Recent entries

Questioner

How do Monarchs compare, power-wise, to the Abidan?

Will Wight

There are lesser Abidan that the Monarchs can beat. I may have answered this before, where someone asked if Northstrider could potentially beat the low level Hound that we saw in Kiuran in the Uncrowned tournament. And yes, potentially he could. Now they would have to have a fight, and it depends on what other powers Kiuran has, but potentially yes, Northstrider could do that. That's something where he's considering just killing Kiuran. The reason why he doesn't is twofold. One thing, you never know what tricks and Abidan has up their sleeve, and then of course he doesn't want to antagonize the rest of their massive interdimensional organization.

Questioner

What are the limits of Reigan Shen's Path of Deus Ex Machina?

Will Wight

That's not what Deus Ex Machina means. But the limits of it are that he doesn't do a lot directly, he has to prepare in advance. And like happens in Reaper, he can run out of his resources because they are finite. He has to store them separately in separate void spaces, and use them later. So that is the primary limitation. Another limitation is that other Monarchs can manipulate space. So they can interfere with his techniques on a different level than other techniques get interfered with.

Questioner

Are we going to find out what the reversal of the Labyrinth field means?

Will Wight

Maybe. It's possible.

Questioner

Does the 8 Man Empire have power loss, or is Reigan Shen equal to 4 entry level Monarchs?

Will Wight

No. So I'm sure we're going to get into the details of how the 8 Man Empire armor works, at least to some degree. I don't know how much detail we're going to get into, but to some degree we're going to go into that. And the idea is that they can all draw on the powers of the others. So that does not mean that they are equivalent to four Monarchs, it means that collectively they can express the power a Monarch. So in some ways that has an advantage because, of course, they have a greater breadth of powers and things that they can do. And they can be in multiple places at once. But at the same time it also has some disadvantages. One of those being that if one of them is drawing on their full power, or two of them are splitting it among themselves, then the others are not as powerful. So they couldn't fight four Monarchs at once. They could certainly fight one, and potentially two depending the circumstances, but usually they are spread out. They are not usually in the same location because they don't need to be.

Questioner

Are we going to learn more about the creators of the labyrinth?

Will Wight

Yes :)

Questioner

Did Eithan take Lindon only because of Suriel's marble?

Will Wight

No. Eithan noticed Lindon because of Suriel's marble, but he would not have inherently taken him in just because of that. There were a lot of other reasons, and I think those are expressed throughout the books pretty clearly, why Eithan took Lindon in as an apprentice. And like he expresses in Soulsmith, Yerin's a big part of that. So Yerin being involved, and Yerin having a lot of potential was always a key component.

Questioner

Is Eithan worried about his trial?

Will Wight

That's an interesting question. I like that you asked that. Sort of. He's less worried about what's going to happen to him, he doesn't really care. It's more about what's going to happen to his goal. And what's going to happen to Cradle, and what's going to happen to the other worlds, and whether he will have succeeded or failed. So that is what he's worried about, and the trial will reveal that.

shadowsaber415

How long ago did you come up with the Monarch twist?

Will Wight

I assume by that you mean the link between the Monarchs and hunger madra. And the whole time I had intended for Monarchs to be a final obstacle for Lindon. Not necessarily THE final obstacle, of course you still have the Dreadgods, but involved in Lindon's final trials. What I always wanted was Eithan guides Lindon up to the final two books, and then in the final two books, Lindon and company have to deal with the challenges themselves. And what I wanted the final boss of Cradle to be, was effectively Cradle itself. I wanted it to be them working against the world. The whole world. Against them. So that was my original intention, and I intended therefore for the Dreadgods and Monarchs to be on the same side at some point, but the mechanics of doing that shifted and changed. I had certain ideas, I kind of knew how they were kind of linked, and it was one of those things where I set myself up for several ways I could have done it, and ended up picking the way that made the most sense.

Questioner

Is Lindon considered a Dreadgod now?

Will Wight

No, he is not.

Questioner

Once Pure Storm Baptism is complete, will Ziel be an Archlord?

Will Wight

Yes. He'll have the capacity to be an Archlord. He will be healed back up. He'll still have to probably work a little bit to get back to his former power, but he'll have the capacity to catch up, and it won't take long. Just have to jam him full of resources.

Questioner

What time frame was Ozriel's visit to Calder?

Will Wight

Can't answer that. Spoiler.

Questioner

Yerin at the end of Bloodlines vs Estyr Six

Will Wight

You know, there are some things that Yerin can do that Estyr Six doesn't have a good ability to block.  Like, Estyr Six is an extremely powerful telekinetic, probably one that could give Yerin trouble.  But at the same time, Yerin's now a suedo-herald, working on a conceptual level, so she's able to fight on some of the same tiers that Estyr Six can, and she can shoot what are effectively laser beams.  And Estyr Six doesn't have a good way of blocking laser beams.  So I'll have to give it to Yerin.  Mainly just a compatibility issue.  Now, there are problems that Estyr knows how to solve that Yerin does not, not that she is not capable of doing that, because there is some of those that a herald would probably be capable of solving, she doesn't know how.  Also, Estyr Six's power set is a lot more similar to a sage's.  So yeah, a little bit of a nuanced answer there.

Questioner

Will Eithan still honor his favor to Malice?

Will Wight

Probably not. He was bound by that until he took off the shroud, and now he is not. So he is not necessarily bound by that unless he chooses to keep his word. Because while the more powerful a sacred artist you are, the tighter you are held, that does not continue to hold true as you advance in magic systems outside of Cradle. And he is, of course, the MOST advanced in magic systems outside of Cradle. So, he has a number of ways around that. So for one thing, as the Reaper he could just annul that oath. It just, didn't happen. He could, however, choose to abide by it. One of the things that a lot of Abidan do is they choose to abide by their oaths as kind of a manifestation or reflection of order.

Questioner

How much, if any, philosophical inspiration have you had for the Cradle series?

Will Wight

That's hard to answer. There's a lot of.. a lot? It goes into a lot of things I write, have to do with philosophy or ideology, but it's not my goal to express a particular ideology so much as it is to just entertain you. So while a lot of that does go into the ideas I have, its more of that, it's more of the background details and the inspiration I draw on than it is trying to express a particular philosophy or so on and so forth.

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

 I’ve always been a bit confused about what makes a talented sacred artist advance faster than their peers? They just refine madra better?

Will Wight

Yeah, that is part of it.  It's really a... How I think of it, is it's more like a madra talent, a talent for madra control, so it's something that just sort of clicks better for you.  So that's one aspect of it.  Another aspect is maybe you understand your techniques better or faster.  So that's one thing.  Another thing is some people seem to have a deeper connection to certain types of aura than others.  so if you are born into a clan or sect or something that only practices one path, your talent is determined by how compatible you are with that particular path.  Which may bot be the thing you are really best at.  But you would never know, because you are only ever exposed to one path.  So that's another factor of talent.

The reason why it is poorly defined in the book is because there is a number of things that people mean when they say talent.  And I found that to be true in a number of the cultivation novels I read.  They would talk about talent, but it would be unclear exactly what talent was.  So either they would have something like talent is effectively your XP gain modifier, or how fast you level up.  Or, they didn't really define talent at all.  Some people were talented because they were good at weapons, other people were talented because they were good at magic, and other people were talented because they learn really fast, and so on and so forth.  And I like that a little better; that felt kind of real.  Some people are more talented at certain things because the logic of it just clicked for them  Other people are more physically or mentally suited to the task.  You know, that kind of thing.  And it felt good to me.  So that's sort of where I've been.

skybreaker82

Was Bloodline's title referencing Lindon's family or something else?

Will Wight

There were a couple of layers in Bloodline's title I did indeed intend for a Lindon to manifest his own bloodline power in Bloodline but having written it I decided I realized, crap that gives him too many powers so that would have been completely overloaded. So, instead of doing that I added references to the bloodline of the dreadgods, the bloodline of Lindon's relationship with his family and, the future vision that Suriel gives him of leaving a legacy behind in the terms of the end terms of bloodline so it's not a strong of the title as some of the others in terms of how it links to the content of the book I definitely I don't know what I would change it but I could certainly have had a stronger connection. It's like Skysworn, I initially intended Skysworn to be largely taken up by them doing a bunch of Skysworn missions and it ends up if I could have made a last minute change for that book I would've called a Redmoon and then I would have had the cover just be a red moon. So I probably wouldn't have that's probably the the 2 changes I would make to Skysworn, I would change the title and I would change the ending.

Questioner

Is there a mortal power above monarch that no one knows yet?

Will Wight

Not really.

Questioner

General consensus is that Reaper is one of the best books.  Do you think feel like the sabbatical contributed to that?

Will Wight

I'm certain that it did.  One of the things that I wanted to talk about tonight was my writing process for Reaper.  That's one of the reasons that I wanted to do this stream; I wanted to talk about a couple of things people have been asking me, which is about my writing process for Reaper, my writing process for other books how it's developed changed over the years and, why some books you perhaps liked more than others. Did the sabbatical contribute to that?  I'm sure it did. I know friends and family have told me that I act a lot differently after the sabbatical. I tend to recover more easily after a writing sprint, or after isolating and writing a big chunk rather than wearing myself down. But what I expected from the sabbatical was that I was gonna come back and I was gonna be full of inspiration and really feel like the next book was super easy to write and i did not feel that way. That was a mistake of expectation on my part. Because it turns out writing books is just hard, just straight up hard. I was thinking yeah it'll feel easy.  I was wrong it didn't feel that way. But I'm sure it did contribute to Reaper. So I'm sure that the sabbatical helped.

One of the things people have asked is what was the difference between my Bloodline process and my Reaper process, and one of the funniest things people say sometimes is that Bloodline was rushed and then I took my time with Reaper. So I wanna address that real quick. The funniest thing is Bloodline despite being shorter than Reaper took me 50% longer to write. It's all about the process of writing and Reaper so far has been the one that I think I worked the best process. It was more efficient. I stayed on track, and I didn't get distracted by rewriting, getting stuck, writing things that I had to remove. One of the things I did in Bloodline was I got off on a tangent where I was trying to figure out a story beat. So I kept writing and rewriting it or writing and rewriting notes on it, and I ended up basically wasting a week.  Then I had to get back on track and building momentum takes a lot and then I spend another week doing that and it just takes time; it kills time.  Typically I think the reason why I do that is because I feel like I want to make the 1st draft really good, I wanted it to feel better. But I'm working with some friends of mine who are working on their 1st books and they have really been learning something that I need to constantly remember which is the way to make it good is not to make it good in the 1st draft, it's to make it good in the 2nd draft and beyond.  So the 1st draft should be just getting something on paper and then you should be making a good later.  So that is definitely the process that I have found to work. It's the process I usually recommend but it's hard to remember. So its hard for me to remember.  So Reaper is the 1st one I've done where I actually stayed on track the whole time.  I just wrote it from beginning to end; I thought it was terrible.  Thought it was really bad but I kept writing and I kept going and I finished it and then I made a good later and therefore it was faster and more efficient and resulted in a better project.

Questioner

Does the 8 man empire contribute to the hunger madra problem?

Will Wight

They do not.