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ljwritesIn a long-ago fanfiction.net forum post about why people write fanfic, I remember my answer being "because I can't not." For as long as I can remember I have been trying not to be a writer and my family has been trying to keep me from that path. Fanfiction was a compromise where I could keep fiction writing as a strictly non-monetized hobby. Besides, when I really like a particular story I get obsessively into it. I watched Crimson Tide 17 times, for instance, and when I like a game a lot I tend to clear it twice or more, usually four times or more. Fandom participation was a good way to work out that kind of obsession.
Conception and Obsession
Shadow of the Dragon King is one of those stories I wrote because I couldn't not. The germ of the idea was a page from the history of Choson, the kingdom that controlled the Korean peninsula from A.D. 1392 to 1897. The death of Crown Prince Sado in A.D. 1762 is a much dramatized and speculated-upon event, but at its core lay the tragedy of a father turning against his son. With this new Avatar kick I was on, I couldn't keep the connection between Zuko's story and Prince Sado's out of my head. Because while I always loved Zuko's character arc, I also felt the background to be incomplete. His punishment seemed far disproportionate to the crime, and the way Zhao called Zuko a traitor and questioned his loyalty even before the Blue Spirit business seemed to allude to an internal Fire Nation power struggle that went beyond that one moment in the war meeting. Similarly, historians conjecture that Sado died due to deadly political strife that turned father against son.
Prince Sado with his son, as envisioned in the 2008 drama Lee San.
(The boy is the titular Lee San who would grow up to be Jeongjo, 22nd king of Choson after his grandfather Yeongjo. Prince Sado's name was Lee Sun.)
I resisted this idea for a while. I knew it would be a complex political story, and would require a number of original characters who were not in the canon show. Established and beloved Avatar characters from outside the Fire Nation would not be able to make an appearance, limiting its appeal. But my obsessive brain simply would not let the idea go, gnawing at it like a determined dog whenever I had a moment of free time. Finally I PMed amanda91, whose series Three Years at Sea I loved (and which I have featured on this blog), and asked what she thought of this story idea. Her enthusiastic response led me to go with it, but really I think I just needed an excuse to go forward. This story was consuming me, and I knew I had to let it out or it would never let me go.
Making of the Story
Shadow was the first story that I wrote a proper outline for and plotted in advance, though that outline was to go through substantial revisions. I decided early on that Zuko's saving a beleaguered village during a tour around the Nation would be the catalyst for his entanglement in partisan politics surrounding the war, and ultimately his exile. This was particularly influenced by Sado's story. The leading historical theory about the crown prince's death is that he was a victim of cutthroat partisanship. Sado was a liberal figure who was critical of the then-ruling faction of Choson, the Noron ("The Elders' Argument"). His earliest recorded criticism of the Noron came when he was all of ten years old, no doubt influenced by his early teachers belonging to the dissenting faction, Soron ("The Youth Argument"). This outspokenness led to members of his family including his mother, who came from a Noron family, and two of his sisters, turning against him. (The dissent against Sado's eventual disgrace criticized the king for acting against his son on the word of palace women.) Finally Sado's own royal father Yeongjo stripped the title of Crown Prince from his son and ordered him imprisoned, by some accounts in a tiny grain closet with no food or water. The latter part is not in the official history; if true, it would mean the disgraced Crown Prince was essentially tortured to death. Either way the former crown prince died eight days later at the age of thirty-two. The exact cause of his death is disputed: Some say it was poison, others say starvation or illness.
With this grim historical inspiration in mind, the original outline was pretty simple: Zuko saved the village, which angered the pro-war interests and his own father, which led to his being exiled on the flimsy excuse of speaking out of turn. Later on, when Stingmon pretty much foresaw this entire sequence of events, I realized how obvious it all was and revised the outline. In the process I divided the story into three parts, Part 2 of which deals in more depth with palace intrigue and hopefully adds a few surprises on the way. I'll talk more about that after I'm done with the whole thing. But Part 1 of the story never changed in a fundamental way, dealing with the young Zuko's idealism and the ways he connected to his subjects. Since this was a political story, though, Zuko's actions would not happen in isolation. From early on I planned to intersperse Zuko's scenes with scenes from the palace where characters would interact with his story from afar.
The plotting of the story was largely a process of problem-solving. For instance, how would Zuko learn the village was in trouble? A peasant would come petition him, of course, but Zuko would be prevented from speaking to him. This would be a good opportunity to show how Zuko chafed under the restrictions put on him, and how badly he wanted to participate more in the affairs of the Fire Nation. Since another of the canon gaps I wanted to fill in was the way Roku's crown reached the Fire Palace, I added in Khoujin and Sa Ye and their whole subplot. Setting up the assassination attempt was the hardest problem, since it was the event that every subsequent development would revolve around, so I was careful to add an escalating sense of menace to foreshadow it and give the characters, particularly Master Lu and Shun, reasons for their actions. The assassination chapter itself was some of the most difficult writing I ever did, and I will discuss it in more depth when I talk about constructing scenes.
Traditional Korean rural village (Nak-an Folk Village in South Cholla Province, Korea)
Character Concepts and Gender Reassignment
One difficulty with this story was the number and importance of original characters I would have to introduce. Nothing but the most unbelievable contortions could staff all the necessary roles with established canon characters, and they would no longer be recognizable as themselves anyway. At base Shadow was a story about the Fire Nation, and I would need to flesh out Fire Nation characters beyond the elites that make up most of the named Fire Nation cast in the canon.
Since the Tamalan part of the story was the most detailed at this point, Sanwai and Elder Lao Tai were some of the first characters to be fleshed out. Later I had Lord Zhen and Captain Kang, and then Sa Ye showed up in Zuko's bedroom and Khoujin was barging into it. (Their names were originally Saë and Shankho for reasons I will never understand. Mercifully I regained my senses and changed the names.) Then I came up with a middle-class artisan family, Ti Shou and his wife and children, to explain the symbolism of the Dragon King. Yenzi was originally their son and Lijin their daughter. This changed for reasons I will explain.
I named Shun (順) from an online list of Chinese names, meaning 'smooth,' though his actual name is the Chinese surname Xun (荀). He was always going to be a warrior torn in his loyalties, but in the earliest drafts he was a firebender. I changed him to an Earth Kingdom soldier later on to highlight his shifting loyalties and the hold Azula had over him. For a while I toyed with the idea of making him an earthbender, but I decided to make him a non-bender because I wanted him to be Zuko's first dao teacher and hardly any benders in the canon used weapons, other than Zuko and Gow. The dao didn't really seem to fit into earthbending moves like Gow's hammers did, plus I liked the idea of a Badass Normal playing an important role in the story.
I added Master Lu because I didn't want Iroh along for Zuko's trip (neither did Ozai), and I figured Zuko would have needed someone to pound his letters and history into his skull. If there is an author surrogate in the story it is Master Lu. Like me, he is a lawyer and a teacher, an intellectual who finds that his learning often has no power in the real world. Though he would never be shown fighting on-screen I gave him my favorite weapon, the bow, and he fought valiantly during the assassination attempt. In Korea the bow was not only the most important weapon in warrior training but also considered essential for learned men, to focus their minds and keep them physically fit. (I guess what I'm saying is, Koreans have always been crazy about their bows and arrows. Guess which country won half of all Olympic gold medals in archery? Yeah.) I also wanted Lu to be a father figure that did not have the complexities of Zuko's relationship with his father or uncle. My vision of Zuko based on canon, alas, was never a good student when it came to book-learning, but that never impeded Master Lu's affection and respect for him.
A high ranking state-employed scholar from 16th-century Choson, in the 2011 drama A Deep-Rooted Tree. Very much my image of Master Lu.
When I got this far with the OCs, I realized I had something of an embarrassment on my hands. Every single one of them except the pregnant teenager and the little girl who needed rescuing (Lijin at the time) were male. While Sa Ye was meant from the first to be a feminist character, dealing with themes like exploitation of women and a woman's independence in patriarchal culture, I really didn't want her to be the sole woman in the cast with a meaningful and positive role, especially since the main villain Azula was also female. So I started looking for characters I could flip around. Sanwai and Lao Tai both refused to be women, and I could live with that because theirs was a community where men called the shots. That was the point of Sa Ye's character arc. Khoujin was not amenable to gender reassignment for obvious reasons, and I wanted to give Zuko a big brother figure. Zhen and Kang were similarly unaccommodating, and while the idea of a Mistress Lu was intriguing, it didn't really fit.
Shun was the character who came closest to starting hormone replacement therapy, and I did seriously toy with the idea of his female version, Shen. (I was later amused when Amanda called him Shen in an early review. She looked into the alternate reality!) But Shen would have been a very different character from Shun, and maybe this speaks more to my prejudices than anything but I simply could not get the right amount of raw bloodthirst from her. She could have the same body count, but her violence was always more calculated than Shun's reflexive and overwhelming urge to destroy. My thoughts about Shen, however, did lead me to place Ming in Zuko's guard detail and give her a role. My concept of Shen would later emerge unexpectedly in another character, which I will discuss in the notes for Part 2.
The character who finally did go over to the female side was Yenzi, who was like, "(shrug) Sure, cool." I think this not only helped the gender balance slightly but improved the character and story. For one thing, Yenzi as a young woman took on a nurturing role toward her brother and even parents that added more dimension to her motivations. Her tongue also became considerably sharper than her male counterpart's for reasons I'm not sure of, maybe because she constantly had to prove herself in a society that's only just starting to grasp the idea of broader roles for women. Her mother Shiri was also a trailblazer, but where her strategy was to keep a cheerful smile while kicking serious ass, Yenzi was more abrasive. I think Lijin similarly improved by becoming a little boy as opposed to a little girl. His impulsiveness in seeking out the Dragon Prince and his hero-worship of Zuko felt even more endearing, somehow, in a boy.
Plot and character were something of a give-and-take process. Sometimes the needs of the plot produced or influenced a character, or the character drove the plot. Mostly, though, perhaps owing to my background in role-playing the characters took precedence. If the plot seemed to cause a character to behave unlike himself, I tried to give good reasons for it. For instance, Master Lu lying to the Fire Palace and giving Zuko's location to a stranger went against everything he believed in, so I inserted at least a chapter's worth of buildup to escalate the threat and lead him to believe there was a genuine threat to Zuko from the Fire Nation elite.
The Writing Process
Now that plot and character were in place, it was time to get down to the actual business of writing. Like plot and characters, writing wasn't necessarily a separate process either. As noted above the plot itself went through substantial revisions as I wrote. Sometimes an event or development envisioned in the outline just didn't make sense when I wrote it out (the thought of a boy and an old man outriding soldiers all night on normal transportation, for instance), or the writing itself changed the characters (Yenzi was originally a fervent believer in government propaganda, but the scenes never worked until I made her a cynic instead). Sometimes when I wasn't sure of a plot point or how a character might react I would simply write it out and see how it worked. If the result felt wrong, I discarded it and went back to the drawing board. Alternately, sometimes I let the writing take me somewhere altogether unplanned.
Aside from the little surprises that writing inevitably throws at you, the most unexpected scene was the spirit vision in Chapter 5: The Reservoir. That scene, and indeed the entire chapter, was not in the original outline at all. But the convergence of Zuko's internal turmoil after he learned of Khoujin and Sa Ye's story, and his earlier curiosity about the altar to the spirits, led to this supernatural scene that seemed to write itself. Then I got the idea of tying the idea of the Dragon King to the legend of King Munmu, king of the ancient Korean kingdom of Shilla who in 7th century A.D. who united the three squabbling kingdoms of the Korean peninsula. Legend says Munmu asked to become a dragon after his death to defend his land against the marauding Japanese. (Not that it always worked, but you can't fault a guy for trying.) Particularly patriotic people becoming dragons after death seemed to fit the motif of the Dragon King in my story well, so I went with that for the chapter epigraph.
King Munmu's Grave in the East Sea of Korea where his ashes were scattered.
The most enjoyable chapter to write was Chapter 6: From Dusk to Dawn, where Zuko fought his first Agni Kai, at least by my headcanon, and where I first got to show Shun being badass. But I think I liked the later pitched battle between the villagers and guards even better because everyone was working together, and it showed the villagers' resourcefulness in using their natural surroundings to their advantage. Zuko's determination and dedication at the end were a joy to write, too. It was even better because everyone understood there would be no killing, so despite the violence both sides of the conflict still had strong ties to one another. The pathos in this situation is that the villagers were fighting to keep that relationship with the feudal lord who wanted to sever it.
The changes in the Fire Nation, represented by the case of Tamalan, was meant to show a country in the throes of of modernization. The British enclosure and the wholesale destruction of rural communities were very much on my mind when I wrote the Tamalan arc and recapped its meaning in Chapter 7: Flames in the Night. Similar movements happened in Korea and elsewhere, too. And that's a painful process with a lot of human cost, though I don't want to whitewash the pre-modern world either. Authoritarianism and abuse were a part of that life, as shown in Sa Ye's story, as was an oppressive patriarchy that kept people quiet about such injustice. I am a huge beneficiary of modernity and I would champion its strides in technology, standard of living, and equality to anyone who longs for the "good old days." But I think it's important to remember that modernization also entailed agony for those who were on the wrong side of it. While rulers could not turn the tide of modernity, they often did try to slow its pace and make it a soft landing for those who had drawn the short straw of history. I understood Zuko's actions in that context, though in a more dramatized form.
The hardest chapter to write was, without contest, Chapter 10: Flames in the Night. The assassination attempt was the most crucial event in the story around which everything else would revolve, so I put a lot of care into setting it up. Now that I had to write the actual event, it was hard to make the events make sense and have emotional impact. I threw away one nearly complete draft of the assassination because it sucked, and was stuck there for months due to having a crazy semester. This was the same chapter where I also rewrote a prior series of scenes from a different point of view, so overall Chapter 10 took more work than any other chapter. Once that semester was over I had the time to sit down and think about how the action would take place. I diagrammed the action on paper to help myself think, which effort was sad enough that I snapped a picture for posterity.
Exhibit A: Why I am not an artist.
When I had it in my mind I wrote the entire assassination part in a day of obsessive writing, during which I walked away from the monitor like twenty times as Khoujin's death approached. In a way it was his death I had been putting off for so long. He would not be the only man to die during the assassination attempt but I meant for him to be the face of those who were killed, simply because it was easier to focus on one man than a dozen. I had put so much thought in the character it was hard to let him go, but I had known from early on his death was essential to the story. But I would send him off right, damn it, and while it took a lot of time and thought I'm happy with the way it finally turned out.
Other particularly enjoyable chapters included Chapter 3: A Royal Departure for the fun action and dialogue, and Chapter 7: While He Was Sleeping for its focus on original characters, the appearance of Roku's crown, and the shamelessly sentimental romance between Sa Ye and Khoujin. However, I'm proudest of Deng Po's point of view scene at the beginning of that chapter. While I detest alcohol myself, I know what it's like to evade life's problems with an addiction or at least obsession. I've also made excuses for my behavior and tried to put the blame on others. In that sense I could understand Sa Ye's abusive alcoholic father, and his scene was very cathartic to me. And Zuko's reunion with Iroh at the end of Chapter 10 is one of my favorite scenes. After everything that happened I needed that reunion almost as much as Zuko, as one reviewer put it. Iroh's anxiety on Zuko's behalf and Zuko's relief to see his uncle made that scene work for me. I just couldn't have ended Part 1 any other way.
In the end, though, all of it was enjoyable. Even when it was hard or frustrating, my belief in the story always brought me back. The story reminded me how much I loved writing and how I can't stop myself from telling stories even when I try. It also confirmed my love of the history and culture I grew up in, and showed me the many, many good stories that lay therein waiting to be discovered. And now that I'm finding ways to reconcile fiction writing with other career goals, I think I can allow myself to try to be a writer. It's not like I can help it.
I'm almost done with the first draft of Part 2, and will probably finish writing (though not editing and rewriting) Part 2 before I start posting any of it. Part 3 is just four chapters that have been building up in my head for almost a year now--it's been clamoring to get out for a while. Finishing a novel-length story will feel like an accomplishment, that's for sure. I look forward to talking about Parts 2 and 3 after I'm done writing and posting them.
Conception and Obsession
Shadow of the Dragon King is one of those stories I wrote because I couldn't not. The germ of the idea was a page from the history of Choson, the kingdom that controlled the Korean peninsula from A.D. 1392 to 1897. The death of Crown Prince Sado in A.D. 1762 is a much dramatized and speculated-upon event, but at its core lay the tragedy of a father turning against his son. With this new Avatar kick I was on, I couldn't keep the connection between Zuko's story and Prince Sado's out of my head. Because while I always loved Zuko's character arc, I also felt the background to be incomplete. His punishment seemed far disproportionate to the crime, and the way Zhao called Zuko a traitor and questioned his loyalty even before the Blue Spirit business seemed to allude to an internal Fire Nation power struggle that went beyond that one moment in the war meeting. Similarly, historians conjecture that Sado died due to deadly political strife that turned father against son.
Prince Sado with his son, as envisioned in the 2008 drama Lee San.
(The boy is the titular Lee San who would grow up to be Jeongjo, 22nd king of Choson after his grandfather Yeongjo. Prince Sado's name was Lee Sun.)
I resisted this idea for a while. I knew it would be a complex political story, and would require a number of original characters who were not in the canon show. Established and beloved Avatar characters from outside the Fire Nation would not be able to make an appearance, limiting its appeal. But my obsessive brain simply would not let the idea go, gnawing at it like a determined dog whenever I had a moment of free time. Finally I PMed amanda91, whose series Three Years at Sea I loved (and which I have featured on this blog), and asked what she thought of this story idea. Her enthusiastic response led me to go with it, but really I think I just needed an excuse to go forward. This story was consuming me, and I knew I had to let it out or it would never let me go.
Making of the Story
Shadow was the first story that I wrote a proper outline for and plotted in advance, though that outline was to go through substantial revisions. I decided early on that Zuko's saving a beleaguered village during a tour around the Nation would be the catalyst for his entanglement in partisan politics surrounding the war, and ultimately his exile. This was particularly influenced by Sado's story. The leading historical theory about the crown prince's death is that he was a victim of cutthroat partisanship. Sado was a liberal figure who was critical of the then-ruling faction of Choson, the Noron ("The Elders' Argument"). His earliest recorded criticism of the Noron came when he was all of ten years old, no doubt influenced by his early teachers belonging to the dissenting faction, Soron ("The Youth Argument"). This outspokenness led to members of his family including his mother, who came from a Noron family, and two of his sisters, turning against him. (The dissent against Sado's eventual disgrace criticized the king for acting against his son on the word of palace women.) Finally Sado's own royal father Yeongjo stripped the title of Crown Prince from his son and ordered him imprisoned, by some accounts in a tiny grain closet with no food or water. The latter part is not in the official history; if true, it would mean the disgraced Crown Prince was essentially tortured to death. Either way the former crown prince died eight days later at the age of thirty-two. The exact cause of his death is disputed: Some say it was poison, others say starvation or illness.
With this grim historical inspiration in mind, the original outline was pretty simple: Zuko saved the village, which angered the pro-war interests and his own father, which led to his being exiled on the flimsy excuse of speaking out of turn. Later on, when Stingmon pretty much foresaw this entire sequence of events, I realized how obvious it all was and revised the outline. In the process I divided the story into three parts, Part 2 of which deals in more depth with palace intrigue and hopefully adds a few surprises on the way. I'll talk more about that after I'm done with the whole thing. But Part 1 of the story never changed in a fundamental way, dealing with the young Zuko's idealism and the ways he connected to his subjects. Since this was a political story, though, Zuko's actions would not happen in isolation. From early on I planned to intersperse Zuko's scenes with scenes from the palace where characters would interact with his story from afar.
The plotting of the story was largely a process of problem-solving. For instance, how would Zuko learn the village was in trouble? A peasant would come petition him, of course, but Zuko would be prevented from speaking to him. This would be a good opportunity to show how Zuko chafed under the restrictions put on him, and how badly he wanted to participate more in the affairs of the Fire Nation. Since another of the canon gaps I wanted to fill in was the way Roku's crown reached the Fire Palace, I added in Khoujin and Sa Ye and their whole subplot. Setting up the assassination attempt was the hardest problem, since it was the event that every subsequent development would revolve around, so I was careful to add an escalating sense of menace to foreshadow it and give the characters, particularly Master Lu and Shun, reasons for their actions. The assassination chapter itself was some of the most difficult writing I ever did, and I will discuss it in more depth when I talk about constructing scenes.
Traditional Korean rural village (Nak-an Folk Village in South Cholla Province, Korea)
Character Concepts and Gender Reassignment
One difficulty with this story was the number and importance of original characters I would have to introduce. Nothing but the most unbelievable contortions could staff all the necessary roles with established canon characters, and they would no longer be recognizable as themselves anyway. At base Shadow was a story about the Fire Nation, and I would need to flesh out Fire Nation characters beyond the elites that make up most of the named Fire Nation cast in the canon.
Since the Tamalan part of the story was the most detailed at this point, Sanwai and Elder Lao Tai were some of the first characters to be fleshed out. Later I had Lord Zhen and Captain Kang, and then Sa Ye showed up in Zuko's bedroom and Khoujin was barging into it. (Their names were originally Saë and Shankho for reasons I will never understand. Mercifully I regained my senses and changed the names.) Then I came up with a middle-class artisan family, Ti Shou and his wife and children, to explain the symbolism of the Dragon King. Yenzi was originally their son and Lijin their daughter. This changed for reasons I will explain.
I named Shun (順) from an online list of Chinese names, meaning 'smooth,' though his actual name is the Chinese surname Xun (荀). He was always going to be a warrior torn in his loyalties, but in the earliest drafts he was a firebender. I changed him to an Earth Kingdom soldier later on to highlight his shifting loyalties and the hold Azula had over him. For a while I toyed with the idea of making him an earthbender, but I decided to make him a non-bender because I wanted him to be Zuko's first dao teacher and hardly any benders in the canon used weapons, other than Zuko and Gow. The dao didn't really seem to fit into earthbending moves like Gow's hammers did, plus I liked the idea of a Badass Normal playing an important role in the story.
I added Master Lu because I didn't want Iroh along for Zuko's trip (neither did Ozai), and I figured Zuko would have needed someone to pound his letters and history into his skull. If there is an author surrogate in the story it is Master Lu. Like me, he is a lawyer and a teacher, an intellectual who finds that his learning often has no power in the real world. Though he would never be shown fighting on-screen I gave him my favorite weapon, the bow, and he fought valiantly during the assassination attempt. In Korea the bow was not only the most important weapon in warrior training but also considered essential for learned men, to focus their minds and keep them physically fit. (I guess what I'm saying is, Koreans have always been crazy about their bows and arrows. Guess which country won half of all Olympic gold medals in archery? Yeah.) I also wanted Lu to be a father figure that did not have the complexities of Zuko's relationship with his father or uncle. My vision of Zuko based on canon, alas, was never a good student when it came to book-learning, but that never impeded Master Lu's affection and respect for him.
A high ranking state-employed scholar from 16th-century Choson, in the 2011 drama A Deep-Rooted Tree. Very much my image of Master Lu.
When I got this far with the OCs, I realized I had something of an embarrassment on my hands. Every single one of them except the pregnant teenager and the little girl who needed rescuing (Lijin at the time) were male. While Sa Ye was meant from the first to be a feminist character, dealing with themes like exploitation of women and a woman's independence in patriarchal culture, I really didn't want her to be the sole woman in the cast with a meaningful and positive role, especially since the main villain Azula was also female. So I started looking for characters I could flip around. Sanwai and Lao Tai both refused to be women, and I could live with that because theirs was a community where men called the shots. That was the point of Sa Ye's character arc. Khoujin was not amenable to gender reassignment for obvious reasons, and I wanted to give Zuko a big brother figure. Zhen and Kang were similarly unaccommodating, and while the idea of a Mistress Lu was intriguing, it didn't really fit.
Shun was the character who came closest to starting hormone replacement therapy, and I did seriously toy with the idea of his female version, Shen. (I was later amused when Amanda called him Shen in an early review. She looked into the alternate reality!) But Shen would have been a very different character from Shun, and maybe this speaks more to my prejudices than anything but I simply could not get the right amount of raw bloodthirst from her. She could have the same body count, but her violence was always more calculated than Shun's reflexive and overwhelming urge to destroy. My thoughts about Shen, however, did lead me to place Ming in Zuko's guard detail and give her a role. My concept of Shen would later emerge unexpectedly in another character, which I will discuss in the notes for Part 2.
The character who finally did go over to the female side was Yenzi, who was like, "(shrug) Sure, cool." I think this not only helped the gender balance slightly but improved the character and story. For one thing, Yenzi as a young woman took on a nurturing role toward her brother and even parents that added more dimension to her motivations. Her tongue also became considerably sharper than her male counterpart's for reasons I'm not sure of, maybe because she constantly had to prove herself in a society that's only just starting to grasp the idea of broader roles for women. Her mother Shiri was also a trailblazer, but where her strategy was to keep a cheerful smile while kicking serious ass, Yenzi was more abrasive. I think Lijin similarly improved by becoming a little boy as opposed to a little girl. His impulsiveness in seeking out the Dragon Prince and his hero-worship of Zuko felt even more endearing, somehow, in a boy.
Plot and character were something of a give-and-take process. Sometimes the needs of the plot produced or influenced a character, or the character drove the plot. Mostly, though, perhaps owing to my background in role-playing the characters took precedence. If the plot seemed to cause a character to behave unlike himself, I tried to give good reasons for it. For instance, Master Lu lying to the Fire Palace and giving Zuko's location to a stranger went against everything he believed in, so I inserted at least a chapter's worth of buildup to escalate the threat and lead him to believe there was a genuine threat to Zuko from the Fire Nation elite.
The Writing Process
Now that plot and character were in place, it was time to get down to the actual business of writing. Like plot and characters, writing wasn't necessarily a separate process either. As noted above the plot itself went through substantial revisions as I wrote. Sometimes an event or development envisioned in the outline just didn't make sense when I wrote it out (the thought of a boy and an old man outriding soldiers all night on normal transportation, for instance), or the writing itself changed the characters (Yenzi was originally a fervent believer in government propaganda, but the scenes never worked until I made her a cynic instead). Sometimes when I wasn't sure of a plot point or how a character might react I would simply write it out and see how it worked. If the result felt wrong, I discarded it and went back to the drawing board. Alternately, sometimes I let the writing take me somewhere altogether unplanned.
Aside from the little surprises that writing inevitably throws at you, the most unexpected scene was the spirit vision in Chapter 5: The Reservoir. That scene, and indeed the entire chapter, was not in the original outline at all. But the convergence of Zuko's internal turmoil after he learned of Khoujin and Sa Ye's story, and his earlier curiosity about the altar to the spirits, led to this supernatural scene that seemed to write itself. Then I got the idea of tying the idea of the Dragon King to the legend of King Munmu, king of the ancient Korean kingdom of Shilla who in 7th century A.D. who united the three squabbling kingdoms of the Korean peninsula. Legend says Munmu asked to become a dragon after his death to defend his land against the marauding Japanese. (Not that it always worked, but you can't fault a guy for trying.) Particularly patriotic people becoming dragons after death seemed to fit the motif of the Dragon King in my story well, so I went with that for the chapter epigraph.
King Munmu's Grave in the East Sea of Korea where his ashes were scattered.
The most enjoyable chapter to write was Chapter 6: From Dusk to Dawn, where Zuko fought his first Agni Kai, at least by my headcanon, and where I first got to show Shun being badass. But I think I liked the later pitched battle between the villagers and guards even better because everyone was working together, and it showed the villagers' resourcefulness in using their natural surroundings to their advantage. Zuko's determination and dedication at the end were a joy to write, too. It was even better because everyone understood there would be no killing, so despite the violence both sides of the conflict still had strong ties to one another. The pathos in this situation is that the villagers were fighting to keep that relationship with the feudal lord who wanted to sever it.
The changes in the Fire Nation, represented by the case of Tamalan, was meant to show a country in the throes of of modernization. The British enclosure and the wholesale destruction of rural communities were very much on my mind when I wrote the Tamalan arc and recapped its meaning in Chapter 7: Flames in the Night. Similar movements happened in Korea and elsewhere, too. And that's a painful process with a lot of human cost, though I don't want to whitewash the pre-modern world either. Authoritarianism and abuse were a part of that life, as shown in Sa Ye's story, as was an oppressive patriarchy that kept people quiet about such injustice. I am a huge beneficiary of modernity and I would champion its strides in technology, standard of living, and equality to anyone who longs for the "good old days." But I think it's important to remember that modernization also entailed agony for those who were on the wrong side of it. While rulers could not turn the tide of modernity, they often did try to slow its pace and make it a soft landing for those who had drawn the short straw of history. I understood Zuko's actions in that context, though in a more dramatized form.
The hardest chapter to write was, without contest, Chapter 10: Flames in the Night. The assassination attempt was the most crucial event in the story around which everything else would revolve, so I put a lot of care into setting it up. Now that I had to write the actual event, it was hard to make the events make sense and have emotional impact. I threw away one nearly complete draft of the assassination because it sucked, and was stuck there for months due to having a crazy semester. This was the same chapter where I also rewrote a prior series of scenes from a different point of view, so overall Chapter 10 took more work than any other chapter. Once that semester was over I had the time to sit down and think about how the action would take place. I diagrammed the action on paper to help myself think, which effort was sad enough that I snapped a picture for posterity.
Exhibit A: Why I am not an artist.
When I had it in my mind I wrote the entire assassination part in a day of obsessive writing, during which I walked away from the monitor like twenty times as Khoujin's death approached. In a way it was his death I had been putting off for so long. He would not be the only man to die during the assassination attempt but I meant for him to be the face of those who were killed, simply because it was easier to focus on one man than a dozen. I had put so much thought in the character it was hard to let him go, but I had known from early on his death was essential to the story. But I would send him off right, damn it, and while it took a lot of time and thought I'm happy with the way it finally turned out.
Other particularly enjoyable chapters included Chapter 3: A Royal Departure for the fun action and dialogue, and Chapter 7: While He Was Sleeping for its focus on original characters, the appearance of Roku's crown, and the shamelessly sentimental romance between Sa Ye and Khoujin. However, I'm proudest of Deng Po's point of view scene at the beginning of that chapter. While I detest alcohol myself, I know what it's like to evade life's problems with an addiction or at least obsession. I've also made excuses for my behavior and tried to put the blame on others. In that sense I could understand Sa Ye's abusive alcoholic father, and his scene was very cathartic to me. And Zuko's reunion with Iroh at the end of Chapter 10 is one of my favorite scenes. After everything that happened I needed that reunion almost as much as Zuko, as one reviewer put it. Iroh's anxiety on Zuko's behalf and Zuko's relief to see his uncle made that scene work for me. I just couldn't have ended Part 1 any other way.
In the end, though, all of it was enjoyable. Even when it was hard or frustrating, my belief in the story always brought me back. The story reminded me how much I loved writing and how I can't stop myself from telling stories even when I try. It also confirmed my love of the history and culture I grew up in, and showed me the many, many good stories that lay therein waiting to be discovered. And now that I'm finding ways to reconcile fiction writing with other career goals, I think I can allow myself to try to be a writer. It's not like I can help it.
I'm almost done with the first draft of Part 2, and will probably finish writing (though not editing and rewriting) Part 2 before I start posting any of it. Part 3 is just four chapters that have been building up in my head for almost a year now--it's been clamoring to get out for a while. Finishing a novel-length story will feel like an accomplishment, that's for sure. I look forward to talking about Parts 2 and 3 after I'm done writing and posting them.
