Recent entries

Questioner

Out of the hundreds of series I've read this is the one I keep rereading. I really gotta ask you to give me your ego response here but what do you think you brought to the table that makes this series so special. 

Will Wight

Someone said recently they were talking about “So will you know you're really talented at this? What makes you talented?” 

And I said, you know, it's funny that you asked me that question. 

I hate answering, even listening to that question makes me cringe. 

It's it just sounds so.... ick, and this is the kind of thing that's like, what do you think makes your makes your series so special....I don't know, man, you tell me.... 

I don't want to... it's Travis Baldree the real answer. 

That's it, the series wasn't special until Travis and it won't be special after Travis. 

There is nothing but Travis. 

There is only Travis. 

So, that is, that's a very hard question for me to answer. 

I can say, I think what resonates with readers that I like is I'm in this to design something fun. 

I want to design something fun. 

I want to have fun with it. 

I wanted to entertain you. 

That's all I want to do. 

I don't have anything about...It's not about creating a world that works on its own, it's about creating world that's fun. 

It's not about advancing some point that I want to make. 

It is about creating a world this fun. 

So I just want to entertain you. 

I want you to have fun and I think people will respond to that. 

Questioner

Have you ever wanted to build a custom language in your books or tried to create one?

Will Wight

Not really... I did as a teenager, I thought it was really cool. 

And obviously Tolkien did it, and who doesn't idolize Tolkien? wrong people. 

But, I don't like it, It's not a...It's not something....

I mean I like linguistics, it's a fun study it's an interesting area and I have a great fascination with words, but.... 

Actually, constructing a functional language is....Absurd, so that's a ridiculous amount of work. 

It has to be very consistent, and it's the kind of thing that even a very simple language would require way more effort than it's worth so I don't do it. 

Questioner

What's your choice of caffeine?

Will Wight

I like Monster zero Ultra Dang it. 

I wish I could say I started drinking the zero sugar ones for health reasons. 

I do drink them for that reason now, and I say health..... 

It's an energy drink so it's not healthy. 

But for lower sugar reasons, but I actually started out because it was the one monster flavor I liked. 

And it's really good,a nd it happens to be sugar free, so. 

Yep, so I drink. 

Questioner

What is your process for creating magic systems?

Will Wight

So there are a few principles and it would be hard to go over them all. 

A lot of them have to do with, I mean Brandon Sanderson, obviously he's talked about creating magic systems and in a very systematized way, a lot, and he's much better to answer that question than I am. 

But how do I do it? there's a few things I start with. One of the things I start with is the general theme. 

So in cradle, one of the things I like the most about Chinese cultivation novels is that the progression system is tied to the plot the world and the characters, so you get more in tune with yourself and with your element and with the world all kind of together at once. So character development and power development and world exploration are all tied together and it's all part of how the world functions, right? Everybody knows how this advancement system works and that's because of that, that's tied into all aspects of culture and how people think all that stuff. 

So I also knew the sort of vibe I was going for. The aesthetic Magic martial arts right? 

So because we're starting there, that's what lent itself to techniques I wanted there to be something tied to the world, that's what led to Aura. 

So I started off with that and then I started off with what I wanted the characters to be able to do. 

Which then of course the question after that is what can the characters not do? and how do they? 

Do it so the funniest thing is when other people have given me their magic systems to look at. 

I find that one of the things people forget to define early on is what the magic systems can do. 

I'm always so surprised by that because that's one of the first things I start with, but they've heard so much about restrictions that they make sure that there's a large list of what magic can't do and what weaknesses it has that they forget to define its strengths and capabilities, and I'm going, well, that's the fun part Dang it! 

Then for a practical perspective, one of the first things I do after I get the theme down and some of the basic tenants is I try to go now I want to picture how it actually works in world so I.... 

*reads chat question* Do you have a can do attitude toward magic? 

That's exactly right. Can do attitude, ladies and gentlemen. 

You try to you try to go OK How exactly does this work? You try to picture yourself in the world. 

How exactly do you learn about it? What does the Learning Center for this magic look like? 

What are you teaching people? What philosophy is behind you? How do people interpret it? 

You try to really put yourself in the shoes of a character interacting with this magic system, and as you do that, you start to figure out practically how it's used, how it's built, how it's made. 

And then as you model that out, you start to realize what you need and what you don't need. 

Will Wight

One of the clearest examples of that I've ever had is as I was fleshing out the traveler system in Travelers Gate, I realized very quickly that if different travelers can't open gates to other territories, then the sure fire method to beat any traveler of another territory is just go open a gate, go in there and wait until they leave. 

So even if you can't like travel travel which most Territories allow that, so you can just go to a different place and they can't follow you so either Gates needed to be really hard to open and slow to open, which they are for some and they're less so for others like Valinhall travelers usually under most circumstances can't open a gate in the middle of combat 'cause it takes like a whole minute. 

Then there has to be a way that other territories can open so that that allowed me to come up with the concept of Gate crawlers, so most territories now have a method by which they can open other territories gates. So after you open a gate then they can be chased back through so that's the, that's the idea. 

Questioner

How much of your first draft, would you say survives revision? 

Has it changed throughout your career? 

Will Wight

Well it changes from book to book. 

Some books are more intact than others at the end of my first draft at the end of Bloodline, the fight with the wandering Titan at the end was basically: insert boss fight here. 

There really wasn't a whole lot to it, so I knew what needed to happen there. 

I knew it needed to be the different characters combining their powers, but I didn't want to go blow by blow into it in the first draft. 

So then of course I flesh all that out and wrote the whole ending. 

And so in that case, the first draft and the second draft were very different. 

Because one of them had a third act. 

So that's yeah, it just depends on the end of the book, but, 

How much would you say survives the process? most of it. 

My first draft. 

First of all, I'm generally just a kinda guy who wants to release a lot of books, so if you're gonna release a lot of books you don't redraft and redraft and redraft you sort of use the story that’s there. 

But my first draft tends to establish the story I really am going to use. 

And then I go through and flush it out, so usually instead of cutting, I am adding, so usually I write the first draft and then go in and change anything that needs to be changed of course, and then I usually flesh it out, usually just add more, so most of my first draft survives. 

It's just that the language is cleaned up all, so usually there's at least a few page changes per page. 

I mean, that's conservative. 

Questioner

You can have conceptual strength. 

Can you have conceptual weakness? 

Will Wight

Oh, what a good question. 

Yes you can. 

So that is again is tied to your origin of existence. 

It's one of those things that...... there are a lot of series that do this...I'm trying to think about one in particular. 

I'm sure Fate does something like this, but it's, if you were a character who derived power from your story in life then whatever killed you would have power over you. 

So Balder the Norse God would have some kind of weakness to mistletoe 

Achilles would have a weak heel, you know, that kind of thing. 

So if you've got a famous story weakness, but because it's not exactly your story that defines you in the Abidan universe, It's the origin of your existence. 

It would be, if there was something that was conceptually opposed to you, or that you particularly were against, in your time. 

That would become something that was particularly effective against you and or would become a limitation of your power or would restrict the amount of authority you can use over it, so yes. 

Questioner

Does or did the Abidan every bother to research esoteric sacred arts? 

Will Wight

Not really. What the Abidan did was they had...again getting into spoiler territory, oh no. 

They had research facilities that they used to investigate the more fundamental nature of madra why certain aspects are on cradle, why things are, how sage works all that kind of stuff and they tracked that back to the function of The Way and that was really how they got off cradle. 

So in that sense, they did but what they were really doing is they were looking into the origin of how sacred arts work and they were looking for other worlds and they were looking for deeper effects. 

They were almost tracking sage authority backwards in a way. 

But did they research strange types of sacred arts? 

I mean, in their quest to do this, sure, but in the sense of are they trying to create new paths nobody ever seen before? 

No, not really. 

Questioner

How long did it take you to get used to writing Yerin differently after her fusion.

Will Wight

Here's a tangent. 

I obviously did the little Dragon Ball Z fusion joke second ago, but. 

Fusion is one of my favorite concepts to come out of DBZ. 

I just think that's super neat. 

It's a real intuitive thing to do because you like talk about what one character would be like fused with another. 

It's you can come up with names for em, it's just a, it's a fun mechanic and I like the idea of characters being just straight up combined with one another, I think it's really fun and I would love that to be a central mechanic to a magic system. 

Funny thing is not even a central mechanic to DBZ, it's just another power up. 

But man, I just like it. It's fun. 

So one of the concepts I had for a game like system, is that, uh, you know you always have the ones where some guy is reincarnated into the body of an expert.  

Will Wight

Well, the idea I had is that two rivals effectively all but killed themselves and in order to save himself, one of them has the special ability to fuse things together. 

And that's how he got so strong. And he uses that ability to fuse himself his dying self with the dying self of the other guy and they stabilize, but now we're effectively one person. And that's how he inherited extra superpowers. 

But then he of course has an identity crisis, because which of them is he? And they both hated each other so then it's them trying to pick up the shards of their two broken lives that they destroyed and trying to figure out who they are. I thought I'd be really fun and it would allow me to really play with two people’s different power sets and how they combine and I thought would be really fun. 

So anyway, that's a real offshoot of that. 

How long did it take you to get used to writing Yerin after she fuses with Ruby... 

Not too long. I mean, Ruby already has the same mannerisms and it's really just a differing background sort of thing, so. It was, it was not hard. 

There's only a couple of hints of Ruby. I mean, Yerin expresses herself slightly differently. 

There's a few specific scenarios that she doesn't respond to the way she would before. So yeah, but wasn't that hard because again, as I pointed out, even when she was Ruby it was.... 

She spoke almost exactly the same as year and it was just her circumstances and preferences that were different. 

So yeah, and a lot of her references were inherited. 

Questioner

You could use the diamond veins and symbiote veins at the same time. 

What would you do if they could? 

Will Wight

Not really. 

They would have diminishing returns, so you could technically use them at the same time. 

It would be the kind of thing that would probably just be overkill. 

Questioner

Are you something about the Pioneer iteration concept for a series or story? 

Will Wight

One of the ideas I mentioned before that still I think is a really fun idea is the idea of like, a generational ship. a generation ship. So like a colony ship that's going to another Galaxy or another world or something that's multiple generations. 

So it's meant to sail for 10,000 years and it doesn't have any sort of faster than light travel or anything and I think would be fun because you could do things like bloodline powers or different species, you could have elves and dwarves and whatever on this generation ship, and then over the years they could blend into one species which would be I think it would be cool, just a custom sentient species and well, how would this culture look and what would the magic be like and what fragments were used to make this kinda stuff? I just think that’d be fun. 

Questioner

Any lesser known book series you can recommend?

Will Wight

That's one of the reasons I don't recommend things a lot. 

I don't have a lot of lesser known recommendations. 

If I did, I would sing their praises quite a bit. 

See you have you ever read CS Friedman coldfire trilogy? 

Yes, I love the Coldfire trilogy. 

Well, I love a lot of concepts in the Coldfire trilogy, and I love the first book. 

I think the trilogy is still really good, but I love the first book and a lot of the setting concepts Coldfire trilogy. 

I do like it. 

It's been around forever so I don't have a lot of lower, lesser known stuff that I recommend, otherwise I'd recommended a lot. 

Most of the stuff that I universally recommend, not knowing the other person tastes are the stuff everybody knows already. 

It's Brandon Sanderson. 

It's Wheel of Time and stuff you've already read. 

Questioner

Who is your favourite cut character?

Will Wight

I included all the characters I love the most. 

That's yeah. 

Probably just Lazar, the Arelius family's refiner. 

I liked him. 

He was kind of fun. 

He ended up kind of being a mix of a few different characters. 

Or rather, they end up being him, but I liked him, he was funny. 

He was neat, He was visually distinct. 

I was a big fan of his.

There really wasn't any place for him though 'cause I didn't get detailed into refining. 

Questioner

Who are the tide walkers? 

It seems that they're mentioned a lot in this series for us to know a little about them. 

Will Wight

So that goes that goes back to what I was saying earlier. 

Effectively they're just the water sect, you know, but I'm like, yes. 

I mentioned them a lot for us to not , an odd amount. 

But it's like, yeah, I can make him kind of cool and memorable. 

Or I can not. 

And I was Like, yeah, I'll do that even though they're probably not going to play any greater role. 

In the later series, so yeah. 

But the background I did for the Tide Walker sect was I did a background for a war that the coat I clan is primarily a part of in the Blackflame Empire, so the northern border of the Black Flame Empire borders the trackless sea, and that's where the Tide Walker sect comes from and the tide Walker second some of their allied factions are constantly assaulting the northern part of the Black Flame empire, looking to take land and resources from the Kotai effectively, and they have like a big seawall that they're constantly manning.  

That's who they are they're the sect that backs that, but they're bigger and more important than the Black Flame empire is, so that's just one of the many things they're doing.  

So the Black Flame empire, especially the Kotai clan, thinks of them as this malicious collection of fish people and in reality they are a lot more than that. 

They just have a lot of other things going on. 

Questioner

You've stated in the past that you include secret bunkers in your settings In the case of an unexpected isekai, where's the one on cradle and what's inside? 

Just in case.

Will Wight

Well, I can't tell you the secret bunker because then if we both got isekai’d there, we would both have access to it. 

I want to also point out that it only responds to my authorization code, so even if you were there, you couldn't open it but, 

I have left secret......but what they're referring to is that what I do is I designed in my setting books for each one of my settings, I design some sort of vault that only I can open in the case that - in the very likely case that I ever did isekai’d - as in “banished” to my own fantasy reality. 

So if some sort of omnipotent dimensional entity makes my setting real and puts me in it, I've already outsmarted them by including secret cheat codes. 

It's like a like a little backdoor cheat. 

So for cradle, because cradle is so big, I have a number of vaults spread around. 

I've got one in Sacred Valley and then I have several under the control of the different monarchs so that if I really needed access to it, I could summon one of the monarchs by being within their territory and saying their name a bunch and then I would have The authorization code to access it and I have all sorts of cheat codes that would help it make it easier to advance and pads that would and iron bodies and stuff that would be easy to acquire and would make my life on cradle easy because I'm not here for an adventure. 

I'm here to stay alive, so that is my answer. 

In elder empire I have vaults in several major cities on file with the consultants guild, so all I would have to do is go into a branch of chapter House of the consultant skill, then tell them my name and they have a file for me. 

So I just want you to know in case you were planning on banishing me to another dimension, that I'm already prepared. 

Case anybody was considering that? 

Unless it's not something I wrote, in which case, I’m screwed 

Questioner

Thoughts on the upcoming Wheel of Time TV show?

Will Wight

Well as I.... 

My siblings both started Both started laughing because I have strong opinions 'cause I love wheel of time and I tweeted this week about the line that Moiraine has in the trailer that it's, she's looking for someone and it's one of the five of you and the five of you being, 

Perrin Mat Rand Egwene and Nynaeve. Well the one thing that we know about the person she's looking for is that it is a man, so it should have been one of the three of you, which is what indeed it is in the books. 

So what I'm hoping is that they are, they're clearly playing it so that you, the viewer doesn't know who the main character is, so hopefully this is an Aes Sedai sort of thing, Aes Sedai like Moiraine are the sorceresses of the setting and they are known for lying without technically lying? 

So hopefully what she has said is something that is technically true. 

It is one of the five of you, and that is something where they're going to be less certain and she has not lied. 

That's what I'm hoping and not that they fundamentally changed the core story of the wheel of time, because if they did that, the fact that it's a man is super relevant. 

To the plotline, because men can't use magic or they go insane, and the savior figure is supposed to be a man who can use magic. 

Who is going to go insane? 

so if they change that I'm going to be, uh... in the struggle zone. 

In terms of my expectations for the series, I have low expectations. 

I always do for any adaptation and it's one of the reasons why I have never been someone who has actively pursued adaptations of my own work, mainly because I just assume all adaptations are bad. 

Will Wight

So I do have a vision of cradle. 

It is the vision that I'm putting in the books. 

I would love for there to be an animated version, especially an anime, would make my life complete, but if I don't get it, Oh well, I know that most adaptations just aren't great. 

And because of that, I've never been enthusiastic about getting my work adapted. 

So that is how I feel about Wheel pf time. 

Do I want the wheel of time to be adapted? 

I don't care. 

Wheel of Time exists in a great format. 

That format being a series of novels, so do I need it to be a TV show no, I don't, but I'm hoping it's really good. 

That would be awesome. 

I would Love for it to be, I thought the adaptation of a Song Ice and fire was great all seven seasons. 

All seven seasons were just fantastic and if it was that quality I would be very impressed. 

How would you feel about a Ruby style adaptation? 

if you're talking about the animation of Ruby? very positively! 

So yeah. 

Sam Wight

How did you feel about Dune will? 

Will Wight

How do I feel about dune? I like Dune a lot, I'm not sure how much I recommend it to other people because it's extremely slow and it doesn't properly end, but for me it was fantastic! I Loved it I was super immersed in it. I really liked Dune as a kid. I thought the Lore was fantastic. 

The worldbuilding was great, the acting was phenomenal. 

The writing was really good. 

The music was some of the coolest I've ever seen in the movie. 

Questioner

Did anyone else notice there's eight seasons of Game of Thrones? 

Will Wight

No there aren't.....

Questioner

Was the Sword Sage considered an unaffiliated Sacred Artist or did he have an alliance/alligence to a monarch like Frozen Blade with the Akuras?

Will Wight

Yes. The sword sage was considered an unaffiliated sacred artist and as such he would be loosely...but not really... considered protected by Northstrider, thats sort of Northstriders thing.

Questioner

What would the emperor from Asylum be ranked comparatively in Cradle?

Will Wight

This is one of those questions that I’ve been asked before and it's hard to answer because relative to his world he’s a monarch, obviously. He's a global spanning superpower that manipulates reality directly. But relative to Cradle, all monarchs in Cradle have specifically designed combat powers and he doesn't. So, he would be much better at fighting on a conceptual level or creating artifacts - stuff that his magic system is better at - but in a straight-up fight, anybody from Cradle would annihilate him. 

 

It's kind of like - is this person stronger than Goku? I mean... no, that’s what Goku's good at, it's the one thing he does - So that's the difference between Cradle and... virtually anywhere else. So, it's hard to say but in terms of his authority and his control over reality and his ability to manipulate things, I would still say he is monarch-level or close to it.

Questioner

Would he be especially effective against a herald because of his intent? 

Will Wight

Yeah, if you ever got into a direct Will-to-Willpower confrontation with him he would be able to crush pretty much anybody - monarchs, probably not, monarchs would be on the level with him - but your average herald or a sage for sure. Again, presumably. It's a case-by-case basis

Blue Pizza

A quick question I've had for a while... the whole 600 billion souls on Cradle thing... is that just the humanoid/sentient species or does that include everything alive including plants, remnants, etc?

Will Wight

Sentient population. It's very large and a much higher percentage of their planet's surface is inhabited.

Blue Pizza

How close are we to the end of Cradle?

Will Wight

Dreadgod is book 11 out of 12. But after you read Dreadgod, you'll be like "you mean 13 books right?"

No, I'm sure I can do it in 12. At least a solid 40% sure.

Kandra (Ozkiel Forever)

Please do cut it in half if you need to

Will Wight

I'll put it this way: I really really want to just do an extra-long 12 rather than a relatively normal-size pair of 12 & 13. If I can make it work, I will.

Honesty I think it'll just be better for the reading experience. I don't want to do Book 12: Part 1 and Book 12: Part 2.

Izzy

I mean obviously Will can't answer this because it's spoilers, but Cradle ending doesn't necessarily mean Lindon's story ends completely, right? Like after ascension their role can expand to future willverse stories and such

Will Wight

Cradle is the story in Cradle. Whether there’s more story after that…who knows? But Cradle the series covers their journey within the world of Cradle.