Recent entries

Lil' Blue

How old is Saeya?

Will Wight

35. Also, Eithan being the youngest in the Empire refers to how old he was when he became an Underlord. Saeya only recently did.  

Eransamo

Is there a type of sacred beast that Orthos is afraid of? like mice?

Will Wight

Sharks.

Chimeric

Only 8 teams will be in the uncrowned competition.

Will Wight

Eight factions, not eight teams. Yerin is being colloquial up there.

Each faction brings four teams.

dyring

How old is Malice? How often does she give birth?

Will Wight

Malice is 4-500 years old. That’s a kid every ~4 years.

Will Wight

Another Underlord blooper from Will posted on discord:

 

Orthos blew smoke into the night air. "Lindon, all this time I have been lying to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I adopted this form merely to gain your trust. Orthos is not even my real name."

The turtle floated up into the air, limbs kicking as though swimming through water. Long

white hair flowed back from his leathery head, and a scythe appeared clutched in the turtle's

mouth.

He spoke with his voice muffled by the shaft of the weapon. "It is I...Ozriel!"

Conzerban

How do you get inspiration for characters? 

Will Wight

I described my outline process earlier, so when I go through the book, I realize kind of what people are, what roles they're going to play, so I then label them kind of that way. So somebody like Harmony I put as like "Akura young heir" kinda thing, and that's how I refer to him in my notes. Ziel was a specific character I was trying to develop so I called him Ziel, and then the other two were kind of "rival 1" and "rival 2" or whatever. So then I go through and I go "Okay, so now I know what their role is in the plot, and how they have to relate to Lindon". Then I go what would be a cool personality and arc and background to give them, and so I do that a number of ways. First of all I kinda know the sorta person they have to be because I know what sort of role they have to perform. So I know that Ekeri in Ghostwater had to be standing outside, had to really want to get to Lindon, and there's a few motivations she could have for that; she could really hate Lindon, she could be very curious, she could have been scorned by him in some way, or she could just be really greedy and want the treasure, and so I when I thought greedy treasure I thought dragons, and the dragons are one of the factions on the island, I already knew that. So I was like oh great they had gold dragons that makes sense, dragon greed, that all fits, and so I alter it from there, so that's where that comes from.

 

So that's how I do it, I do role and then I do sort of now I know kinda their traits, now I can build a personality around that, and then I can figure out based on the other people in the world, kinda what a cool other thing would be to do, like cool power sets to give them, and that kind of thing.

Somebody asked if I could talk about how I come up with names of the characters. Every way. All the ways. I spend so much freaking time naming characters....so much....its hurts....deep inside....I cry.....  No it really is one of the most difficult things for me, I don't know why that's the hardest thing for me, because I kinda just do baby name books, I do random names, I pick a word that kinda has a sort of feeling that I want for a character and a tweak it until it looks like a name. I try to give the the different clans and factions their own naming conventions, both for cohesion and to kinda build the world around them and just to give me a shortcut with the name, cos like I gotta give them a dragon type name, or an Akura type name. You like the Ziel name? I'm very glad, because Ziel was one of the few names where I was like, i really like this name, Ziel spelled this way, and then so I was just looking for a character to attach it to, so I was like I'm definitely using this freakin' character name because I don't want to make up another one.

 

So whenever I do think of a name, I have a name document on my phone, its one of the ones I use the most, so I hear a unique name or I think of a variation of another name, I write it down in my notes and come back to it later when I'm looking for a name.

Donorgyll

How much do you find yourself influenced by what you think the fans want to happen in your stories? Do you ever find yourself writing something that you think should happen based on how characters act and then rewriting because you don't think fans will be happy about it? 

Will Wight

No that does not happen. So i never write something that i think is in character for the characters and then say no cant do that cos fans wont like it. There are a few things that i know that i'm not allowed to do because the fans wouldn't like it, so for instance...ahhhh....no that's a little bit of a spoiler so... The point is I've got to be careful how i treat Yerin, for instance, because some people take the heroine of a series very seriously. So there's things I cant do with Yerin that i could do with a male character, even one who's in the exact same..yeah see..he he see I've got Andrew Rowe in there telling me not to harm Yerin. So I've got some restriction on the characters in that way, so there are story actions closed to me based on how the reader will perceive it.

 

Having said that, what i'm trying to do always, is i'm trying to create an experience for the reader. So one of the things we say a lot around the team is "purpose, target group, strategy", so I really say that a lot. So its "what is your purpose", "who is your target group" and "what is your strategy for reaching that target group for your purpose". That really kind of permeates everything i do. So when i'm writing these stories, I kind of have an idea of who my target audience is, and what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to give them a sort of experience, an emotional reaction, a journey, a something.  So that's always how i'm processing everything. So when I say that this action is in character for the characters, the reason why i want it to be in character for the characters is because i know that that improves the experience for the reader. So there's nothing i do without the reader in mind. I never do anything like "man I know what Lindon would really do but i gotta hold back cos the readers aren't gonna like it", that's... that never happens. But it is still, its the major factor, is what is the reader experience going to be, everything is about the story and about the reader experience.

Kandra

The Eldest Nye mentions that before Kai lost his siblings and his sanity, he would have made a 'good' leader of Valinhall... Would you agree with the Eldest's assessment of young Kai, and what was Kai like back in the day? 

Will Wight

The eldest Nye has kind of a, has a particular set of criteria of what he thinks a good leader would be. This is not necessarily yours or mine. His definition is somebody who would be a strong leader and who would prioritise the advancement of Valinhall over anything. He believes that Kai would have done that basically because Kai had no friends and family outside Valinhall, and also Kai is a really good swordsman, so Kai's strong and he's resourceful and he has no connections that would prohibit him from doing all the stuff that the Eldest Nye wants Simon to do.

Slogan

What is your general outlining process when preparing to write one of your novels? 

Will Wight

Okay, yeah good question. Like i said, i'm working on revamping that right now, so that's part of what i'm talking about when i say i'm trying to change to process, so what i'm trying to do cos...okay...so for Underlord, i wrote an outline of it and then i was going to sit on it and focus on Kings and Killers, so i wrote an outline for it last June, or something like that, like June or July. Then i went to work on King and Killers, and i was just going to sit on the outline. Then i came back to it and i felt that everything was wrong, like it was terrible. So then i wrote another outline, and i sat on it for a long time, then i got back to it and i was like okay, i could write this, i know that the cradle books take me a couple of months to write so i'll....its been a long time working on Kings and Killers, let me get back to Underlord, and i was actually trying to write the book, and i got back to it and i wrote the outline again. I'm redoing my ideas too much, i'm undoing my work too much, and the funny thing was, it turned out, the final thing I landed on was almost identical to my original outline. I'd taken it through 3 or 4 long extensive revisions, and I ended up just ending up at the first outline. With that in mind, when i really do an outline, especially a series i'm already familiar with, is i take the general concept of the book, so i've got something about this book that i like; so Ghostwater of course was, i knew i needed to get Lindon up to par with the really good people of his generation, like he needed to be able to fight alongside with Yerin. So therefore I needed to power him up, so i thought okay, whats a cool setting in which he could power up, and i really love underwater settings so i did a crumbling underwater world and then i was like okay so now who are the other people, and i thought other people there that are trying to power up!

So I just brainstormed on that for a while and thought of cool concepts. That's the fun part of the outline, so i get to think of all the cool stuff that i think could go in there, and originally when i designed Ghostwater it had nine different levels and nine different wells each of which had a different aspect, and each floor of the tower; it was a tower but still still in a separate world. It was a tower because you got deeper and deeper, you went down, and so each one was a different level of the ocean, and so they had different ocean biomes, so there was a coral one and a whatever. So each one had a different survival element too, as they went down, but that was way too much, i knew that that book would be a million words long. So i knew i'd have to condense that, it was way too much. So i therefore had to go now i have to get this into plot structure, i have to go okay so what is this that's going to be.....traditional plot structure, i'm not going to explain that here, you probably already know that, but you can also look it up. So i had to make sure that it fit into the three acts and all that jazz. So then i started trying to do that and i came up with the first draft of the story, and then i had to come up with the personalities for the other people, the enemies, the antagonists. I ended up going through a lot of possible people he could have been fighting in Ghostwater. Then I had to go do character arcs for, so Lindon, what did he learning, what does he learn at the end that he didn't know at the beginning, and Yerin and Mercy as well, all the main characters. At that point I've developed kind of an outline, and write from there.

 

The problem is, and this is the reason i started explaining my revision, what i'm learning first. The problem is that a lot of times i then dont stick with that outline, i use it as a jumping off point, and then kind of develop it on the fly as i go, and that i think, i think i end up working less efficiently that way. So that's my process.

hosoke

You said recently that you'd made some changes to your process so that you could write Elder Empire better and finish OKAK, what are those changes, what do they look like and how do they help?

Will Wight

The changes to my process, honestly iv'e been to work on and iterate on if you don't mind that word, my process basically constantly from the beginning, i'm always trying to write better. There are two parts of the process that i kind of separate it into and that "writing a better book" and "writing a book better". So writing a better book is sort of figuring out how to sit on the book i'm writing on and try to make that book as good as possible, and the other part of that is trying to make it so that the process of writing that book is superior.

So what I've been really working on is trying to front load a lot of the writing part, because i tend to lose a lot of time to rethinking and changing and tweaking and really thinking over these different parts of the book, and i tend to lose a lot of time doing that, it feels inefficient, it feels like l'm treading over the same ground. So a lot of things i think are very important as i'm developing the book end up not really mattering. I tend to rethink the ideas a lot, so what i'm trying to do now is not give myself to do that, to instead produce a book and then develop it from there. So I'm doing a lot more about what they teach you in writing class, which is you write the first draft, you don't think about it too much and then to go and develop it afterwards.     but its hard to do, because i'm not used to that

notacommittee

Which of your characters would you most like to be friends with in real life? 

Will Wight

That's a great question, I don't know, I feel like i'd get along fine with Eithan, despite the fact that he pushed me off a ledge in one of my short stories. Little Blue, that would be kind of awesome, I would love to have little blue around that'd be a lot of fun.  I really think i'd get along with Eithan, I think i'd get along with Dross. Any of those kinda quipy people i feel like I would just really enjoy talking to.

KingGoomba

How much do you plan ahead of the series? do you have the ending in mind? 

Will Wight

I knew a lot of the major beats from the beginning. So i knew a lot of the major twists and turns and where its going and kinda the general overview of the series and a few of the specific things that are going to happen. So that I've had in mind from the beginning and we've been always been heading in the same direction. 

 

And then i knew a few more general things that i wanted to do and i slotted them in whenever i could. For instance i knew i wanted to do a tournament arc, Andrew Rowe and I have talked about that quite a bit. I wanted to do a tournament arc, i wanted to do some other arcs, some other things. So Ghostwater was a  great example of something i wanted to do; a "pocket world" arc, but i didn't know what shape that was going to take r anything like that. So i knew that kind of thing, and then i knew specific things that are going to happen in the plot, like obviously the suriel/ozriel thing is going to go somewhere, obviously the destruction of sacred valley thing is going to go somewhere, i knew all that.

 

And then in terms of when the series will end, that's a bit of a sticky point, because i don't think its too much of a spoiler to say that Lindon is going to keep advancing, i don't think that's throwing anybody off here. So the question is do I end it with Cradle? do i end it when he gets too strong for cradle and then has to choose whether to advance. So do i end it when he has to make that decision, and he either stays there or goes off? Or do I end it after that? do i just keep it going? Because there's stuff he could do at the Abidan level, interacting with Suriel, all that kinda stuff. So i don't know how far i'm going to go on that, i don't know where i'm going to cut it off. I know kinda the direction those are all headed, but it depends on how the series it doing in 6 or 7 books.

Rahl

So you mentioned earlier you're on year 6, and you talked some about your team and the jobs they do, paint us a picture of what year 12 looks like? whats in the future?

Will Wight

Oh hey i like that question! I've never gotten that question before! So , year 12, i have difficulty projecting out very far at all. So we have some long goals, its hard to know where we're gonna be in 6 years, there has been a lot of explosive growth, over the last 6 years as the books have been trending well. I made as much last year with one book release, Ghostwater, as I did the year before that with two releases, Skysworn and Blackflame. A lot of that is a direct result of the team, audio books, that kind of thing. But its also because the fan base is growing, so people are finding the books. So I cant even imagine where we'll be in 6 years. It could be anything from we're operating as a small publishing company and we have other authors on board working together as a team, or it could be I've lost all income and i'm teaching English in middle school. So who knows, Amazon could collapse at any time...for me! Amazon's not going to collapse, but my income through Amazon could collapse at any time. They could make a change tomorrow that would really screw me on income and I'd have to figure out another way to sell books. So the longer term goals, i'm trying to do some other forms of story telling, we've talked about a visual novel or simple game or something like that, we've talked about a comic book, we've talked about little stuff like that. Could be other things like that, could be picking up other authors, could be a lot of things, i dunno, its a good question.

 

Cradle dating sim? yes 100%

The Lost Reader

The last time you were on the Discord chat, you said that people generally don't do drugs in Cradle because it would harm their advancement?

Will Wight

Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds like something I'd say. I don't remember half the things I say. That sounds about right. One of the big things is there's definitely some recreational alcohol-use, drug-use on Cradle just like there would be on most worlds but the difference is, in Cradle, there's a lot of--first of all, it's harder to affect a sacred artist's body because everybody on Cradle is superhuman, therefore, you have to get these really expensive, difficult elixirs and stuff in order to do this. The people who can afford those are often the best sacred artists, strongest sacred artists, and so they're a lot more about discipline and control. And so, typically, you just don't see a whole lot of that. Like, Monarchs aren't lounging around--most Monarchs aren't lounging around in their palaces, you know, smoking hookahs or whatever. I don't know what image I was trying to conjure there. Culturally, that's not what catches on. But, of course, there are some. I mean refining is a thing so, obviously, you'd have some really crazy weird substances.

Valinora

What character do you most closely identify with?

Will Wight

I used to have an ready answer for this but I don't remember what it was, something from Travellers Gate I think.

Maybe Petal? the reclusive alchemist from Elder Empire. To be real, the character that has the most of me in them is probably Simon. What i tend to do in these action series, is the main characters are half normal action protagonists, so i'm gonna to the right thing cos its right, and I will fight if i have to and defend the weak and all that stuff. And then half the fleshed out person they would be in a more literary story, so they were more their own people. The half of Simon that was more unique and more distinct was mostly the way i feel all the time, he's sorta insecure, no matter how good he is at something he never feels like he is. Therefore there's a lot of times he feels like he should say something, but he's actually going to say nothing. Lindon has kinda a similar sorta thing, but it comes from a very different place and I think it ends up demonstrating differently, so they're sorta similar people but I don't think of them the same way as i'm writing them. I think they would make very different choices in a lot of ways.

Questioner

Is purity and quality of madra only about aspects or mostly about aspects, because I was thinking if it is, then Lindon and Eithan's pure cores are more or less very similar, except that Eithan did something with the soulfire to make it more dense or something along those lines?

Will Wight

So Eithan and Lindon's cores are very similar in that they're using the same jade cycling technique, so therefore they're increasing quantity and using external means to increase quality. So yes they would be very similar.

Arch

As an author, how do you get your statistics on your books, do you go through Amazon and how comprehensive is that information?

Will Wight

Its not very comprehensive, that's the bottom line. Amazon gives us some information, Andrew can weigh in on this to. So i get to see how many sales I've gotten when from which region of the world, and that's basically it

Andrew Rowe

There's also author central for looking at our rankings and ranking change over time.

Will Wight

That's true.

Questioner

Don't take this the wrong way, I really would like to buy some merch.

Will Wight

I'm already taking it the wrong way

Questioner

But i don't think a lot of it looks great, so is there any future plans to maybe hire an illustrator/graphics artist to get a cohesive style or an overarching emblem or some graphics for the overarching series rather than just the book logos?

Will Wight

So again that comes into, i could spend more time developing the merchandise, but why? Is it worth the time and the effort, and thus far it doesn't seem to be.

Lil' Blue

I will say the mugs are really awesome, the mugs are very big and they fit soup, and you know, very few mugs can fit soup. 

Will Wight

Yeah actually I really like the mugs, I use the mugs, but that's more of a practicality thing. 

Questioner

 Will we see more about refining? 

Will Wight

Maybe, I think probably not, simply for the reason that Lindon is not a refiner, so probably not. I think probably i'll just go deeper into Soulsmithing. I just don't know that i'll have the space for it. I have some rules and mechanics for it, I actually had drafted up a pretty extensive refining scene in Blackflame, and there was a whole refiner character, and he actually...that's neither here nor there, but anyway, I ended up deleting that and I gave basically his role in the plot to Cassius and a couple of other people, so I ended up not doing the refining scene. So probably not, but maybe , I'm not closed off to it.

Questioner

On the force thing, did you say that force aura is gathered via all kinetic energy or is it consistent? would a falling axe or a falling hammer generate enough force aura to use?

Will Wight

The intensity of aura changes depending on where you are, so that is going to affect whether something generates enough aura for you to use. Also so you, as you advance on your path need better and better sources of aura, so something that would be plenty for a copper would be like nothing for a truegold, they'd be like "this is useless to me". Its like black flame, one match vs an erupting volcano.