Recent entries

nerbomer

(In response to Wintersteel's plotline post)

Make it a Jai Long book and release it April 1st.

Will Wight

How did you know about my plans for Cradle 13, Girthspear?

Will Wight

Aw, thanks! There are certainly ups and downs, but thus far my positive experiences have far outweighed the negative.

If I’m upset about anything right now, it’s that I haven’t finished EE yet. Which is on me, and is the reason why I so desperately need to finish.

Also, I love your username.

Akura_Fury

As for the username, I made a reddit account just so I could comment on your subreddit. The name choice was obvious, since Fury was by far the best and funniest secondary character in the book! Although secondary might be a bit too generous in his case (more Fury please <3).

Will Wight

I loved writing him more than I expected I would, and he was always involved in the main Monarch conflict, so 90% chance he’s around for the long haul.

When I originally drafted his character back before Blackflame, he was this stern military instructor type that was entirely controlled and militaristic. Then when I started to write him in this book, I realized that he overlapped too much with too many other characters...and also wasn’t much fun to write.

Thus, the true Akura Fury was born.

cleanflea

Noooo!!!!! I demand a Yerin book. Co-starring Little Blue and Shera. If you do not acknowledge my demands, I will form a coalition to threaten you properly. You have been warned. Act accordingly.

Will Wight

I wondered one time if I could do a non-canon short story or novella in which I split my various main characters up into random teams like this one. Like Lindon, Simon, and Shuffles having to do one quest and Calder, Leah, and Little Blue doing another while Yerin, Shera, and Caela are doing a third thing.

It’s gimmicky, but I think it could be fun.

morgf

So explain this to me. Eithan and Mercy, if not Yerin, know a lot about the world. Lindon lists two Monarch powers, and Luminous Queen Sha Miara. If they have never heard of Sha Miara, why didn't they say anything? Are there lots of Luminous Queens in the Ninecloud Court? If they did not say anything, why did it not stick in their minds? Certainly Eithan would remember every word that Lindon told him from a heavenly messenger.

Will Wight

No joke, there was actually a point when I was writing that scene in Skysworn where I had Mercy frown and say “Sha Miara?” like she heard wrong, and then the conversation moves on. It’s in one of the rough drafts.

Ultimately I waffled on it and then, as I revised the scene, that line ended up not making it back in because it didn’t have any connection to the events of Skysworn or my plans for Ghostwater, so I thought it would feel out of place for at least one more book.

Then when I was writing Uncrowned, I looked back at that scene and felt like it was a sufficiently minor connection to not warrant an explicit explanation. I didn’t feel like I as a reader would need an explanation for why Yerin, Eithan, and Mercy didn’t immediately connect the dots based on an offhand comment from Lindon so long ago.

morgf

A message from a heavenly messenger, and talking about the most powerful people in the world? And they just dismiss it like talking about the weather?

Will Wight

I’m really not trying to persuade you of anything here, I was just telling you what my thought process was since you asked. If it didn’t work for you, it didn’t work for you. That’s okay!

If I had expected this to trip people up, I would have included a line of explanation.

Tourni-quet

Can someone explain why Lindon was all worked up at the end of the book and had to rush off to tell his friends that Sha Miara is actually a monarch?

Like he literally mentions her name in skysworn, when he says about northstrider, the 8 man empire and luminous queen sha miara.

And Eithan, Mercy and Yerin are all like yep they’re strong.

Is this a continuity error? Bc it seems like lindon believes this is some big secret that he has to divulge, that he already has years previously. And I checked she’s not under a fake name in the tournament, northstrider announces her name in the revealing of the fight schedule so our other MCs are aware of the name

Will Wight

Yeah, I can actually answer that one! My take on that, which I probably could have retroactively explained in this book when it became relevant, was that anyone with knowledge of the world knows who the Luminous Queen is. But at this point, the Ninecloud Court are keeping it secret that the previous queen has died and her daughter has succeeded her.

Also, she's participating in the tournament, so of course she's an Underlady.

Lindon's urgency at the end comes from the fact that, at previous points in the book, he doesn't want to say anything lest he get in trouble with a Monarch. But after the Abidan have come down, there's enough at stake now for him to risk it.

That's the idea, though obviously I could have communicated it more clearly.

morgf

Yup, it is a continuity error. Unfortunately, the book is riddled with them.

Lindon, Yerin, Eithan, and Mercy all know that Sha Miara is a Monarch. As the commenter I was responding to said, she was in the tournament under the name Sha Miara. There was no reason for Lindon to run to tell the others since they already knew, as the commenter said. He told the story to Yerin multiple times. He probably mentioned the Monarch names every time, but he definitely mentioned Sha Miara to them by name at least once. Didn't you read Skysworn?  

Travis Baldree

I read it out loud :) But I don't remember him mentioning her by name.

But even if he did, I guess I'm not sure it would ruin the book for me. The world is huuuuge. The distances are vast. The people almost mythical.

Will Wight

Jumping in here: I was aware of this scene in Skysworn when I wrote Uncrowned, but I didn't see the need to clarify that Yerin and company didn't make the connection to Lindon's story from years earlier. They're thinking he saw a vision of the Luminous Queen, who this girl competing in the tournament obviously isn't.

I thought that came across in the story, but obviously not clearly enough.

I knew when I wrote Skysworn that it wasn't common knowledge that Sha Miara led the Ninecloud Court, but since it wasn't relevant to that book or the next book, I didn't want to bring it up at the time. In Uncrowned, I thought the situation was clear enough to go without further explanation, but apparently I was wrong.

Questioner

When is Cradle book 8?

Will Wight

Book 8 is after Elder Empire. So my current plan, and I want to emphasize that this is my current plan and is all subject to change, is that I am going to do Elder Empire, well I'm definitely doing Elder Empire, I'm already working on Elder Empire. Then after that, my intention is to do Cradle 8 and 9 and then something different. I'm not changing my mind on Elder Empire, that one's happening. After that one I can do 8 and 9.

Questioner

Are there different sacred beast Goldsigns besides the eye change?

Will

Actually, see, the eye color thing is one of the hallmarks of being contracted to a sacred beast. To take on the eyes of a sacred beast. So, that's kind of the general shorthand for 'this person has a beast contract'. That is normally how it works. I'm sure there are some exceptions, but generally, that is the rule. 

Questioner

Have you thought about doing hardcover or leatherbound special editions of cradle?

Will Wight

Yes. Absolutely, I have thought about that, that is a very real possibility that might happen at some point. Maybe as part of a Kickstarter, maybe not. I don't really know how that's gonna work. I need more research in that before I give you an answer. Of course, I'm not commiting to anything right now, but I absolutely have considered it.

Kidpen

What would be the best strategy if a foundation sacred artist was suddenly dropped into the world of Subnautica?

Will Wight

If a foundation artist was dropped in the world of Subnautica and they did not have access to the technology that Riley here, my survivor, has access to, they would be in real trouble because while they have some superhuman powers, not nearly enough to keep up with the world of Subnautica. So, therefore, if there's aura here that they can cultivate then fantastic, they are in good shape. The better spend their days hunting for fish and getting water and now I don't know how you would do that without a fabricator but they'd find a way to get some water and food and then trying to make it to Copper ASAP. If it doesn't have aura and they don't have this technology, then they are going to be hunting fish and just hoping that they don't instantly die.

Green0Photon

What does a core being deep mean, that is, does it have extra-dimensional depth? Does this have anything to do with why spinning your core make it more dense?

Will Wight

They say deep just kind of as a word to explore that. It's not literally elongated in depth. That's just how the describe capacity; so a deep core can hold more madra. The dense madra is more effective with a little bit, so very concentrated madra is more powerful; not more powerful in terms of you throw an energy blast and it does more damage than somebody else's energy blast but more like your mana costs go down. So, if you've got dense madra you can use less madra to accomplish to the same goal. And if you have deep cores, then you have more maximum mana. So, that's basically the idea.

You may call me mr bean.

I've written a book on Amazon and it didn't do well at all but I wanted to know if you would recommend College writing classes or not if I should just push through and do the work?

Will Wight

Mr. Bean, I would highly recommend working on your writing craft. I know that for me, I learned that through college classes and I learned that through grad student classes and that was extremely valuable for me and that is a reason that a lot of my writing stands out is because I've mastered a lot of skills, not mastered, certainly not mastered, I am on the path to mastering skills that a lot of people don't bother to cultivate. There's a lot of advantages to... its kind of like you are putting a car together and you can just follow the instructions or you can go to school and become a mechanic and learn all of the principles and then you really understand how cars work. So, if you run into a problem, if I run into a problem I can figure out, basically, what caused the problem and how to fix it. So, there's a lot of advantages to that. I'm not necessarily telling you you have to go to college if you want to write, but it did help me.

Arch

Where did the original Travellers gate pocket dimension based magic system idea come from?

Will Wight

That's a good question Arch! A couple of places. For one thing, I thought it would be cool to have a magic system based around, I thought the word "territories" lent itself well to a magic system, but what I had originally envisioned it as is you claimed your territory. So, your territory was the source of your power. So, kind of like a wizard's tower would be his territory, right? And that's kind of what I thought, is that that's where you draw your power from. I also thought that's how it would work out, but as I developed it, that's kind of not what it did. But another thing I thought of was, there's this fantasy, kind of, that I have that is it would be so cool if I could just step out of time into a comfortable room that existed just in another dimension, you just step into it. You just kind of have this cozy, camping place, this sort of like house that you can have. And that fantasy to me was always really cool, I'd love to be able to introvert out at any time and just kind of take a break in my little cozy space. And so I liked having a separate dimension for that. So those ideas kind of fused together, also, I knew I wanted a magic system with inherent progression.

Twitch Participant

Instead, he made murder house.

Will Wight

Ya, exactly. It's not fun to make your protagonist comfortable, it's way more fun to make them uncomfortable. So I also wanted a system of progression built in, so I thought exploring a place and becoming more of a master of that place and then drawing power from that location, I thought that was pretty cool. That was a neat concept that tied it well together, so that's how it came into being; those sort of disparate ideas  coming together and going in the pot.

Carlinours

Favorite MTG Color?

Will Wight

Not blue. Anything but blue. If I had to pick one, I'd probably pick green because playing big creatures is fun. But it's really not blue.

Questioner

Cultivation stories are often written as serials. Have you given any thought to writing something in that format?

Will Wight

A lot of thought. I have given that a lot of that. As a matter of fact, I cannot stop that thought. I really want to do that. It's a unique challenge. But, part of the challenge is monetization. If you are not on a site with ads, that's kind of where money comes from for serials. So, I don't know how that would make any money. Its not a good thing to release on Amazon because you can't really do the chapters. I don't know what delivery method to use. So, that's kind of the practical concern. A less practical and more artistic concern, I don't know, like I was talking about earlier, I don't have that idea that I think is really compelling enough to do as a serial. When I sit down on my phone and I've tried to, let me just write a chapter and see what comes out. I don't like it, I don't enjoy it, it doesn't engage my imagination. It ends up just being some guy showing up and doing something and I don't know why, but not in a curious way, more like in a 'I don't know why and its not that important because this guys got no personality and no goal.' And also, writing a really good serial like Against the Gods, or any of these successful cultivation novels. Writing a really good serial is it's own skill because you want each chapter to kind of have an arc of it's own and you want it to begin with the resolution of the last chapter and end on a cliffhanger, basically, it's not really a cliffhanger, but a tease for the next chapter, so you open by answering the last chapter's question and close by asking a new question that's going to be answered in the next chapter. So that's kind of the general structure that most people use for serials and I have not mastered that because I have not practiced it because that's not how I structure my chapters. So, I don't really know how to, that's a skill I'd have to cultivate and in order to that I would need an idea that, a vision, for a thing that I really believed in.

Questioner

Can we get that Spotify playlist to listen to?

Will Wight

I intentionally made my playlist private because I named them after the books and so I was afraid somebody would search on Spotify and see what I'm listening to. I'm not afraid, just more like-well yes, afraid.

Nate K

What resources have you used to help organize your thoughts? Do you just use bullet points/notes or do you have something more sophisticated like character sheets/diagrams/maps/etc...?

Will Wight

So I always have to sketch out a map. Those of you who have been around a long time know that I hate maps. There are many reasons why I hate maps, I think each is more compelling than the last. But, I can't stand maps, I don't like them, I really don't. But I do have to know where things are in relation to one another, so I always sketch out some kind of really rough map and so I do that and I keep that and that is something that I definitely do. Also, I have things that are like character sheets, so I definitely keep information. I have a document on my laptop, that's called "Powerful Figures of Cradle," and so I have all the Monarchs listed and all the Heralds and all the Sages and what continent they're on and what their  allegiances and so I make sure I have all of that done. And, like I said, when I was working on magic systems, I did go through and put together a form for them. But, I don't really do that. Mostly, I just use bullet points and word documents and I just write my thoughts down. Bullet points, mostly, that's what I do. I list things, I keep things saved in different note files.

Cody

Do you ever play incremental/idle games? If you do, what's your favorite?

Will Wight

I have. I have probably put too much time into them. But, I don't play them ongoing, on an ongoing basis, I don't play them frequently, so I don't have a favorite. They're all kind of the same to me. The mobile game I've been playing is Fate/Grand Order, which I can't entirely recommend because it will sap your time and money. But, I love the Fate universe and I always have and Kinoko Nasu is one of my favorite writers of all time, so it was really cool to see that being executed and a lot of the different characters come to life, so that was really cool. So, that's what I've been playing, that's what I've been using to idle my time away, but it's not an idle game.

Danillo

Who was the hardest Monarch to create?

Will Wight

I don't really know how to answer that to be honest. The eight man empire probably because there are 8 of them. Oh! I went back and forth on Reigan Shen for a long time. That's probably it, that's probably the answer. I went back and forth on Reigan Shen for a long time; he's obviously an antagonist figure. So, who he was and what his powers were, that changed alot. I ended up on the Path of the King's Key, which I like as a Path and we are going to get to explore that a little bit at some point, but I had also had him be like a plague, toxic venom Path as well. There's a lot of things I went back and forth on him about. But also, I kind of had him as a character, he didn't look like this, but a character who's kind of like Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay Night, where he is this arrogant King where he believes everything belongs to him. So I had him do that, and that's again The Path of the King's Key, so that even fit, so it fit his powers, not his physical description. And that would have been cool, but it didn't really work for me, so I ended up coming up with a different personality and there also weren't enough sacred beasts on the Monarchs, so he's now a white lion. That's why he is the emperor of lions. He is an emperor who ascended as a rare white lion.

Carl

Can you tell us what some of your favorite books are? So we know what to read when we're done with Uncrowned and wish to fill in the void it left behind.

Will Wight

I have a lot of favorites books, it's difficult to narrow it down. But, like I said earlier, I usually like to know what the person enjoys reading before I recommend things because there's very few things that I recommend without caveats. So, there's always something that I'm like 'if you like this, then you will like this, if you don't you're not going to, pretty much.' That is a common occurrence. So, my favorite books; I love the Wheel of Time series, I love the Dresden Files series, I love a lot of these web novels I've mentioned many times tonight. All of those, I stand by those. Funny enough, a lot of what I read, I read comics. Someone mentioned Solo Leveling earlier, that's absolutely one of my favorite ongoing comics right now. Solo Leveling, really good stuff, its a Korean webtoon, the art is maximum hype. So, Brent Weeks Night Angel trilogy, that used to be one of my favorites, its still probably up there, its close. I really like it. It's got some problems that have become more important to me as I've gotten, I don't know, older, or whatever but it still has place in my heart. That's a very great action magic series which I really enjoy, as you know.

Anything by Brandon Sanderson is a solid bet. My favorite of his, I love Mistborn, the first book is just one of my favorites, the rest of the series is good too, but the first book is like a fantasy heist novel and I just love that. I would love to write one someday, that'd be amazing. Mistborn does it so well, it's hard to try and compete with that. The Stormlight Archives are fantastic and, of course, he wrote the later editions of Wheel of Time, so, Brandon Sanderson, great stuff. And, that's it off the top of my head. There's a lot of other comics I read, but, I don't know, there's way too many of those to list.

Oh! Spy x Family, if anybody is interested in what comics to read, man, Japanese Manga Spy x Family, it is fantastic. The idea is that is a fantasy East Germany/West Germany kind of thing, so they are not real countries, but its basically East Germany, West Germany and one of them, the man, is a spy, and he, as a cover, needs to have a family, so he gets a woman to act as his wife. Secretly, unbeknownst to him, she's an assassin and she also needed a cover, so she was also looking for a fake family, which is why it worked out so well. And together, they adopt a daughter, who unbeknownst to either of them, is psychic and can read both of their minds and they are both keeping a secret from each other. And its a Mr. and Mrs. Smith kind of setup, except the daughter can read both of their minds and knows all their secrets and thinks its awesome because they are basically like characters from a TV Show. So, it is hilarious and heartwarming and it's adorable. I really really like it. Spy x Family, that's the name. It's like Hunter x Hunter; There's an x in the middle, but you don't say it.

Zane

What is the biggest jump from a single advancement? Ex: Copper to Iron

Will Wight

Copper to Iron is big because there is not a whole lot of difference because you didn't have a lot of abilities at Copper and then you get a lot more at Iron. I would say the biggest jump is from Truegold to Underlord, if I'm being honest. Truegold to Underlord is a huge jump and Archlord to Sage is a huge jump, Archlord to Herald is a huge jump, Herald to Monarch is a big jump. Either Archlord to Sage or Truegold to Underlord I think would be the bigger jumps. I think, probably Archlord to Sage because that's a whole extra thing.