a lot of progression in the main characters...like he grows stronger as a channeler and he grows better at doing what he does, but its not really a progression fantasy, because that's not the focus of the series, that's just something that happens. Main characters often get better and stronger and whatever, but its not focussed on his progression, it's really focussed on how he relates to the world, and how he grows into the person the world needs him to be. That is less of a progression fantasy.

So I have read a lot of LitRPG, I wouldn't say I frequently read a lot for LitRPG, because its not my cup of tea, I've never enjoyed it much, and there's a good reason for that. I'm not sure what it is, but im sure its a good reason. I read LitRPG and I just can't get into it much, either it takes place inside an actual game, or a VR game, in which case, if it's takes place inside a game, why am I not just playing a game...I would rather just go and...I don't feel like the stakes are real, because they're just playing a game, and I don't really care cos I'd just rather go play a game. If its not inside a game, if its inside a world that works like a game, usually it's just the character running around playing the game, that is usually what a good rpg does, is it gets you really involved in the character just running around playing the game, and that's not compelling to me, I don't enjoy that, its... I don't know, I want there to be some significance to it, I want there to feel like there's a story playing out, I don't want to see him go on his quest, kill fifteen wolves and take their pelts back. When I'm playing a MMO and I'm doing a quest, I'm not fantasising about doing a quest, I'm fantasizing about being an awesome warrior or wizard or whatever, and part of what I do is go around and I do these things because there's an important reason and I'm going get something out of it, so therefore reading a book about someone going around doing these fetch quests is not my favourite thing in the world.

I've read what everybody recommended to me, I've read what people considered the best in the genre, I read them fairly regularly, I just don't like them that much. However, having said all that, I play a lot of video games, I really like their stories and I really like the experience of playing them. Obviously what I'm writing in Cradle, if you put numbers on the powers and the abilities, and you said Burning Cloak takes 5% hp per second but it increases your attack by whatever, and you put numbers on it it would basically be a LitRPG, so I'm not against that in theory, so I think there's probably a LitRPG that I'd enjoy writing, I just don't know what it is. I've spend a lot of time running at that and trying to figure out what is the LitRPG that I would want to write, what's Will Wight's favourite dream LitRPG that I can make happen. I don't know yet, I don't know what that is. There's also some adjacent genres like the dungeon novels like for instance, Dakota Krout write in the Dungeon Born Series, which I enjoyed those. So those LitRPG adjacent are considered LitRPG, I don't consider them LitRPG but they're similar, like Isekai and that kind of thing. Those I like, and I could easily see writing something like that, but it would have to be an idea that really struck me, that carried me.

I think a version of the genre is always going to be here, and has always been here, because these are... I mean Conan the Barbarian, it's not progression but its somebody going around fighting a bunch of stuff ad-infinitum. He goes around, he fights, he wins, he gets loot, he goes home and rinse and repeats in the morning. So I think that this kind of genre is going to take different forms, its fashion, a lot of literature stuff is literally movements or fashion and they come and go like anything else. I think some from of this is going to be here to stay.

Ruff

Will Wight

@Ruff I thought there are so many prime madras

There are, but different cultures and sects disagree on what they are. There are greater aspects and lesser aspects of madra. Greater aspects are universal and usually elemental, like fire or water. Lesser aspects are the weird things that practitioners can do to their madra over time to make it take on a certain quality, like making it sticky or in the shape of a snake. Lesser aspects are what make everything confusing.

I'll be going into this eventually in the books, but I haven't up to this point because A.) most characters aren't aware of this, and B.) I'm trying to find a way to explain it so that it makes the magic system less confusing instead of more confusing, which is what I'm afraid of.

LionChasing

Since discovering Cradle, there's never been a time where I didn't have one of your books in rotation, and Elder Empire is equally amazing. You walk on water here!

Do you have active plans or dreams for extending the universe in other formats in the future? I.e. graphic novels, games, e.t.c.

Will Wight

Aw, shucks!

I would love a visual novel or a graphic novel or a simple tie-in game or what have you, but all of those things require cooperation from other creatives.

I don't write books in isolation, but I do write all the books myself, which is a lot easier than having to cooperate with an artist or co-writer.

Bean

Could 2 sacred artists take advantage of the dream stone technology emriss has created by training with each other in a simulated space sorta like lindon does with dross but with one another?

Will Wight

I don't really understand the question. But technically yeah, it seems to be feasible if I properly understand the question.

Tievel

This would be a longer one, but any chance we could (someday) get a primer on how and why "internal" vital aura aspects operate differently than others? Such as blood and dream aura, which non-blood/dream madra shouldn't be able to affect, but the spirit somehow defends against Ruler techniques of them since Blood artists can't go around giving Lords heart attacks willy nilly.

Will Wight

Maybe someday?