Q&A:

Hi Guys!

Ask me anything you’d like (although I may avoid revealing spoilers) and I will add the questions here after answering them for others to see!

If I can’t get to your question immediately I will when I wake up!

Q1) How much pot do u use before coming up with the titles?: Who needs pot when you have sleep deprivation! Me. Probably.

Q2) Will you continue to the point that Andross is no longer in school?: This one is a really minor spoiler.

I always intended to finish Mark of the Crijik from the beginning, and it was always going to go past his school years.

Q3) How much time do you spend writing: I spend approximately 2-3 hours writing a chapter in the morning (I wake up at 6am and post at 10am for patrons). The RR chapters are done every day of the week during a more distracting time of the day and take 3-4 hours. Editing for both takes 30 minutes - 1 hour depending on the chapter. Some edits take hours (longest was 11 hours before I hit the deadline and absolutely had to post). Posting the chapters themselves takes about 15-25 minutes on all websites.

So approximately a minimum of 4 hours a day for writing.

Q4) Is it difficult to manage your time with such a fast pace?: It is sort of! Some chapters come easily, and others don't. The hardest thing to manage isn't time, its actually mental health. Posting so much and spending so much time on writing can bring a lot of pressure when the deadlines are every day or so.

Q5) Do you (or did you) also have another job at the same time?: I don't! Unfortunately I lost my job a few months ago when I became disabled (I can't really use my hands anymore). But that means more time for writing! Woo! (I use dictation)

Q6) How'd you come up with your initial idea: We were given a prompt for the story contest and I went from there. The title itself was a twist on another story I did an outline for years ago called Cry of the Crijiik. That was my first foray into horror as a genre and I wanted to honour it by incorporating the name in part into this fiction.

Sidenote: I also wanted to test a few new things. Such as writing a male lead (previously my major book leads were all female), writing in first person (I usually only write in third person and don't know how to do first person), I wanted to finish a fiction (in progress), and I wanted to try improve in a genre I hadn't written before (LitRPG/Super Magic World). Previously I wrote VRMMO fiction as my main genre.

Q7) How's the process of taking said ideas and turning it into a story?: I'm what's known as a pantser, so I come up with ideas on the fly and put them on to paper. I generally have a few major points outlined and putting them to paper is easy but fleshing them out is the challenge for me.

Q8) Any investment tips to make me rich quick?! I heard I should put all my money in doge coin /s: I hear the moon is a great place to live if you don't need to breathe! Is that answer related to investing? It is not haha

Q9) What would be your favourite bit of the story that has been written that you hadn't originally planned?: Definitely the final battle with Eli. It was a rush to write and I felt that for the singular chapter it was I was really in tune. Also the one of the upcoming chapters (approx two chapters ahead) was just really fun in general to write. I felt I got to explore parts of the world that aren't major, but add to the magic.

Q10) Are you structured writer, as in do you plan out chapters ahead or do you write and see where to the characters and story takes you? :) I am a panster (not structured) writer! I like to write and see where the story takes me, although I do have and end in mind (for the story, for the arc, etc, but not in too much detail for the middle).

I've tried to mitigate this by learning structure by reading and editing prior novels, so that I can add it automatically into my writing. That will be a skill that I take years to learn further.

Q11) Whats your favourite colour?: Red!

Q12: What was the first fiction you read on royal road?: Eight (or maybe nine) years ago, I read a fiction called Legendary Moonlight Scultpor. It was the fiction that led to the creation of RoyalRoad as we know it (RoyalRoad itself is a term from the novel). My first novel was a direct fanfiction, borrows the setting but not the characters, and was published here (it wasn’t that early, I was shy, but it was around fiction number 350).

Q13: How do you get Wombo Dream to output all those Symbols (or legit looking pictures at all)? o.O: Time! Usually I just sit there generating pictures for half an hour or longer until a good one comes up. However, key words are also key -heh- and the theme too. Usually I use the mystic theme and type stuff such as 'symbols' 'lava rune-symbol-alphabet-letter' etc.

However, most of it will turn out badly. The key is dedication with constant refreshing until you get something good.

Q14) How do you get Womba to make the symbol cards? Every time I use the program I get a complete garbled mess. How do you use keywords and what theme are you using?: I've used two main themes for the symbols; Mystical and Moonwalker. Mystical is the one used for all symbols pre-chapter 75.

My keywords are usually along these lines: Stonehenge, line, symbol, (colour of choice). This will eventually yield a symbol of my variety. The reason I use the term 'stonehenge' is to provide a sense of familiarity among all symbols. They are all variations on what the AI generates from images of stonehenge.

That being said, not all symbols follow this structure. For the metal symbol I typed 'metal symbol' into mystic and got that.

For more complicated and layered symbols I type the words: Runes, symbols, rock/metal/orb etc.

Q15) As a pantser, how hard is it, for you, to manage the intricacies that surround writing fiction, i.e : target audience, genre, themes, plot structure, cadence, etc? Or do you only notice after its written?: Its not too difficult to picture the target audience, themes and plot structure. It is mostly done as I write, but because there is always downtime between words I come up with plots and themes a lot quicker than I write them. Often I pants the first chapter and by the time I've slept I have come up with how the story will end. The target audience and genre are in my mind from the beginning, but those can go a bit out of control.

I initially wanted this to be a stat grind fiction with tons of levels and skills and also endless action. That ended up not working out with my style. Next fiction I will likely try again to do that type of novel.

Q16) Does what you traditionally read, influence your plot devices, how you structure sentences, and what plots you focus on?: Absolutely. But that being said, I've read a fair amount of stuff in my life and I've forgotten most of it. Its there in my subconscious, influencing my decisions and making me aware of tropes that I'd like to explore in different ways. Usually that's how I start my stories, reading something and thinking about a small part that I would expand on and do differently.

Sentence structure is different. I changed that to suit RR's tastes. The readers mostly read on mobile, so large paragraphs have disappeared from my writing style on purpose to accommodate that.

Q17) How do you use dictation software and not have problems with punctuation?: A lot of editing, and a lot of practice! I have been using dictation software for 7 months now (since I became disabled) and the first five months did crap all. A major part of doing this fiction was that I was finally getting a hang of the software and I wanted to force myself to use it until it was perfect.

1: I changed my accent when talking. This took months and I am still improving it. It has drastically increased my accuracy.

2: I'm not the worst at punctuation, and I went out of my way to get better over time, especially in the last few months. That means I dictate the punctuation as I go along and most times it is correct. As my punctuation skills grow better, there is less editing I need to do and less strain on my hands.

3: I edit a lot. Each chapter is edited after I finish them. I use text to speech first for it to read the words out to me, and I can still poke a screen with my fingers so I use my phone and fingers to correct mistakes when I see them.

4: I copy the document from gdocs (which I write on with my phone) to Word on my laptop. I can use a mouse for a bit of time, and I can press keys just not too many (I go slowly as well and the time my hands can handle typing on a keyboard is increasing each day) so I use the error finder on word to pick up anything I've missed. Usually its a stray comma.

Note: I can use the phone, I just can't use a laptop (for long) or a pen. My disability is getting better (I couldn't really use a phone either in the beginning) and with the phone I get rid of fine errors. Is it difficult? Yes. E.g a few days ago I couldn't use my thumbs for 3-4 days. I had to poke each line with my pointing finger and slowly edit it haha.

Q18) And what software do you use? I have tendinites and have no luck until now with the free softwares: I used Microsoft Word's voice software at first. Then that was going badly, so I switched to the dictation software on my phone (apple iphone XR). The phone dictation is great, but it took a few months to adjust my accent. I'm hoping to try Dragon Naturally speaking if I get enough discretionary money from my writing.

Most of the improvements in dictation came from hours of practicing a day. This fiction is almost exclusively written using dictation, but that was after months of trial and error, and I'm still improving.

Q19) How does reality recognize symbol shapes and changes it with their meaning?: Essentially the symbols don't exist before the concept becomes a reality, and then they appear (how they appear is a spoiler) and are ingrained in reality. So once a symbol appears reality will always recognise the meaning behind it as intrinsically as if it was part of itself. Which it is, technically.

To put it simpler; A symbol is like a hotkey. Once you've programmed it into the computer (reality) every time that hotkey appear and is pressed (activated), it will do what it is programmed to do.

Q20) Are the titles AI generated?: They aren't! They are a mix of jokes I made up, paraphrased quotes and fun references to other media.

Q21) Women art of Anti and Gold?: Unfortunately that's too complicated for Wombo and I don't have the money yet to pay for commissions.

Q22) Does the name ThinkTwice come from the Magic: the Gathering card?: It doesn't, but to be honest I've forgotten the original reason for my name. Its been a great name so far though!

Q23) Hi, I'm sort of confused by the Class selection structure. I believe it stated there were pillars going from common-legendary, then a rare and legendary pillars afterwards (just harder). Why would anyone choose to pick the 2nd rare pillar (that's apparently harder than the 1st legendary pillar)? I'm just confused on how obtaining classes work/why the repeat pillars exist.

Good question!

There's two answers here.

1) The priorities of the person may not align with the priorities of the legendary class option they receive.

2) The rare class provides a more relevant skill or a better skill than the original skill of the legendary class.

Let's answer (1) first.

Let's say a farmer spends his days doing two things. He farms, and he kills farm rats. He lives a relaxed life so he doesn't actually have to farm that much. He just does it when he likes. However, he does have to kill the rats or they will eat his crops, so he ends up spending more time on that.

He gains a skill that he uses for both battle and farming, called 'shovel blow'. It then becomes his highest rated skill and he also earns the accomplishment of killing 10,000 rats (he has a real problem cause they breed fast).

His goal in life is simple. He wants to live on his farm and marry his neighbouring farmer. He doesn't need to actually do work that often since he has it sorted out. He's never been beyond his city walls and he doesn't feel the need to either. He's happy.

When he finally goes to select his class, his legendary class is a battle oriented class (legendary rat slayer) and his rare class after that is farming oriented (rare farmer: specializing in digging).

If it was the protagonist, we know they'd have to choose the higher rarity class that is battle oriented. But this is an ordinary farmer.

The legendary class is functionally useless to him even if he does spend most of his time fighting. He doesn't need the original battle skill it provides, or the battle enhancement options to his current skills.

So he picks the rare class. It is better, and more specialised, than the other rare classes before it. It is also more in line with his goals (he doesn't like to fight and get ripped to shreds by monsters). He just wants to farm.

Why make it like that?:

The reason is because I wanted to make a class system that fitted society as a whole, but took into account the fact that not everyone has the same priorities. Their actions and accomplishments might come about as circumstance or luck, and they might not care about the classes those things provide.

It seems a bit silly because protagonists always want fighting classes, and then they'll always pick the absolute best fighting class, but for ordinary people in the big wide world the novel is set in, that's not necessarily the case. They have different circumstances, and they might pick a rare class because its what's best for their situation, and not the class that is the highest rarity.

(2) has pretty much the same answer but with individual skills. Maybe the legendary class provides an original skill you don't need or want, but the rare class has a mixed skill that is way better and mixed two options you did want to improve on.

Q24) What are the limits to earth manipulation? Can an earth mage control poo? If not, how far does it have to be in the decomposition process before it counts as dirt?:

Solid question! Or liquid, depending on your diet. I believe that the limits of poo and dirt don't exist. Let your heart and imagination fly to their content!

That being said, poo counts as dirt around the time someone would say 'I stepped in dirt' instead of 'I stepped in poo'. That is the exact scientific method.

Q25) Do you have any advice on how to write a believable currency/ economy?

The best way is to not mention it most times, and allow our own minds to fill the gaps. In this case we have farmland in Andross' hometown, and of course businesses and factories. There are companies buying armour for armies, and people have jobs and are seem going to and from them. We know there are bronze pieces and silver pieces and have some examples of how they are used.

In the end that's really all that's needed. People will fill the gaps because we all know how economies work. These businesses and jobs all contribute, and we have been given a currency.

You can always go deeper into it, and I have in personal notes, but that is often genre specific to kingdom building novels.

Q26) Have any advice on how to write fantasy?:

I do! I will take a while longer to answer this question, since it is going to be a longer answer.

Q27) Have any advice on how to best convey a magic system to your readers?: I've found personally that showing magic in action is the best way for my writing style to help readers to grasp how magic works in my story.

Soft magic (magic that isn't defined in hard terms) is usually intuitive and not set in hard definitions or rules. It is the type of magic I've focused on in my novel.

Andross enters door > comes out somewhere else completely different > oh, its a portal.

This kind of structure is used a lot in my novel, which is tough because having a system tries to force hard definitions of magic into place.

However, big visual descriptions that make the change obvious are often the best way to go. E.g Indra kicks the wall > A tornado of symbols appeared from the ground and surround him > he manipulates the wall through the symbols and the MC sees this done clearly.

Andross's dad walks through a tiny door > the tiny door grows huge > it shrinks back down after passing through it.

Each description shows clearly what's happening, but it doesn't say 'how' or 'why' it only implies them or leaves them a mystery.

Readers are smart enough to work it out as they read more, and they will find the rules you've got in place.

Or you can just straight up tell them the rules from chapter 1. That's your choice!

Fun facts!

1) I originally intended to finish Mark of the Crijik at 8000 words.

2) When Mark of the Crijik went a (tiny) bit above that, I put the final chapter arbitrarily at 120. This has also been abolished.

3) Mark of the Crijik was originally written for the RoyalRoad Magazine Contest hosted in January, it won third prize!

4) I spend an average of 30-40 minutes on each title (longest took 4 hours), 25-35 minutes on each art generation, and 30 minutes - 1 hour on each song generation (not including rendering time and posting it to youtube).

5) My last job was at an investment firm (Fun? That’s for you to decide!)