Writing Blog: Song Daiyu (Patreon)

Fun fact: Song Daiyu’s introduction was originally planned to happen way before the tournament.

Auctions and the like are fairly common in xianxia. There’ll usually be a scene where the main character gets into a bidding war with someone and either tricks the guy into bidding too much for an item or wins a super rare item from them. Sometimes both. I wanted to do something like that for Ave Xia Rem Y.

The way I envisioned it, Old Jiang was going to take Liu Jin to another city and introduce him to the concept of auction houses and merchant guilds. They were going to piss off some rich jerk by outbidding him and all that cool stuff.

While at it, the two would have sold some elixirs through the auction house. That’s when Song would have entered the story. The quality of the elixirs would have caught her attention, establishing the first link with Liu Jin. This would have set the stage for subsequent meetings between them. 

The whole thing would have maybe taken three chapters at most, yet I could never fit it in.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. What do you mean you couldn’t fit it in? This is, after all, my story. I’m the one who controls what goes in or out. If I want to make something happen, I just have to make it happen.

Thing is, that’s true, but it also kind of isn’t.

I’m not sure how to best explain this. There is some sort of… rhythm to a story. A beat. Something that tells me, “These sentences shouldn’t all be in the same paragraph”  or “This event should only take one chapter, and this one should take two.” Stuff like that. 

When it came to Song’s planned introduction, the timing just never worked out. It was always “Wait, this will fit better after the New Moon Town Arc.” Then it was “Hold on, this other stuff takes priority. Better take care of it.” And lastly, “Shit, Old Jiang’s disease has progressed too much to use that idea.”

Yeah. 

Thankfully, the tournament provided a good place for her to make an entrance. It was a bit grander than I originally envisioned, but I think it worked well. People even liked her banter with Liu Jin. 

So I guess the moral is, sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and that’s okay.