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But if Lindon X yerin does happen i would hope it would be really unhealthy awkward because neither of them know what a relaionship really is.

Will Wight

Frankly, this is the part I'm struggling with. Because neither Lindon nor Yerin are well-equipped for a healthy relationship, pairing them with anyone is going to result in significant emotional conflict.  

Which, for most stories, is great! Organic character conflict is awesome. But it also takes time to do it justice, which means I'll be cutting space that would otherwise go toward The Sacred Arts Adventure Hour and spending it on Lindon And/Or Yerin's Love-Time Troubles, which is a...steep transition to make 6+ books deep in a series.   So...working on it!

Hammy

I don't think [Lindon and Yerin] should date at all. I don't have a reason, just imo I do not think they work and it kind of a troupe that the two lead characters of opposite gender started dating in a book.

Will Wight

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools?from=Main.TropesAreNotBad   

 

Just as a clarification, a "trope" is just a literary element used to build a story. The story's a house, and a trope is a brick. Stories are made of tropes.   As for this specific subject, I know that if I do end up pairing Lindon and Yerin, some people are going to be thrilled and others will be disappointed. I'm aware of that with every choice I make. There's nothing wrong with not wanting a specific pairing, or not wanting something to happen in a story.

TransEmo

... it was too odd, and due to this bloody discord involved northstrider having a harem lol.

 

(describing a cradle inspired dream questioner had and was sharing in humour)

Will Wight

Random response to a comment in General: you know who in Cradle canonically has a harem? Akura Malice.

Will Wight

Her real name is also Tim.

Losano3

How would Northstrider fight something so massive though? Like, kick the tip of the Phoenix's talons?Can he just make his techniques bigger?

Lil' Blue

I mean, he fights a 50 kilometer dragon and eats it.

Losano3

Lol, yeah, but how exactly? Can he just punch with ridiculous force from a Monarch grade body? Make his striker technique enormous?It's clear he can do it, I just don't understand how he does it.

Will Wight

Fortunately, THAT at least will be very clearly shown through the series. As you would imagine, large-scale Monarch fights will definitely be a thing.

Will Wight

What do you want to see in Skysworn

Questioner

Maybe adding some romantic relationships? I know he has a one track mind of "getting stronger" but he is still a 15 year old boy, he should be thinking about girls at least sometimes.

In most fiction works it is either "one fated love" or "A huge harem", I would love to see a more realistic approach in your work which mean Lindon having 4-5 different relationships during the course of the series.(not at the same time, of course).

Will Wight

You know, I understand and feel the same way, but I'm not sure this is the series for it.

It's not like I spend much time on Lindon's day-to-day life. I've been trimming away basically everything except progression and exploration, so anything focused purely on relationship development would be taking time away from either the story or the world.

It's the reason why so many series default to either a single, fated relationship or a harem: time.

For a harem, you just have one love interest per arc. It's part of the story formula, and you repeat it over and over. It takes no extra time because it's part of the story, and because the girls only get shallow development and have no real lives of their own.

And a single relationship is either gotten out of the way early or is someone intimately involved in the plot, just like the main character is, so their development together can be folded into plot development.

Basically, that's two ways to bake romance into a story without it taking up too much word count.

As it is now, an ongoing series of romantic relationships would mean 20-30k more words per novel. Which means either 20-30k fewer words spent on the meat and potatoes of the story, or a lot more time to develop and write each book.

Plus, writing engaging and organic character relationships is far more challenging than writing fights or cool magical doohickeys. So...it comes down to having a limited amount of time, and having to choose where I spend it.

However, despite everything I just said, I'm not entirely ruling it out. I'm spending some time over the next few days just trying to figure out how much of my books should be spent on plot progression, and how much room I have for other things. This will be part of that discussion.

Questioner

Lindon should have a harem.  By now Mercy, Yerin,lil blue and Geisha would be in harem by now. Orthos would turn out to be female and Lindon's goal would be to show arrogant young lords why he is worthy of Emperor's jade like beauty sister.

Will Wight

Strange...this is exactly the plot of the sixth novel. Using the Emperor’s elixirs, Gesha is regenerated back into her young body, and she finally notices how heroic Lindon’s eyebrows are and falls for him. Little Blue gains a solid form and can now express her long-standing affection for Lindon, it’s revealed that Mercy is actually gone from the Akura family to look for a man strong enough to be her husband, and all this attention causes Yerin to realize her true feelings for Lindon. The Emperor’s sister begins to see him as a little brother until Lindon rescues her, and as she is carried away in his arms she realizes how much she’s missed a man’s strong embrace. Despite the fact that she’s physically stronger than he is, but forget about that.

The only thing you got wrong is Orthos. He’s not a female turtle, but his never-before-mentioned daughter is, and she’s so advanced that she is perfectly human in appearance and, of course, has beauty like a heavenly fairy. She has to continue the Blackflame bloodline, and Lindon’s the only one around...

I’m amazed you picked up on all that, considering how subtle the clues were in the previous books.

Lil' Blue

You should definitely address romance in your books. ;)

Will Wight

Shshshshshshshshsssssssshhhhh. Hush now.

Lil' Blue

I need an awkward Will protagonist date in my life.

Will Wight

Jk, I know you’re right, and it’s going in. I have to practice to learn how to use it effectively, and the only way I practice is through LIVE-FIRE EXERCISE.   Everything that happens to Lindon and/or Simon results in awkwardness.

Lil' Blue

"Lindon: So uh...you like swords, right Yerin?"   "Simon: I like my eyes and having both of them."

Will Wight

^ Thats now my favorite. I’m going to try and work that in.

Tower

My 2 cents is to just leave rape out of books altogether. It's a problem worldwide. We don't need to read about it in a source of ENTERTAINMENT.

Will Wight

Eh. It depends on the tone and intent of the work of entertainment in question. Sometimes it’s perfectly appropriate to deal with a heavy subject in a drama designed for entertainment. That said, it’s too heavy for my stuff. I’m not going to give sexual abuse the gravity it deserves, so I’m leaving it out.

Lil' Blue

And that's a perfectly acceptable reason, Will. Better to not address it than address it poorly.

Will Wight

That’s basically my position. And not every work of fiction can or should deal with every subject, so...

Lil' Blue

I wish Jeri died instead of Lucian.

Will Wight

Too bad; in OKAK she wins and becomes the new Empress, ruling forever over an Elder-blighted homeworld.

Lil' Blue

Or is Yerin still gross and scary to Little Blue?

Will Wight

No. Her hatred and fear has only grown. Soon she will evolve into a Yerin-devouring monster.

Lil' Blue

Will, I like when you use easily searchable words for the archive.

Will Wight

Hahaha gotcha, I should say other easily searchable words.   Rutabaga I am committed to developing my characters romantically.   Aardvark if I can figure out how to write stories more efficiently, I hope to scale up my production to a consistent 3 books a year so that I can try more new things

Lil' Blue

I really think we need an extract from Dross's Patreon.

Will Wight

I’m not writing erotic fanfiction of my own or anybody else’s work, BUT...writing “erotic” fanfiction the way DROSS would view it...that’s pretty tempting.

OrgnlDave

If a boy dragon wanted to be a girl dragon, could his soulfire allow that transformation as he progressed to Overlord?

Will Wight

Hmmmm never thought of that. Yes, though, that would work. Maybe not in the transition from Truegold to Underlord, but probably at Overlord, and certainly at Archlord.

Lil' Blue

Let's say a trans person is becoming a Lord, can they transition?

Will Wight

Soulfire doesn’t allow a human to shift shape, so no. Sacred beasts have a different relationship to soulfire; it’s a lot more tied to their bodies.

Lil' Blue

Is madra a series of tubes?

Will Wight

Madra itself is not a series of tubes, but it can exist only in the context of a series of loops and channels that might be described as tubes. Bindings and scripts re-pattern madra in order to control it and produce different effects, so you might say that madra in its natural state is ALWAYS cycling through an interconnected network of tubes. So while madra is not a series of tubes, the system by which the sacred arts can be performed IS a series of tubes.

TransEmo

Papa orthos must live! And love!

Will Wight

It was hard not to, I won’t lie. But I like him. I need to start killing some folks. 

Decadakon

Kill Ozriel, We won't see it coming.

Will Wight

That’s true, that would be the biggest twist. “Hey, told you Ozriel was dead.”

OrgnlDave

HEY WILL DID YOU SEE DBZA60 pt 3? there's a big green now. so where's big blue?

Will Wight

Following the DBZA example, Big Blue is a giant wish-granting sapphire dragon.

OrgnlDave

What's a fanfic you'd write?

Will Wight

No joke, I seriously considered writing a real DBZ-inspired fantasy series. Some of the elements could work wonders in a novel series. Yeah, 90% filler and 9% powering up. The magic system isn’t necessarily too simple, it just isn’t developed. If it were, and given actual rules, it could work. The same fights become tactical and more dramatic when you understand the interplay of the magic system. But the main thing that got me interested was the constant tension they keep the reader in. The false climactic fights, the ramp-up of tension, the continued escalation of stakes... DBZ doesn’t have real rules. Or rather, they do in individual chapters/episodes, but the rules change so frequently and arbitrarily that it might as well not. So people making fan charts and speculating on power levels from Super might as well not bother, because there is no real answer. I vividly remember my collection of DBZ tapes.

Lil' Blue

Pirates or Ninjas? Will said he likes both equally.

Will Wight

Whoa whoa whoa, I said I was on Team Shera and Team Calder. Because I basically own both teams. But pirates versus ninjas? Ninjas all the way. No contest.

OrgnlDave

Will the reason I asked about Raw Shark Texts is because I thought it might be good instruction for Lindon x Yerin

Will Wight

Their next villain will be the text on the page, forming itself into a shark to devour their conceptual existence

OrgnlDave

that's actually that could work in Cradle

Will Wight

Yeah, as I said it, that actually wasn’t too absurd for the Abidan.