Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #628: Greg Weisman

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

I had the pleasure to have a carpool guest, Greg Weisman, the author of the upcoming War of the Spark novel, Ravnica. He and I talked all about what went into writing a story with over 100 named characters.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Well, guess what? A special treat today, guys. I have a special carpool guest. So say hello. Hi. So, who are you? I'm Greg Weissman. I'm the author of Ravnica, War of the Spark. Okay, so Greg, so today Greg's riding with me. In fact, he drove out to my house specifically to be on this podcast. So this is some dedication to be on the podcast. And we're going to talk all about the new novel, because Greg wrote a new novel.

So let's start with this. Are you a Magic player? I'm not. I know that's a horrible thing to have to admit, but I'm not a gamer at all. I wrote two World of Warcraft novels and I never played that either. So how, how did you get, like, how did you end up writing this? Well, how did that happen? It's a little bit roundabout, but, uh, Elizabeth Schaefer, uh, was my editor on, uh, Warcraft and originally, and then, uh then partway through that project, she moved to Delray Books,

and when Delray was looking for an author for this, she recommended me for the gig. Okay, so obviously this is the culmination of a big storyline. Right. So how do you get prepped? This is something where you were obviously not familiar necessarily with the game when you started. Probably not familiar with the storyline when you started. How do you prepare?

How did you learn about all this? I read a lot, a lot of stories and a lot, a lot of material, including material that you wrote. To get a clear idea on the significance of the color chart and but also all the characters. I read literally thousands of pages of material and took copious notes and my process is very very high tech. It involves a lot a lot of index cards and sharpies and and I spread them across the floor of my home office because for reasons I do not understand, my wife didn't want to wallpaper our house with corkboard. Ah. Um, so, uh, they just go across the floor and they spread out into the living room,

uh, which she's also not too happy about, but it's temporary. And I just move those cards around until the story starts to take shape. And I then write those cards up into an outline, which folks at Del Rey and at Wizards of the Coast approved, and then I wrote the book. Okay, so you had to learn a lot of characters, obviously. Mm-hmm. War of the Spark is... It's not only a culmination of the story,

but it involves the majority of the planeswalkers that we have made. Right. So was it tricky writing a story with so many different characters? It was very tricky. There are, uh, over a hundred named characters, uh, in the book and each of them at minimum gets their, gets a moment.

Yeah. You know, uh, and, and a huge percentage of those characters get way more than a moment. huge percentage of those characters get way more than a moment. Um, and there are about, uh, I'm going to say 11 or 12 leads, um, which is a lot of lead characters to juggle. Um, but it was a great challenge. It was a lot of fun. I love the characters, fell in love with the characters. Got to sort of really help create Teo Verada.

Let's talk about Teo Verada. So in the game we make cards out of the characters and in the War of the Sparks he gets a card, but he's a brand new character. So who is he? So Teo is a young shield mage acolyte from a plane called Gobokon. And Gobokon is a world where this sort of burgeoning civilization exists in a ring between two large storms, what they call the eastern cloud and the western cloud.

And when you think of these storms, you need to think about the hurricane that's existed on Mars for centuries and centuries and centuries. And these storms are sandstorms, basically. But also, in and among the sands are diamonds and so shield mages are essential on Gobokon because they use their magic to create shields to protect villages and towns from these storms that periodically come through, not just with sand, but with diamonds that obviously can kill

and do tremendous damage. And Teo is a young shield mage acolyte, and he is considered to be the worst student in the group. And during War of the Spark, or just before the war starts, I should say, and this is, I guess, a bit of a spoiler, but it's in, like, Chapter 2, so I don't feel too bad about it. Or Chapter 3, I guess. too bad about it. Or chapter three, I guess.

He's caught in one of these storms and buried alive. And that's what turns his ember into a spark. Ah, that's what he sparks. Okay, very cool. So I'm going to talk about a few characters and get your take on the characters.

So let's start with the big bad, Nicole Bolas. What do you think of Nicol Bolas? He is dangerous and arrogant and, you know, with wheels within wheels within wheels, and just in case that wasn't enough, there's some more wheels in there. His plans are so complex

and what he's been doing on Ravnica in again stories that I didn't write stories from a lot of great people came before me especially Django Wexler the stories your audience probably hasn't read yet I've gotten to read them but yes I think that story is not out yet. But, you know, he had all these machinations and all this great planning and forethought. And so he's virtually unstoppable. Yeah, do you know,

so the game started in 1993. Do you know how long ago Nicole Bolas got created? I'm guessing 93. 94. 94, okay. Yeah, he goes almost back to the very beginning of the game. So he's been around a long time. Yeah.

As is the character has been around a long time. So, okay, of the other, Nicole Bolas, he's the bad guy. Who's your favorite of the good guys? Well, I'm really partial to Kaia. Okay, Kaia. Yeah. She sort of emerges for me as one of the heroes of the game, one of my leads in the book. in the book sort of took a job from Bolas that put her in a situation that she is not prepared for and she has to make a decision you know does she go

along with Bolas and or does she do the right thing and it becomes the way she steps up I just really admire and she's sort of a adopts a couple characters including Tao and mentors Teo and, uh, and so, you know, her growth in the book, uh, was really fun to, to write. Well, what's your opinion on Jace? I like Jace a lot. I mean, I really like all these characters, including the ones I'm supposed to hate. Jace is great. You know, coming off of what happened on Ixalan,

he's really trying to be a different person in Ravnica. He grew a lot on Ixalan. He's really fallen for Vraska. Yeah. And that's creating conflict because Vraska, well, you know, they had this plan. Yeah. And the plan sort of went awry. And he doesn't know what she remembers and what she doesn't.

He doesn't know how she's going to feel if and when her memories come back. He doesn't even know if she's going to be on Ravnica when he gets there because he knows he's getting there very late. be on Ravnica when he gets there because he knows he's getting there very late. Yeah. Um, there were all these distractions, uh, particularly on, uh, Dominaria. Yep. Um, and, uh, and he, but I like him because he's really striving to change, to be a better person, to not be particularly as passive-aggressive as he's been in the past. And it's not necessarily easy for him. It doesn't necessarily come natural for him at this stage to change,

but he's making this effort. And I, again, really like that about him. Okay. How about Liliana? Liliana's great. I mean, this is a hard book for Liliana.

Really hard. Coming off of the Dominaria arc that just preceded my book. She is in a really compromised position with no good options and a growing self-awareness of how she's gotten herself into this position and the cost of it. And almost in spite of herself, it's starting to matter to her

what all this collateral damage that she's causing. It's no longer easy for her to just sort of go, well, you know, it's every man for himself. It's starting to weigh on her. And yet, you know, ultimately she's still making the decisions that are best for her in any given moment. And that can change from moment to moment. But, you know but this is a dark book for Liliana

okay how about Chandra Chandra is also a lot of fun she's gonna get to Ravnica and find out that Dovan Ban is there. Yeah.

It's going to really piss her off. Um, and, uh, but she's also realizing that she's going to have to start fighting smarter. And Jaya mentoring her and she's being shepherded by Gideon and by Jace, but is also really coming into her own. And so she is really going to step up quite a bit in this book. You mentioned Gideon. How about Gideon? Gideon is also great. Gideon is sort of really eager to take a more direct approach. That all the strategizing hasn't worked well relative to Bolas,

that no matter what strategy they come up with, Bolas has got a plan B and a plan C and a plan D. And so Gideon's attitude is, I got Black Blade. I wasn't thrilled about using it, but I'm over that now. And it's time. Get me close to this guy. Find a way to get me close. But Gideon is also a hero,

and there are a lot of people endangered on Ravnica because of what Bolas is up to. So Gideon's going to step up and make sure that it's also about saving as many lives as possible. So is it tricky? I mean, like I said, you're juggling so many characters. Yeah, like I said, there are 11. I mean, all the characters you've just named are all leads.

There are 11, 12 leads in this book, and it's a lot. So I'm trying to think who other. Okay, what leads have we named? Is Ajani a lead? No. I mean, he's got a major role, but he's not a lead. Is Ajani a lead? No.

I mean, he's got a major role, but he's not a lead. The leads are Bolas, Teo, Kaya, Chandra, Jace, Gideon, Liliana, Ralzeric, Vraska. That's nine. It's a test yeah so I'm let me ask about Ral and Vraska so Ral so

Ral has been playing catch up in the stories that precede the book. And every step he's taken, some in concert with Nim Mazet, some on his own, have kind of backfired. have kind of backfired. And sort of plan Z was to activate this beacon that would bring planeswalkers to Ravnica.

And he managed to activate that. And so the question is, does that backfire too? Or is that going to be helpful? Is it going to be helpful? Is it going to end up, you know, is having the planeswalkers all come to Ravnica going to end up being the solution to the problem? Right. And he is struggling to keep up now

with being the guildmaster of Izzet and juggling all those responsibilities with also some personal issues that he's got going simultaneous to all this. Okay, Vraska? Vraska starts the book on Ixalan, determined never to go back to Ravnica. That is not a huge spoiler to reveal.

Wait, she's back in Ravnica? Yeah. By her second chapter. Well, it's funny. The two previous sets in Magic, there was Guilds of Ravnica and the Ravnica Allegiance, which leads up to this, that takes place on Ravnica. And she shows up as

a card in one of them. So the audience is well aware that she's the Ravnica. Was Kaia one of the 11? You said earlier. Yeah. Okay. So we got 10 of the 11, but we'll pick up the 11. The, uh... So here's a question. Something near and dear to my heart, which is the color pie.

I know one of the things that we do whenever we get a new writer, someone who isn't very familiar with magic, one of the things I have said to Nick, one of the people that deals with writers, is, look, give them this early. This is very... Yeah, and I got it from him, too. So talk a little bit about, as a writer, about someone who, I'm interested to hear your take on the color pie as somebody, like,

you knew nothing about this. This is kind of your introduction to magic. Sort of a writer's take on the color pie. I think that it's a great shorthand for defining character direction. Where I found it really useful was with the guilds.

In other words, trying to get my head around ten guilds before I started. Just the fact that there were ten of them, I'm like, oh my God, how am I gonna keep them straight? And then once you get your head around the dual colors of each guild, it's like, oh now I get it. It actually became relatively easy for me to keep the guilt straight. As challenges went on this book, once I understood each guilt's two-color schema, I'm not sure what vocabulary to use. The philosophy.

Suddenly that all became sort of crystal clear for me and it was really easy to differentiate and distinguish between the guilds and make use of each one's strengths. I think all ten guilds are featured in the book. Obviously some more than others. Kai is a lead, so Orzhov is big. Ral's a lead, so Orzhov is big. Ral's a lead, so Izzet is big. Vraska's a lead, so Gagari shows up some.

Yeah, Vraska's a lead. So there's some guilds that get a little more play than others, but literally every one of the ten guilds has a featured role in this book. And I couldn't have done that without the color chart because I couldn't have kept them straight and differentiated. So as someone who's obviously worked with different licenses and stuff, what was the most unique thing about magic, the thing that you found the most interesting as far as from an outside perspective?

I'm sort of curious. The setting of Ravnica really jazzed me a lot. And I only, you know, I've been reading some of Nikki's stories that have been coming out recently. And so I feel like I only got to scratch the surface because I'm in war mode. You know, I'm not seeing everyday life on Ravnica.

I'm seeing Ravnica under attack. But I really, the guilds and the way they interact and the way the city works, we have a new character in the book named Rat who's gateless. Okay. And for me, Tao and Rat were really essential to my gateway into the story, and I think they'll be fun for readers who love magic, but I think they'll be great gateway characters for someone like me who's new to the IP. someone like me who's new to the IP.

Tao is someone who didn't know what a planeswalker is. Right. Oh, so he's your POV character to learn all about. Yeah, he's never been to Ravnica. Yeah. Doesn't know. He has guilds on Gobokon. He has like the Carpenter's Guild. Yeah.

And the Mason's Guild. And there's a point in the book where he's asked about those guilds, and he says, I think mostly they sit around drinking and complaining a lot. There's no political thing with that on his world. So he is our great, you know, point of view character to sort of intro these concepts to any reader who isn't familiar with them and also to give readers who are familiar with them a new perspective, an outsider perspective. Rat, on the other hand, is gateless and is considering joining multiple guilds. Her parents are Gruul, but she's really attracted to both Selesnya and Rakdos.

Those are very opposite. Right. And there are very specific reasons why each one appeals to her. And her parents want her to be Gruul, but she hasn't decided, so she is very much the character who doesn't know much about planeswalking, but knows Ravnica inside and out.

And so she becomes Teo's guide to a certain extent to the world of Ravnica. And again, for a new reader, she becomes their guide as well. And for someone who's been there a while, I think she's just a really fun character that I'm hoping everyone sort of falls in love with. I sort of did. Yeah, I'm amazed the amount of characters you juggled. There's a lot of characters. And that's not even getting into,

it sounds like a lot of people have their moment, even though they're not the major characters, but they get their moment. Yeah, we've got Vivian Reed, and we've got Watley, and Samet, and... uh, um, Watley and Samet and, um, and breath. Does Tybalt have a moment? Tybalt, uh, no, I actually think, uh, I was told Tybalt was, might've been off limits to me at first. And

then later I was told, oh yeah, you can use him. And then I was like, it's too late. I don't have... So I don't think Tybalt has a moment, but he's one of the only ones who doesn't. Yeah, what does that mean? Nahiri and... Narset? Narset and Sarkinval. Teferi?

Teferi has more than one moment. Ajani has a significant supporting role. So does Jaya and Karn and Ob Nixilis. Ugin? Dakvayden. Dakvayden is one of the other leads that I forgot. Ugin has some role. Ugin has, Ugin is also one of the leads so there are those are the two that I couldn't think of at that moment yeah so there's a lot of characters yeah for the people

one of the things also to note you mentioned back that we had a limit of how many planeswalker cards we could get into so there are characters that show in the book that you don't necessarily see on cards. This is a giant story with

lots of characters, and so we got as many of them as we could on cards, but not all of them ended up on cards. But for those wondering. Okay, the other thing I'm kind of curious about is so if of all the characters in the book, if you were allowed to take any character and go write another book, what character are you most interested in?

Well, I am writing another book. Oh, okay. Yeah, I hope. I did not. And the leads of the... Well, you know, if I reveal who the leads are, then it's revealing who survived. Yeah, don't reveal the leads. So, yeah, I guess I can't answer that question.

Okay, we'll move on. I didn't know it would reveal that they survived the first book, and I don't think we want to do that. Okay, that's true. So, here's the thing. Some survive. At least four characters survive. At least four characters. I went down in the second book from 11 or 12

leads to 4. There's a comic out right now and some of the characters the comic is post-designate happening. Yeah, Sean Redd-Tibble. And you see a Johnny too. Anyway, so there's a few characters that kind of survive, but we don't want to... No spoilers here.

We want you to go read the book, so we're not going to tell you any spoilers. So, we talked about Ravnica, we talked about all the characters. How about the, how magic gets used in magic? Did you find that interesting? Yeah, it, it, that was, if anything, that was probably the most challenging part of the book because the characters are all really pop. So they were easy to keep straight. I was worried about the guilds, but like I said, the color pie really helped me with that. I mean, a lot. The thing that became tricky for me is how specifically each character uses their magic.

And making sure that I was as much as possible in continuity with how they'd used their magic before. Yeah. When they were stretching themselves. Well, no, that's dead easy for them. You know, why isn't Jace just doing this, oh, Jace can do that, yeah, Jace can do that, oh, okay, well, then we'll have Jace do that, you know, things like that, it, there were so many characters, and each one has such a unique way of expressing his or her magic, that that became actually, ironically, my biggest challenge.

I mean, you know, I'm a guy who's written a lot of superheroes over the years, and that's, you know, what are their superpowers? That's not usually the hard part for me. And, you know, the use of magic in here with so many characters that I was learning all at once, that took a lot of focus and a lot of help from wizards. You know, I mean, that's what made it work, you know, that I had all these great people at Wizards of the Coast who were, you know that I had all these great people at Wizards of the Coast who were you know I was

we mentioned Nick earlier so Nick is sort of my contact my main contact not my only one my main contact at Wizards and I'm literally

emailing Nick every night to the point where you know I work late into the night. And so he'll see the emails first thing in the morning and then respond. And, you know, it was getting to the point where I was like going, so am I completely annoying you? He's like, no, no, keep asking.

So I just, you know, I wasn't shy about asking questions and I wasn't shy about making sure you know I wanted to get this right yeah so my end of this is so the creative team sits down with where I said and so you'll see Nick come down all the time and ask them questions and like okay well if so-and-so did this and how would you like you know Nick would always come down to clarify to make sure like because Nick doesn't necessarily know the answers to all the questions and so he has to come and talk to the creative team and, like, find out, oh, can so-and-so do this, or what happens if this happens?

And so, so you brought up an interesting point, something that I'm interested in, sort of, that the Planeswalkers are, in a lot of ways, like, archetypally like superheroes. Yeah, very much so. And it's something that we, like, we often sort of say they're like fantasy superheroes, right? That they're superheroes, but their powers are magic-based. Right. How do you, as someone who's written lots of superheroes, how do you find them like superheroes, and how do you find them different from superheroes?

Well, the similarities, I think, are pretty obvious, and I guess kind of surface. I mean, you know, they, um, if you were looking at Marvel's X-Men, which I actually haven't ever written, um, you know, they're all mutants and they all have these different powers and how is it that this one can do this and this one can do, well, the answer is just they're mutants. There's no, uh, pun intended magic to it you know I mean

they don't have to think up origins for these characters personal origins sure but not like how did you get your powers

well I hit puberty right yeah and Stan Lee was tired of coming up with origin that's where X-Men

came from puberty that's a good origin. And in magic, so where does all the power theoretically come from? Whether the power is

invulnerability, or the power is telepathy, or the power is necromancy, it's all coming from magic. And what that allows you to do, same for the mutants, is we don't have to focus on how or where the power came from.

You focus on the character. What did they go through to get to this point not so much you know in an Iron Man sense okay he was in Vietnam and

the grenade blew up and he had things in his chain. It's like, okay, I don't need to know where the magic comes from. It's about how it's expressed and how it's expressed comes down to character and personality and

their experiences as opposed to some sort of technical thing to justify why the atom can shrink down and why Flash runs really fast. And that's very free in that way because it allows you to focus on the things as a writer that you want to focus on, which is character, personality, their personal experiences, not, you know, how did the spider get irradiated in the first place?

You know, I mean, that kind of thing. And that's a more interesting place for a writer to be, I think. place for a writer to be, I think. So those, in those ways, yeah, they're superheroes in the sense that, and supervillains, I mean, they're not all heroes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in the sense that, yeah, this one can do

sammits really fast. Yeah. Jace has telepathy, and in that sense, you could sort of say, yeah, they're like superheroes. But what it allows you to do, in essence,

by having this common source of their raw power, is again, to focus on character as opposed to focusing on the mechanics of it. Do you see what I mean? So the other thing I'm questioning, so this is, you know, you're dealing with characters that have existed, like I say,

Nicol Bolas goes all the way back to 1994. And a lot of these other characters... I've written Superman, it goes back to 1938. Oh, that's true. Is it... One of the things that's very interesting for Magic is just because we're constantly going to different worlds and the characters are showing up in different places,

did you find it, like, were there interesting... As you went back and looked at the past of the characters, did you find, like, moments for each character that helped define who the character was for you? Yes, definitely. I mean, they're... I'm preceded by a small legion of phenomenal writers on this. And as you said, this book is a culmination of stories that have been building for quite some time.

So, you know, reading the Ixalan arc and seeing Jason Vraska slowly find each other I don't mean in a literal sense they met pretty early on but you know find out

who each other was and find themselves and become better people for being with each other. That was really significant for those two characters for me. Seeing Liliana's growth by being literally in proximity to Gideon, who she makes fun of all the time, but who is clearly having an effect on her. but who's clearly having an effect on her in the Dominaria arc that Martha wrote that precedes mine. Seeing the relationship between Ral and Kaia and Vraska, Lavinia, and Hakara in Jango's arc, which your listeners haven't had a chance to read yet,

but will eventually. Yeah, you will eventually, guys. You will get a chance to read it. You know, again, those became really important, significant foundations to what I was writing. The Bolas stuff, the Ugin-Bolas origin stories that came not too long ago. Yeah, the last year. And some of Nikki's stuff set in Ravnica came too late to have a major effect on the first book,

but definitely have influenced me on the second book. Sure. And helped me also. So I really owe a huge debt to all these great writers who came before me on the property because they created the moments and building blocks that have led all these characters to this huge crisis that they're all facing simultaneously. Yeah, it's definitely, so we're almost, we're almost to work. So the book, guys, comes out April 23rd.

And this is the first magic book I think we've, I mean actual book we've made in about a decade, right? Magic Once Upon a Time used to have a lot more books and we've done a lot more online stuff recently. And I've been told to tell you that pre-orders are open. You can pre-order now and you can view a bit of it at bit.ly

slash mtgnovel So any last I mean we're about to work any uh final notes uh well I know that uh the yeah uh yeah Magali

who uh Villeneuve I hope I'm pronouncing that right who uh did the terrific cover art on the book. And I both signed like 750 prints. And if you preorder, you can get one of these prints for free. And, you know, it's been a great experience. And it's ongoing because, like I said, I'm writing a second book now.

Working in this playground, it's just been, like I said, I'm writing a second book now working in this playground. It's just been a lot of fun. And so I'm grateful for the opportunity. Well, lots of fun. And you are the first. I've had other guests on my show, but you are the first guest who I met literally when you came to me on the show. I have other guests I've actually, people I already know.

So it's been nice to talk with you. So the audience right now, I'm not sure when this airs, but we've been teasing War of the Sparks. So they don't know a lot yet. They just know that there's a lot of planeswalkers in War of the Sparks. That is for sure. Because in a normal magic set, there's a lot of planeswalkers in War of the Spark. That is for sure. Because in a normal magic set, there's like three planeswalkers. This one has 36. So that's a little more than normal.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, there are over 100 named characters in this book. Not all of them, obviously, are planeswalkers. Lavinia's not a planeswalker. Rat's not a planeswalker. I mean, a lot of the characters of Ravnica show up, right? Oh, yeah. A lot.

Yeah. Well, one of the things, funny, not only is it a planeswalker war with all these planeswalkers, but also Ravnica is one of the worlds we've established the most, so there's lots and lots of characters from Ravnica. It's very populated. Yeah. And so you definitely, for your first magic book,

they threw a lot at you. Yeah, I mean, when I started, Nick was like, well, there are probably a couple things you should read first. I'm like, great. And, you know, he sent me. Then he's like, well, you should probably also read this. And then pretty soon I'm like, guys, you know, I'm telling Tom Kohler, who's my editor at Del Rey, I'm like going, okay, Nick's now sent me over 2,000 pages worth of material to read. And I'm happy to read it all, don't get me wrong.

But I can't do it overnight. So we actually had to alter the deadline on the book because I needed time to read everything. To read everything. Yeah. Oh, very cool. So guys,

if you haven't had a chance, pre-order the book. It is really cool. It is the culmination of three years, actually, one could argue more than three years

of story. But, I'm talking about Bolas, it's like, yeah, 25 years. Yeah, so,

anyway, it's a chance for you guys to read something really fun so i wholly uh recommend you guys get a hold of the book and read it um like i said a lot happens where we tried hard not to give it away there's a lot of cool things that happen in the book um but anyway so i want to thank you greg for being on the show thanks for having me and so guys i am here so we all know what that means and this is the end of my drive to work instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic see you guys next time