Recent entries

    Writing Advice ()
    #1541 Copy

    Your Benevolent Dictator

    What is your favorite book you've written

    Will Wight

    Of Dawn and Darkness

    Your Benevolent Dictator

    Why?

    Will Wight

    Because I tried a lot of difficult things behind the scenes and they paid off. As opposed to something like Blackflame, which came together well, but was relatively easier so I'm less proud of it.

    Lil' Blue

    Ugh but Calder     tries to throttle him

    Will Wight

    Yeah, part of what I did in that series was give the MCs more obvious character flaws. To contrast them with Simon and Lindon, who are fairly straightforward people and more normal protagonists.   But as a result, one or the other usually makes people violently hate them.   I was aware of that risk.
    Will's Life ()
    #1542 Copy

    Aru

    For real though, one of my favorite activities is logging into Reddit writing prompts or one of my online stories that still has a following and writing "There will be an update soon." And then never releasing an update. It keeps them all in suspense.

    Will Wight

    That's my release date policy.     ...
    Writing Advice ()
    #1543 Copy

    Aru

    You can tell that I wrote it because I also used the name "Aru" on that site. Gotta warn you though at this point I was still embracing the "Show, don't tell" to an extreme extent, so the first 50k words takes place over two-ish days.

    Will Wight

    That happens all the time. "Show, don't tell" has become one of my least-favorite pieces of advice; now my left eye twitches whenever I hear someone say it. First of all, most people don't understand it. What it should mean is "In a story, don't simply tell me something is true when you can show me that it is true." For instance, don't tell me a character is brilliant when you could instead show them doing something brilliant. You want to get the reader to think "Wow, this character is brilliant" without you having told them so. People generally use it to mean "Show us when something happens, don't tell us." This is dangerous because it's both good advice and bad advice. It's a double-edged sword. When something is important or integral to the story, you always want to show it happening in a scene, rather than telling us that it happened in narrative. "Lindon fought a dragon and won" isn't nearly as interesting as a fight scene between Lindon and a dragon. But there are always scenes that you should be telling instead of showing. "Winter passed without incident" is a much better way of summarizing a boring winter rather than ten pages of summarizing boring training and nothing happening, even though the first one is telling you that nothing happened and the second one is showing you that nothing happened. TL;DR - "Show, don't tell" is both so broadly applicable and so frequently misused that it's almost useless except in certain specific circumstances. So even though it's good advice, IMO it confuses new writers more than it teaches them.

    Writing Advice ()
    #1544 Copy

    Aru

    Got 384 pages into it too before I ended up stopping. Part of that was because I improved so much while writing it that the beginning just felt like a hunk of junk. And also because my sense of pacing was waaay off.

    Will Wight

    Always true. Part of finishing a book is just getting to the end so you can go back and fix the beginning. You usually don't know what your story is about until you finish the first draft. Which is what makes writing serial stories one chapter at a time hard

    Aru

    Part of the reason I gave it up was because I realized that the first 70 thousand words should have been the first 10 thousand words.     I'm open to criticism though if you, Will, or anybody else wants to skim through a few chapters.

    Will Wight

    One of the most common problems new writers have is starting way too early. That happens all the time.

    Writing Advice ()
    #1546 Copy

    Anu

    Will: Is there a limit to how bad a story you are willing to read? How low are you willing to go?     AKA, now long do I need to spend editing my story before you are willing to read it?

    Will Wight

    That is one of my favorite questions I've ever gotten. I laughed out loud.     I used to teach Intro to Creative Writing, so there is no rock bottom.     It's an endless freefall.
    September 2018 - December 2018 ()
    #1547 Copy

    Puppet Master

    did dragons evolve as a species or are they a result of their status of Sacred Beast?

    Will Wight

    I don't know if this is a spoiler or not, so I'll answer it anyway: sacred beast, but dragons exist in many forms in different Iterations similar to humanity     So the relationship and origin of dragons is a subject of study among Abidan
    September 2018 - December 2018 ()
    #1551 Copy

    Decadakon

    Do you have a small example for a sword related beast   Like is it an animal     With a sword or with sharp claws

    Will Wight

    It would be more like with sharp claws, though I'm not against a species of sacred beast that uses sword madra/aura to make sharp weapons     Tool-using sacred beasts do exist
    September 2018 - December 2018 ()
    #1553 Copy

    Icoret

    I'm rereading the books right now, and I've got a question about Sacred Beasts. Sorry if this was in the books already and I missed it, that happens a lot for me. Eithan mentions that when he was young he had a breeding pair from a lineage of sacred beasts. Does this mean all sacred beasts have kids that are also sacred beasts?

    Will Wight

    I wouldn't say all, but in general yes. Snowfoxes from Sacred Valley started off as one fox that lived long enough to advance, but now it's a whole race of little snowfoxes that are sacred beasts from birth.

    Will's Life ()
    #1555 Copy

    sadly_streets_behind

    Will, have you read Overlord or watched the anime adaptation?

    Will Wight

    Yes, both! I think that's one of the web novels with the most squandered potential.     In particular, I think it's let down by the MC being undead. So he doesn't have any emotional reaction or physical response to anything.     Therefore, the stakes never feel personal and there's no connection to him. However, Nazarick and the floor guardians are the best ideas anyone in that genre has ever had.     I'm super jealous.
    Writing Advice ()
    #1556 Copy

    Akrasia

    Will, how do you feel about all these litRPG questions despite you having stated that you don't write litrpg?  

    Will Wight

    I'm honestly a little confused by all the LitRPG questions, but I'm cool with answering anything. And I'm not against the concept of LitRPGs in general, I've just never read one that really grabbed me. Which makes me want to try and create one I do like.

    Cradle ()
    #1557 Copy

    dyring

    So, is it Orthonardo, Orhtael, Orthangelo or Orthello that we should call Orthos after he advances to underlord and becomes a ninjaturtle?

    Will Wight

    Orthonardo. Orthael is his name after he joins the Abidan Court.

    Cradle ()
    #1560 Copy

    TransEmo

    if each stage of advancement from UL up affects the bodies ageing and your body changes to look more like your ideal age, why does sha miara still look 10yo?

    Will Wight

    She's the child of a Monarch who inherited power, so she's a little different