Now let’s get the standard definition out of the way first: Wuxia (武俠 [ù. ɕjǎ]), which literally means "martial heroes", is a genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Where people are always fighting.

Now when I say ‘always fighting’, I mean they can’t go one day without someone hurting the pride of another which then turns into a duel where one may die a bloody death just to defend ‘honour’.

In my humble opinion, I’ve always understood yet couldn’t agree with how ‘honour’ works in these stories just as in real life. The reason you see people doing stupid things for the sake on honour is because ancient times worked like this.

It was the same literally everywhere in the world and the whole reason most Xianxia usually start off in a Wuxia setting. Because the people of this world are naturally narrow-minded due to the belief system they are taught about what should be done for the sake of defending or preserving a family’s honour. As they have much to learn, a Xianxia allows them to slowly grow through journeys.

However, a Xianxia is at the end more about magic and ‘the Dao’ than practical martial arts. Stories like Martial King’s Retired Life and Legend of the Condor Heroes are more about fictional martial arts that have some level of believability to them.

They are a different beast from Xianxia which demand the characters to grow, as Wuxia stories pride themselves on flawed characters that may get some development but won’t change the same way a celestial would on his path to godhood.

There’s no ‘Cultivators are sealing resources from each other which is why the world sucks’ crap in these stories as Martial Heroes of these fiction are all inevitably visited by death. They don’t seek immortality, so their reasons for fighting become much more personal and raw. From revenge on another to greed, anything is possible for them.

Those who train martial arts have to have a fiery will and no nonsense personality in this world if they don’t want to be screwed over in pugilistic society of fighters. Though not really magic, some techniques might as well be magic with how they end up doing absurd things like smashing boulders with their fists and flying through the air.

Mangas like Peerless Dad do a good job in portraying the hardships and the kind of people that are formed through a mixture of experience from the technique they practice and view on life.

Some could end up seeing others are fires just waiting to be started if they get too obsessed on training their fire-related technique while others could become more pious and nurturing individuals from learning a healing technique to help others.

Though it isn’t like a technique shapes the personality of characters as the main character of Peerless Dad would have become a masochist if that was the case. No technique is easy to train and one must always be affected by the hardships it took to train their technique, even the prodigy main characters. After all, who doesn’t love the feeling of accomplishment from rewarded efforts?

There isn’t really much a structure to writing these stories once you got your setting down and put forth rational struggles for the main character to overcome to reach his goals. Then you can even introduce the power dynamics of various factions.

No one is perfect, and you shouldn’t hold back from showing flawed characters in this setting who have been personally moulded by their sucky environment, but that don’t go too far, as making the world too crap to live in makes people sad.

Blood and gore in this setting are either exaggerated or skipped as not many stories want to focus on a brutal death unless the character really deserved such an end (subjectively). It’s to the point that some main characters of these stories become blood-obsessed-murder-hobos who end up killing all of those they love and hate.

When figuring out the end goal of your main character, make it pretty specific so they can reach it or pretty vague so they themselves don’t know even at the end of the story if they’ve achieved it.

The ‘Heroes’ of these stories aren’t supposed to be paragons of justice but those who are special due to either high talent or destiny. Think of classic Greek Mythology if you want good examples as Heracles was a total badass in his Twelve Labours.

The themes of these stories mostly pertain to overcoming stuff like social status and destiny or so on. As these worlds are normally unforgiving to those not wealthy just like how in medieval times nobility were sometimes assholes to commoners.

As governments can’t control who in these worlds become ‘talented’ or what kind of absurd techniques can come into existence in these worlds. It is natural that there is always chaos and death in these pugilistic worlds, to the point you start to wonder how could civilisation survive with so many unjust massacres going around.

Most writers remedy this by making governing forces at least give some level of protection to its residents and makes it so the ones getting the power aren’t all murder hobos like what realistically would happen. The story is how you make it.

There CAN be warm and lighthearted stories in ancient China but just remember that these stories are inevitably set in pasts where people didn’t have modern social values. A member of royalty hitting on you to the point of wanting ‘ownership’ of you while ignoring yours opinions could be considered a generic love story in such backward societies.

Getting someone’s calculated murder investigated was pretty hard and there was so many loopholes back then that it’s only natural that even the most amateur of authors can easily write these stories.

You don’t need to learn ancient customs as things in the past were less about rules and more about honour or status. Those who know good are more than likely to get preyed upon in these societies.

However, my biggest gripe with some of these stories is that they sometimes make an avenger that realistically shouldn’t be tricked into an all-knowing judge of character like in literally every revenge related story of this genre.

These Author’s ignore any growth or degradation on the main character’s part and instead focus on his ‘cool’ plus omniscient they are. Setting aside any character development in favour of basically praising how awesome this character was or is.

An example of what I mean is in ‘The Evil Girl is The Emperor’ where the main character gets betrayed by a loved one and instantly gets over the pain of his betrayal literally moments after finding it out.

It’s almost like betrayal is a mere trope with no value other than being there rather than an important tool that can temper the main character’s personality. The reasons for why they were betrayed may not be as simple as ‘because they were so blind they could not recognise a jerk in their vicinity’, but rather, more sincere reasons like the MC’s negligence on a certain matter, or even history they didn’t know about the betrayer.

Forming a bond of hatred is not always as simple as one person is bad and other is good. As this is supposed to a society with flawed people, it is alright to show that even the MC has his flaws that he must overcome. Even after his betrayal.

Anger as a motivation isn’t bland, what makes people bored is when anger becomes the main character’s only defining character trait. You must at least give them a life if you use this trope.

Lastly, make sure that you aren’t throwing characters at the main character for the sake of adding action. A character that actively seeks conflicts is the antagonist, but it doesn’t mean that all journeys with conflict can never be justified.

Don’t just make it as simple as the main character fighting some bandits out of compassion for the locals, but more like him getting a taste of reality for being hot-headed when takes action.

The Revival Man Manhwa isn’t a Wuxia, but it perfectly encapsulates a hot-headed main character getting screwed over by his greatest character strength, his hot-Hesse’s drive, due to the realistic consequences of not planning ahead.

Just be sure to build a sense of community between characters and develop them properly.

Anyway, that’s all I got. Hope it help you and ask for more Analysis blogs anytime without holding back~