Recent entries

    Will's Life ()
    #1982 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 ()
    #1983 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.

    Will's Life ()
    #1984 Copy

    Aru

    I haven't played League of Legends in a few years, is everyone still as salty as I remember? Also, is my boy Darius still meta?

    Will Wight

    Darius is actually really strong right now. There have been some great changes in the last few years, especially in terms of the client and UI.     The community is still cancer.
    Will's Life ()
    #1985 Copy

    Lil' Blue

    Are your Facebook posts carefully planned out or more stream of consciousness?

    Will Wight

    Not planned at all. People said I needed to post more, so I started posting memes and stuff.     I kind of hate doing it, but I try to make them a little fun for me.
    Writing Advice ()
    #1986 Copy

    Polycore

    And I feel like I agree with you Will, there shouldn't be too much emphasis on the levels, it's not the interesting part of the story, only some context and eventually motivation for the characters

    Will Wight

    I wholeheartedly agree, but evidently there are a lot of people out there who really do love the stats and the levels and the stat pages and all that stuff. It bores me, but it seems there are a lot of people out there who specifically like that stuff. Idk why.

    For me, the interesting parts of having a world that worked like a game with stats and levels and everything would be how all that junk impacted the story

    I mean, I want there to be fewer stats and shorter stat pages so that each of the stats and skills has more impact. When the MC has one level each in sewing, dodging, jumping, leaping, underwater basket-weaving, interpretive dance, hat-juggling, carrot-eating, and everything else they've ever done, I don't want to see that on their stat page.   That's a pretty cool element, I like that.   The pile-up of skills is what turned me off of Kumo desu ga, Nani ga?, which was once one of my favorites. But she got a point in a skill any time she did anything for the first time. Literally anything. It drove me crazy. She spins her web into a lasso? Bing, point in web manipulation and lasso-tying.   If there are too many, I can't keep track of them. And if they're not important enough to keep track of, don't include them in the first place. D&D is actually a great example, because frankly it would make a really good LitRPG. And now we have come full circle to the early days of fantasy novels.
    Writing Advice ()
    #1987 Copy

    Aru

    They can exploit the gamer demographic, which is huge relative to the fantasy novel reader demographic, and they pad page count with long tables     Which boosts Kindle Unlimited money because of page turns.

    Will Wight

    I'm not a LitRPG fan or author, but this is a misapprehension that for some reason keeps spreading. Stat pages and tables almost never significantly increase page count or increase the amount of Kindle Unlimited revenue. The increase is laughably small. No one I've ever seen is including those stat pages to boost word count or page count, but everyone thinks they are. It baffles me. They're including those stat pages because it's expected in the genre and it makes the world feel more like a game. If there were a way to include a hyperlink so that you could check the character's stat page at any given point in the book and see his stats, that would become the norm. Unfortunately, including stat pages is just awkward in a written book, so they don't have great options.

    Writing Advice ()
    #1990 Copy

    Mierin

    the author kept trying to like pull game stats out of his ass like it was wow where you knew everything going into it instead of giving the reader a system to work with

    Will Wight

    Yeah, that's why I'm not a fan of LitRPG as a genre     I feel like I should be, and part of me wants to support the LitRPG community, but it's just not my cup of tea     I want it to be, though. It makes me want to write some LitRPG, to see if I could create a LitRPG I really liked

    Writing Advice ()
    #1991 Copy

    Aru

    Alright thanks Will. I suppose it's time for me to try and get back in touch with some people I knew in the fantasy creative writing club back at University. I don't think I'm going to get a MFA though. I don't know about your experiences but back when I was in college people kinda looked down on SF & F relative to real literature, which turned me off on my schools whole creative writing program. I'm not sure if it was different for you at school but I realized SF & F just wasn't something they get to explore in that program. It's a shame but even though Fantasy has been growing by leaps and bounds there's still plenty of people in academia who can't conceive of it qualifying as literature.     Which is bogus in my mind. Since when were their rules on what's literature and what's not? I believe in his writing course Brandon Sanderson talked about how SF & F is the only genre that's unbounded and unrestricted in scope, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

    Will Wight

    Yes. Exactly the same. They're all about the literary fiction train, which is complete crap and I disagree with their fundamental philosophy on literature almost totally. My master's was good for honing my basic skills in an environment where they made me write a lot, critique other people's work, and evaluate critiques of my own work. Those are all vital skills. I also got a very good grasp on what my strengths and weaknesses are as a writer.     You can learn all those lessons for free. However, I wouldn't have. I wasn't disciplined enough for it. So the master's was worth it for me.  
    Will's Life ()
    #1992 Copy

    Hjorth

    Since you don't like coffee, what would you drink if you wanted to relax?

    Will Wight

    Those Monster Energy drinks in the white can. Idk what they’re called. Apparently they’re zero sugar and zero carbs, but idc about that, it’s my favorite energy drink flavor. I assumed it was like normal Monster but worse, and I could not have been more wrong. It’s like drinking the blood of an angel.

    Writing Advice ()
    #1993 Copy

    Aru

    Ooh, a questions for Will page. I'll ask a question. This is more relevant to writing than any of your books though: Where do you go to find good beta readers? I hate pushing qualifications and saying "You must be this good to read my writing!" , but I've learned you can't just take advice from anyone, otherwise your story will turn into something you didn't want it to be. Maybe it's my fault and I'm just not good enough at sorting the good advice from the bad, but if you've got a link to a magic El Dorado for people who can give good criticism, I'd appreciate it.

    Will Wight

    The best thing I got out of my Master's program was a lot of experience both giving and receiving feedback. I learned a lot about how to take feedback, which feedback to take, and how to sort through people's responses to the work.     The key to understanding people's feedback (in my experience) is that Neil Gaiman quote: “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” In terms of picking beta readers, you want people who will tell you the truth about their experience as a reader. Then you can decide how to apply that to the book. If they're people who read and they'll share their experience with you honestly, it's good feedback.
    Writing Advice ()
    #1998 Copy

    Mestama

    Will, what is your opinion on writing assistants?

    Will Wight

    I guess I should have addressed my above answer to you as well.

    I might have misunderstood the question, but it sounds like you may have an idea of a "writing assistant" as something like a manga artist's team of assistants, where they help him draw side characters and backgrounds and stuff and the whole thing goes down under one name on the cover. That doesn't happen so much in writing. Usually you have ghostwriters or a group under a pseudonym (Animorphs was written by a team of ghostwriters under the same name so that they could produce a book every month), but that's pretty much always something you can find out with a little research.

    Normally, the person who gives you a lot of suggestion and help on your writing is called your editor. I don't know if I've ever heard of someone who leaves writing certain scenes (or certain POVs or whatever) to assistants and then claims all the credit. Theoretically I'm sure someone must have done that somewhere, but I'm not aware of it as a common practice.(edited)If anything, writing as a team is harder than writing alone.

    Writing Advice ()
    #1999 Copy

    Tievel1

    Will, what would you change if you had to do Cradle over?

    Will Wight

    There's a lot (as with all the books I've ever written), but I can hit the highlights off the top of my head. I would keep the series only in Lindon's POV, perhaps in first-person, or maybe in third and then just do one POV from Lindon, one from the bad guy, and maybe a brief interlude from Suriel.

    EDIT FOR CLARITY: This means no Yerin or Eithan chapters, for instance.(edited)I would change vital aura, maybe getting rid of it entirely, but at least defining it more clearly. Not because it doesn't work now, but for the sake of removing ambiguity and increasing clarity.Basically I would streamline the whole thing so it's more immediately clear.Also, I would give Lindon more of a personal connection to the world and everything he's doing.So lots of general changes. There are specific things I would tweak, but mostly in the service of this general style change so that everything feels more immediate. I feel like it would increase the impact of the stories.

    I would change vital aura, maybe getting rid of it entirely, but at least defining it more clearly. Not because it doesn't work now, but for the sake of removing ambiguity and increasing clarity.

    Basically I would streamline the whole thing so it's more immediately clear.

    Also, I would give Lindon more of a personal connection to the world and everything he's doing.

    So lot of general changes. There are specific things I would tweak, but mostly in the service of this general style change so that everything feels more immediate. I feel like it would increase the impact of the stories.

    Writing Advice ()
    #2000 Copy

    Will Wight

    I'm regularly tempted to go back and clean up old books, but that's not something I can make common practice. I could always go back and make an old book better. Always. There will never be a time where I couldn't improve one of my old works, because I'm always learning and growing.

    So at a certain point, I have to let the stories go. I could work on each compilation and change them so that they flow better and work better as three-part stories, but where does that end? Do I change the individual books to match those changes? If not, then the people who buy the books individually and the people who buy the collections are getting different stories. If so, then I've told a story in three-book arcs rather than in one-book arcs, which is a very different approach to storytelling.

    It just becomes complicated. And I think it has to be rare to go back and make significant rewrites to a story, because it's too easy to justify. I'd rather improve by writing new stories and getting better as a writer over time than by constantly fixing stories I've already written.