My original outline, pieces of which I'd already written, took me in directions I was no longer happy with. Everything necessary to the "main plot" of Cradle I had decided back in Unsouled, and of course I'd done some auxiliary world-building as well, but this was where I really fleshed out Cradle as a world.Īs a result, though, quite a few things were left by the wayside.įor one thing, the original vision for this "arc" of Lindon's journey was a lot more like the standard cultivation novel journey. This was where I did a lot more background work on the world as a whole, including detailed profiles on all the Monarchs and their factions, histories, and relationships. But with the series' unexpected reception, I really wanted to make that transition work. To be clear, I always intended to start the series in a manner familiar to any cultivation novel-readers and take it further into original territory as Lindon got farther from home. This was where I knew I had a chance to distinguish myself from generic cultivation novels and define Cradle as a distinct entity. It worked out, though, so it was totally intentional all along.Īnyway, by the end of Soulsmith, it was clear that Cradle was way more popular than I had any reason to expect, and I was feeling the pressure.
Was it because I hated my first draft and started over? Did a complete copy of Blackflame fall through a crack from a parallel universe and cause me to re-think it from the ground up? Did a future version of myself travel back in time to stop me from writing my original vision?Īs I mentioned a few days ago in my Soulsmith post, I did not expect Cradle to be "the next big thing." It was supposed to be a low-effort side series I wrote in my spare time.Īlthough the phrase "low-effort" needs to be held in the most massive quotation marks you can find, because while that was the intention, I ended up putting way more time and effort into Unsouled than I promised I would.
I shared a full deleted scene from Blackflame yesterday, and today I just wanted to give you some backstory on why I have so much deleted / unused material for Blackflame in the first place.
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