Recent entries

Xektalon

Since we know the Iteration is called Cradle ... what do the inhabitants of Cradle call their world? Is it rutabaga? or do all humans call the main planet terra or earth?

Will Wight

My thought on that is that almost always unless people are aware of a larger universe they just have a word that means the world, so we'd just translate it to Earth. That's usually my answer to that, because there's all these fantasy worlds where the inhabitants call their Earth "Kren", or whatever. And it's like - that's cool, that's really neat, that makes sense, they call it "Narnia" or whatever. I like knowing the name but would the inhabitants of their world really call it that, or just call it the world? So that's always my thought process on that. Depending on the language, they have different words - so that's just the world for Earth in their language.

Skull

Let it Go or Baby Shark? You have to listen to one for the rest of your life or else you cant read ever again

Will Wight

Its probably Let it Go. If i had to listen to something on loop for the rest of my life, probably be Let it Go.....thats a more interesting song, and there's more to it.

Questioner

Suriel v. Beerus

Will Wight

I don't know how that would go. The problem with Suriel v. Beerus, for one thing, I don't know how Beerus's powers work. I don't know how [inaudible] destruction energy works, I don't know how any of that works. I don't think anybody does. I don't think there's really an answer to that, I think they just kinda work. But I think that, if I assume Beerus's powers to work on the same level as Suriel's, he has no authority to erase her, but she can still restore herself, so he would be probably stronger in a fight and she would be able to just restore herself. So I think it would probably be a stalemate, because she would just kind of not die.

Questioner

In the Traveler's Gate books, both the ice dagger and diamond are powers that are said to be earned from a room called the winter garden. I was wondering if this was a mistake on your part, or if it is an example of a room holding more than one power?

Will Wight

Yes. So there's a couple of things in play there. For one thing, the power earned from a room can change - like the guardian and trial, that all can change. So there are examples of that happening. There's also examples of there being two powers because in some of these rooms, just beating the room once is enough to progress through it, and then you've got to really show mastery in order to get the power. But then in other rooms maybe there's one power and then a second power. Now, I don't remember about that room specifically because it's been a really long time since I wrote those books, but it could have changed or it could be, instead, that you just earn two powers from that room. That's absolutely something that could happen.

Questioner

What is the Cradle equivalent to Hershey's? Do they even have chocolate?

Will Wight

They do have chocolate.

Kaz

Hey Will, is Lindon's Bloodforged Iron Body and a typical Sandviper's both considered "Perfect Iron" in terms of advancement potential? I've always been a little uncertain, since "perfect" is kind of a binary term but we see with Lindon that the same specialization can have a large degree of difference

Will Wight

Yeah so that's a problem. I regret that terminology. What I should have done was call them 'Advanced Iron Bodies' or something; because I say perfect and that suggests that there are not any grades of quality (which of course there are). So I've created this implication that both Lindon's Iron Body and this other person's Iron body are both equally perfect when of course that is not so. So there are actually grades of Perfect Iron Body so of course they're not all perfect. The terminology I reget on that but I'm stuck with it now.

MountainKing

What were the earlier designs of Lindon's path?

Will Wight

So, in Blackflame, when you see Lindon choose from those other Paths, those were all things I considered for his path at one point. Though by that point I'd already decided he'd end up with Blackflame. In the Megaman Battle games there's a character called Bass. He's this rogue/virus kind of thing with a cool purple laser sword and powers. Anyway, I always thought that look was a really neat. So I took that aesthetic for a Path in Cradle and that's the Path of the Broken Star.

That was one of the one's I originally intended for Lindon, but I intended a lot of stuff for Lindon. There was at one point a plan to have him learn just a million different paths. I ended up straying away from that (though I'm not saying he won't split his core at least once more, maybe, potentially, could happen, who knows). But he's not going to be master of a thousand Paths because that's too many powers and the problem with giving someone too many powers is less that the reader can't remember it and more that if you don't know what a character can't do they can effectively do anything.

I thought about giving him all sorts of this stuff. But if he does split his core again there's going to be a limited number of things he can do. The reason why I went with Blackflame as his power was first of all because it was kind of in contrast to what you'd expect from Lindon - you wouldn't expect him to have this hyper aggressive Path that does allow him to fight on the level of people he probably shouldn't be able to fight; and it's cool to see in action and it contradicts who Lindon usually is so there's some interesting stuff you could do with that.

Calvitron

The Sword Sage could cut a single page of closed book. Could Eithan read a page of a closed book?

Will Wight

That's a good question! Ah...no, he could not as a matter of fact, that's actually something he could not do.....right now. So it could be that once he advances further, he could end up developing that ability, but for now, no he could not do that

BigManDan

Are you worried at all that as Lindon and Co.'s advancement continues into the heavens, are you worried at all about being able to maintain interest in fights as they escalate to ever more ridiculous levels? After all, Naruto struggled with that towards the end.

Will Wight

I am worried about my ability to convey the scale of the fights. I'm not worried about the fights scaling beyond interest. I think I'm going to design the fights well but am I going to execute them well? I'll try my best I can promise that. One of the big problems I've had with the serious so far is because Lindon and company are always competing against people who are roughly on their level, you never get enough of a sense of how strong they really are. So that's what I'm worried about - not conveying scale because I continue to escalate everything up with the characters.

Cash4Golda

Are any there any characters whose personality is based off of a real person, in your life or otherwise?

Will Wight

Cash for Gold now! So, I don't really do that. That's a common question I get and I understand why, but I actually don't really base characters off of the personalities of people I know. I don't find that to be helpful. For one thing, and I know this sounds bad, I find it difficult to reduce people I know's personality to a character that I am comfortable working with. So, it would be a caricature of them and I don't feel very comfortable...I know a lot of people get a lot of inspiration from that and they are cool with that. Also, all of my friends and family reads my books, so they would immediately know who this was. So, I guess I can take mannerisms from people sometimes, I can take character details and cool names from people, but I don't really do that.

Tievel

Where did the name come from for the territory Lirial?

Will Wight

Yikes. That's a great question because obviously most of the other territories are named after mythical afterlives. Lirial is one of the ones that I just made up. One of the things I do sometimes is I think of words that would just sound cool and I turn them into names. And that's really where Lirial came from. I wanted it to sound cool and ethereal because of course it's the moon territory.

Questioner

How many books do you think Cradle will have?

Will Wight

I think 12. I said that recently on the subreddit. Which I fully understand, not everyone looks at the subreddit, so why would you know that? But I recently decided there is going to 12 for a couple of reasons. One is cradle is not structured in trilogies, but that's four trilogies. That's enough content. Secondly, it's a good length and I think that's about when I want them to reach an endpoint. That feels right to me, I think I can do the stuff I want to do in five more novels. After that there might be a spin-off or a continuation. Who knows? I would like to do some new stuff, because I just love doing new stuff. One of the things I like the most is coming up with new ideas, I just love doing that, and I don't get to do that a lot when I'm working on one series. That is something I'm looking forward to, and I also would like to go back to Traveler's Gate, it's been a long time. But of course, Elder Empire first.

Questioner

How are new methods for creating iron bodies discovered?

Will Wight

That very much depends, there are some Monarchs and Sages and high-level people that just understand how this works, and they'll develop it. There are also some sects that have figured out - they spend a lot of time trying to develop new Iron bodies. People understand the principles behind them, so a lot of people who really understand how it works can guess or develop new ones. And some people can guess at what it might take to develop an Iron body and they can try to execute it. And after that it becomes trial and error.

And the trial and error is really where the awkward part comes in because trial and error often involves people ruining their bodies or dying or going through horrific pain.

Arcturin

Many xianxia books feature notable similarities - development of the dantian as a source of power, sudden enlightenment leading to huge breakthroughs, people yelling "you are courting death!" before getting stomped, and so forth. What are some of your most liked and most disliked themes and similarities found across xianxia novels?

Will Wight

That's a good question. The interesting thing is, you can probably answer this for me. The reason why, is Cradle is my version of that genre with the stuff I dislike cut out and the stuff I like included, with one notable exception. The notable exception being, I really do like the deep roots and Taoist mythology and the themes of intellectual and spiritual self improvement. I've basically stuck with kind of magical martial self improvement, I think I could have done more character development. So I like those things, and I didn't include those mainly because they're not really included in those books, they're more culturally included. So the author often doesn't develop them at all, the reader just understands, the reader in the native culture that these stories are intended for, kind of understands the cultural context there. So Western readers often don't, I know I didn't, didn't get any of this Taoist immortal cultivation stuff. So I like that stuff, and I left it out of Cradle, so that's the only exception to that.

 

What I did with Cradle primarily was, I was reading these Chinese cultivation novels, and as well Korean and martial cultivation novels, there's some Japanese stuff in there and other nationalities and cultures that they came from. So I was reading these stories and I really liked a lot of the concepts, I loved progression, I loved the tie between magic and the universe, I loved all this stuff, the problem is when I recommended them to other people, my friends, they were turned off by the hasty writing. Often they are written in haste, because they're written one page or one chapter at a time every day, and so you can't spend a whole lot of time on each chapter.

Or they're turned off by the translations. The translations are done by fans who I think typically do a fantastic job, but they are fan translators and so they often don't read like they're written in English, they read like they're written in another language and then translated which is perfectly appropriate, but some people don't enjoy that.

 

They were tuned off by some other cultural differences, and one of the main cultural differences that turns people off is they way Chinese novels treat women. The treatment of female characters in Chinese cultivation novels is often very unfortunate, so I'm not going to go too much into that 'cos that's the sure fire way to get myself clubbed over the back of the head, but it is not good. For one thing, on the lowest level, women are treated as weaker than men, even though there's no like in universe magic system reason why that should be true, 'cos all of your strength comes from your cultivation and your advancement and your magic so therefore why should your physical body have any impact on that whatsoever.

So it's always weird that why in this culture would there be a hierarchy between sexes because at no point in this cultures development were men actually stronger than women. So that's always kinda weird, but then also there tends to be a lot of over sexualization/sexual abuse, there's high level of chivalry that ends up kinda being condescending and patronizing in, I'm not naming any specifics here but that tends to be the trend in a lot of the genre. So I was very much not a big fan of that.

So that was one of the things I really I didn't like, and another thing I didn't like, this is something I liked and didn't like, was the ruthless pursuit of power, because on the one hand, if you live in a world where you can learn to do anything, including fly and be immortal, yeah everybody is gonna be ruthless in they're pursuit of power, because that makes sense, why wouldn't you be?

So obviously I kept that to a degree in Cradle, but what I didn't really like was that the main character was very amoral. So what I've tried to do was that I've tried to take Lindon as more toward that side and make him less like that as he's grown and progressed as a character. So I've tried to make him, not more moral, but more sympathetic or more compassionate.

 

Those were some of the things I that liked and didn't like, what I loved is the action focus, the progression focus, the fast pace, a lot of times even though they're telling the same story over and over and over and that does kind of wear on you, because basically every single cultivation novel is the same story, 90% of them I guess. There's always some difference, and the other thing is there's really an infinite amount of ways a story can play out, because it's all about progress, and it's all about personal development, and it's all about getting your universe. So seeing the same story play out in dozens of different ways is honestly pretty cool, I kinda liked that. I started off seeing that as a detriment, and now I almost see it as a pro rather than a con.

 

All the stuff I thought was really good about cultivation novels, the pacing, the progression, the way magic is influenced into the culture and the way that there is no highest level, where the ladder never ends, all that stuff was worked into Cradle. The stuff I didn't like, the treatment of women, the way that it relied on cultural assumptions to deliver the magic system and the general kinda relationship to the reader, and then some of the repetition that I also didn't like, so I cut that stuff. The stuff I liked but then couldn't include was the cultural background which is very rich and amazing and one of the reasons I encourage you to check out the originals, because the original cultural background is really cool.

Questioner

How much does an audiobook cost to produce?

Will Wight

That question varies wildly and is difficult for me to answer. It doesn't cost me very much in terms of the amount it generates, but that's because I'm comparing it to audiobooks in successful series that I know are gonna generate a lot of money. So therefore to me, they make a lot more than they cost. But if you're just trying to get your own audiobook made, it may be relatively expensive. That's probably a question better suited for Travis Baldree.

nighthawk7890 (paraphrased)

we need an anime

Will Wight (paraphrased)

When I looked into how much it cost to develop an anime series, it takes 1.5 to 2 million dollars for one season of anime and I don't have 1.5 to 2 million dollars, but over time, potentially, we could generate that, 'cause I do put most of the money that I make back into hidden gnome. I pay myself a salary out of the money that goes into the business. What we do with the money is when we get the check at the end of the month what happens is amazon cuts us a check two months after the royalties come in. When we get the money, we immediatly put 10 to 15 percent into an account to giveaway, or no, the minimum we do is I think 12 percent. We range it between 12 and 20 depending where the check comes from. That's the first thing we do and after that we pay taxes. Of course, the whole amount, I'm not cheating anybody out of taxes. We also save and pay expenses and employees and that kind of thing. I'm one of the employees we pay, so, I get my salary. Then, after that most of it goes into the business account - we save it or we invest it in the business. So, we're saving up quite a bit of money. My personal preference would be that someday we have enough stocked up that we could someday do an anime. That'd be amazing. Those are my nerd dreams.

Patriarch Core Split

Have you ever considered partnering with an artist to make a graphic novel of one or more of your books?

Will Wight

Yes I have considered that. So as a matter of fact yesterday I was at Ringling which is primarily an art university, and so I was talking to some of the professors there about what it would take to get as graphic novel or a comic produced. One of the things they suggested which I thought was very interesting that some other authors do, is instead of a full length graphic novel, something like a 20 or 30 page comic, that could come out more frequently and not require a novel length script. Because a graphic novel requires a novel's worth of development, and a shorter comic doesn't. Thats something i'd be very interested in, and they said they had some students who were interested in that. I know there are alot of artists you could hire on a commission basis, and that would be something that I would definitely look into.

 

But writing a comic script is a seperate skill set that i have never developed because i have never written a comic before. So I would either have to learn how to do that or work with somebody else who was really good at that particular... (Will gets cut off by a tea delivery in a fancy mug, available on willwight.com!!)  So something like the deathmatches would make a great comic, Maybe! maybe! that would be a really cool....I would love to be able to see that stuff visually.

 

One of the reasons i've considered a comic is I know in the action/visual heavy series; with a lot of magic and a lot of action, they fit well in comic form. So that would be something I think my books would be suited for, but obviously I cant do it on my own, and thus far since i'm the only content producer, other than Travis Baldree who's fantastic, anything we do, it has to be within my abilities and I dont know how to write a comic. So I could do my best and I could learn how or I could learn from someone else who's good at it, but thats definitely something we're absolutely considering.

TristanLN

Will, Can you name and describe a sword path we have not seen yet in the books, Thank you, big fan

Will Wight

I dunno if i can name a sword path, because I wanna make sure that, naming is one of the things I spend the most time on and its very difficult, and so there could be some that I have named and theyre in my notes and there could be some that I know about but i havent named yet, so naming it is harder than describing it.

 

But, i actually was thinking today about some of the things that we haven't seen in the books, and some of the things we haven't seen are some weird sword paths, because there are some! There are sword and life paths, where there is this like laser thin green light that cuts through your life line and severs you, and that kind of thing. There are sword and fire paths where you fight with kind of like lightsabers. There would be alot of really neat fun flexible sword paths.

 

Now of course the most common thing are sword and blood paths, so plain sword paths are common, sword and blood paths are common. There are sword and earth paths, which I think was what Kiro was on, he might have been force, I don't remember off the top of my head, but they're similar, thats why I get those confused. 

 

So those are some of the kinda things that you can do with a sword path. There are also of course sword and wind paths that kind of duplicate what you see in anime where the wind user sends the razor sharp gust of wind at his opponent, the "kamaitachi" kind of thing, thats a path. So there are definitely things like that, pretty much any combination. I wanted to do a sword and dream path, because I just thought that would be fun, just to kind of see what it did, like does it cut your mind and your memories?  But I haven't developed that out yet.

LCSpartan051

Who was the last person from cradle to join the Abidan, and which faction did they join?

Will Wight

I dont know the answer to that off the top of my head. some of these things i'm going to have either say read and find out or I dont know off the top of my head 'cos some of this stuff comes from notes, and I dont really have time to consult my notes, so I am gonna just have to say...sorry.

Questioner

How much of my writing do I [Will] keep?

Will Wight

I usually keep most of it, now, but I used to write basically two words for every word I kept. Less that I was going through and cutting things and more that I would write something and I would just toy with it. Over the course of developing a scene, I would end up writing twice as much. It would take me a thousand words to write a five hundred word scene.