This interview was originally published on Audible.com.
Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Katie O'Connor: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Katie O'Connor, and today I'm honored to be speaking with director and writer Yulin Kuang, whose debut novel, , a moving contemporary romance, has been making waves in the literary world. Welcome, Yulin.
Yulin Kuang: Thank you so much for having me.
KO: I guess my first question is, how dare you [laughs], for just breaking our hearts from the start? Your novel begins from a place of tragedy. Our heroine, Helen, is at her little sister Michelle's funeral when none other than Grant Shepard, the boy whose car struck Michelle when she jumped in front of it, walks into the church service. This is our first glimpse of the two main characters, and it's quite a heart-wrenching non-meet-cute, really. Was this always the opening scene?
YK: It was, yes. It was always the opening scene. That was the very first thing I wrote. And it was the thing that changed the least from start to finish.
KO: That's so interesting. And then flash-forward 13 years, our setting jumps from New Jersey to California. Helen is a successful writer whose YA series is being adapted for television. She's got a spot in the writers' room, as does Grant, and so officially begins our enemies-to-lovers journey. But there is so much for Helen to mentally overcome to start to see Grant that way. Talk to me about the challenge of making a hero realistic but also just irresistible enough that Helen can start to fall for him.
YK: I'm so glad you said "realistic," because I do feel like that is what I was going for. I wanted both Helen and Grant to feel very textured and like people that you would know in the world, people that you could encounter in LA or New York, or New Jersey, more specifically. I think it was just kind of giving him a lot of attractive traits and then also giving him a wound, because I think real people do, we carry wounds, right? And once I kind of gave him that texture, he felt like somebody I could fall in love with.
KO: I love that. Yeah, you want to make sure, too, that you can also have that part of your heart with your characters. And given that Audible is in New Jersey—I'm from New Jersey—I really appreciated the bicoastal setting, little bit of Jerz, little bit of California. And you do get to see how those locales mirror different sides of both Helen and Grant's personalities. Was there a world in which this story was only ever going to be an LA story?
YK: Oh, no. I knew I always wanted it to be a screenwriter and a novelist, and I knew I wanted it to kind of embody the East Coast/West Coast dichotomy. 'm from Jersey, and so I do remember when I first moved to LA, there was a little bit of a culture shock when I got here. I just didn't quite know how to exist in this world, and it took me a while to find my footing. And so these characters kind of gave me a vehicle to explore those feelings.
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KO: You have two dedications at the opening of your novel, and one is for the eldest daughters of immigrant parents, which Helen is. Talk to me about why you wanted to honor that audience.
YK: Because I think I wanted it on the record that I love myself [laughs]. I think when I wrote the dedication for this, I knew I wanted to dedicate it to my husband because it is a love story and he is somebody who taught me a lot about what I know about love today. And thenI also wanted to write a love letter for eldest daughters of immigrant parents because I know firsthand how that can be, what that life looks like. And, yeah, I wanted it on the record: I love myself.
KO: I love that. In romance novels, because you're guaranteed a happily ever after by definition of the genre, I think sometimes there is a compulsion to also neatly tie up any other loose strings in a main character's life. And you resist this temptation with Helen in her relationship with her parents. There's a bit of progress, but they don't all of a sudden have some Norman Rockwell moment, really. Why was it important to you to leave some messiness there?
"I'm from Jersey, and so I do remember when I first moved to LA, there was a little bit of a culture shock when I got here. I just didn't quite know how to exist in this world... These characters kind of gave me a vehicle to explore those feelings."
YK: I think there's maybe a specific passage where she talks about if this was some award-winning family drama, this would be the part where they wrap things up and they have the hard conversations. And I think that was because when I was growing up, I would watch those award-winning TV dramas, like, you know, Gilmore Girls, and I would just think to myself, "This is not [laughs] something that will happen in my family." I couldn't ever picture it. I couldn't picture any version of those conversations. And I've had different conversations with my parents where we've managed to talk about the past and different things that give me context for where they were coming from. And we have had really good conversations as adults.
But I would say emotional conversations where things are wrapped up neatly, maybe that's not even specific to my family, maybe that just doesn't happen in real life, and TV and movies have conditioned us to want it. Although I do think also there is a trend amongst TV and movies that moves away from that, because I think the media I grew up with was very much built towards the syndicated television model where it was like 100 episodes and every episode is kind of the same structure. And I think with streaming, there was a lot more room for serialized television and these story arcs that go on for a longer time. So, you see less of that now, but that was the media I grew up in, and I think that was the feeling I was reacting to when I wrote this. I wanted something that felt a little bit more real to me.
KO: Yeah, I think there's something generational, too, just about we want everything out in the open. We share ourselves, we share our lives. We are very much online, and so we don't necessarily understand when our parents don't want to have those conversations or kind of react with, "Well, why bring that up now? Well, that's in the past. I'm already X age. You're not going to change me." But we maintain this hope of, “Well, maybe we could change you a little bit,” have an improved relationship, whatever it is.
YK: Yeah. And there have been times when they've surprised me, where it is like, “Oh, this is movement.” I have a much younger sister, and the thing we always go back to is we are sisters, not twins. She's 14 years younger than me, and so the parents that she got and the parents that I got are on a bit of a time delay. And seeing the differences there have been interesting. She got Invisalign. That's a tiny detail, but I wasn't allowed to have braces [laughs]. So, you know, [my parents] are capable of growth.
KO: See, I sit on the other side of that. I have half-siblings that are 15, 20 years older than me, so I'm the baby that benefited from maybe some more relaxed parents going down the line. So, I'm sorry and thank you for walking that path on behalf of youngest children everywhere. There's also a messiness in Helen's friendships. Her two closest friends at the start of the novel, Pallavi and Elyse, they seem to really struggle with Helen's success. And I think in an age of social media, we lean into celebration, right? It's women celebrating women, but at times emotions and friendships can be more complicated than that. Has your road to success changed any of your relationships?
YK: That's such an interesting question, because I think I have spent so long trying to get my way here that I haven't thought of it as a road to success. And in some ways, I don't feel like I have gotten to a destination yet. I'm still on the road [laughs], so I'm kind of like, I don't know, check back in 10 to 20 years. I guess my answer would be like, I think time has changed me. I think that it would be quite sad if a person stayed in one place and they were the same year after year after year. And so I'm definitely not who I was when I was 22 or when I was 25 or even 28. And then I think the pandemic did a number on me too, along with everybody.
KO: It did on all of us [laughs].
YK: I'm also, I feel strangely superstitious about calling it success because maybe I'm just like, I don't want this to be all there ever is. I don't know.
KO: I feel like I need to now pivot to this other question I wanted to ask you, which was imposter syndrome. You have discussed imposter syndrome in interviews. It's something that Helen struggles with as well, but there is this great moment early in the book when Helen seeks out advice from a more seasoned writer about will this feeling ever go away. And they say, "At a certain point, it just becomes unseemly." With this novel, with your adaptations that we will get to, have you had that moment where it has for you reached, well, “This is my unseemly point in the road”?
YK: I think so. I think I kind of went into this pub season with that thought of—it's battling two sides of me where there is a part of me that cringes at the thought that anybody might think I come across as arrogant or like I don't know how lucky I am. And I think that's part conditioning that women receive a lot, right? And then it is also part of the thing that I do feel like I am very much still at the beginning of my career. I feel like I've had a lot of throat clearings before this point, artistic throat clearing, where I've done things where I haven't felt quite like I achieved what I set out to do. And I would say this book is probably one of the first times where I felt a significant closing of the gap between what I set out to do and what I ended up with. I think—what is it?—the gap between your taste and your ability.
"I also wanted to write a love letter for eldest daughters of immigrant parents because I know firsthand how that can be, what that life looks like. And, yeah, I wanted it on the record: I love myself."
So, I'm very proud of this, but then at the same time, it feels like the first time I've really managed to do that, to me. I do feel some degree of imposter syndrome, I suppose, or not imposter syndrome so much as I don't want to toot my own horn too early. And then at the same time, there is also that feeling of, yeah, I think it's unseemly at a certain point to act as if I am brand-new. That would be disingenuous if I came out and I was like, "Oh, my god, I can't believe I'm here." I'm like, "No, I wanted this. I worked very hard to get to exactly this point." I've won a lot of lotteries, but also I didn't get here by accident. And so that is kind of the energy that I've been trying to imbue.
KO: So, you are also the screenwriter for two of Emily Henry's novels, and . And there are some really fun meta moments in your novel, as Helen is in the writers' room on her own book-to-screen adaptation and frets about coming off as too precious about her work. Can you talk to me about your approach to adaptation? How are you balancing the need to make it your own to a certain extent and bring in new audiences, while also staying true to the source material and keeping the book people happy?
YK: [Laughs]. The book people, as we call you guys when you're not here in the room. Yeah, I look at adaptation as a puzzle that I'm kind of trying to solve. And I also look at it as a love letter to the book because, contrary to what Grant might have you believe in the book when he says something about like, "I didn't like the book," I could not do my job if I didn't love the book. You spend so much time with it, you kind of have to burrow into the work. And so, at least for me, I do not think that I could adapt a book without loving it, something fundamental to it.
That being said, early in my career when I would pitch on books that I loved, I would say things like, "The book is so good, and I've always just wanted to watch somebody film a book. We should just film the book." And I wouldn't get those jobs. And that was when I kind of started tapping into the part of me that came from fandom. I have roots in writing fan fiction. And I do remember how revolutionary it was to me when I first discovered fan fiction. And so I'm part of the generation that came up with Harry Potter. The books were coming out as I was growing up. And I remember waiting for the fifth book and writing out my own fifth book as I was waiting because I really wanted to read something. And then a friend of mine who I shared my, like, hand-scrawled fanfic to before I knew what the word fanfic was, she said, "You should check out this website called fanfiction.net."
So, I went there and I was like, "Oh, my god, what are people doing here? They're not just writing the fifth book that they want to read, they're writing things about the parents' generation. They're writing things about these random side characters that show up for a single second." And it was so revolutionary to me to think that you could play in somebody else's universe in that way. And so once I kind of tapped into my fandom mindset, when I look at source material, I look at, what is it about this that compels me specifically? And why do I gravitate towards that? And then I kind of build my take, as we call it, around that. So, I figure out what it is I love about something and then the rest is a love letter to that.
KO: That's great. And I think, too, you're also dealing with built-in fandoms to a certain extent while getting to create your own. I think it's this really unique and fun path to kind of walk and discover, and then get to obsess over as you continue on the journey.
YK: That's the hope. I think successful adaptation brings new audiences to the source material rather than only reaching the original audience.
KO: Do you have a favorite romance trope?
YK: I think I love forced proximity. I think on some level I need a couple to be on the page together, on the screen together. Sleepless in Seattle is one of my favorite movies, but I think You've Got Mail for me always wins in the Nora Ephron-offs because they're just on screen together more. I like when a couple is together. And sometimes I think that requires some forcing.
KO: I felt that when I was listening to How to End a Love Story. So, the narration from Katharine Chin and Andrew Eiden as Helen and Grant is wonderful. They really capture the nuance of emotions that are felt throughout this story. And so with what you're saying of that forced proximity, I was curious from your experience as a screenwriter if you were gravitating towards writing their dialogue?
YK: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I wrote with the dialogue in mind. I wrote with the audiobook in mind sometimes because there would be times when I would be sounding out a phrase for myself and I would think about how it would sound out loud, which is funny because I don't really consume a lot of fiction via audiobooks. I mostly consume celebrity memoirs through audiobooks because a lot of the times the celebrities themselves will read it, and I like to hear the memory in their voice.
KO: Did you have any directions for Katharine or Andrew ahead of time? Like, did you ever think in sort of a stage direction type of way?
YK: No, and I wish I had. I think they've done such a lovely, lovely, wonderful job. I truly feel so lucky that I got the two of them. But also, as a director, I always have notes [laughs]. So, I kind of wish I had sent along a couple of notes beforehand. Something to think about next time.
KO: Always wearing multiple hats, a true multihyphenate in that sense. I love the dual points of view and how even within chapters, they start to bleed together. How did you approach this structurally? Was Grant's point of view always in it? Did you write linearly? What was that process like?
YK: I just kind of wrote it, yeah, linearly, straight from top to end. I tried skipping around I think at one point and then very quickly realized that's just not my vibe. I think I did write a very spare first draft, so it was kind of like when I would feel stuck, I would just write towards the next scene that would interest me. And then once I got into the editing stage, I went back and filled it out a little bit more when it felt like there was a missing beat or something.
"I think it's unseemly at a certain point to act as if I am brand-new. That would be disingenuous if I came out and I was like, 'Oh, my god, I can't believe I'm here.' I'm like, 'No, I wanted this. I worked very hard to get to exactly this point.'"
KO: So, you've got your screenplays that you're working on. You've just wrapped this novel. Not that you don't have enough going on, but what do you feel like is next for you? What is your next chapter?
YK: Well, I would like to get those screenplays produced. I would like to get them made. So, People We Meet on Vacation is in the very capable hands of our director, Brett Haley.Beach Read is my baby, so I'm directing that one. And that's the one I'm really kind of shepherding to production. I feel like that was why I gave Grant the last name Shepard. I'm like, "You work in adaptation, you are a shepherd." That is one I would really like to see it through to the finish line. And I have a couple of other projects that are in development on the Hollywood side of things. And then I have book two, which is a perpetual slow grapple. It's hard to write books [laughs]. It's real hard to write books. I have so much respect for every novelist I've ever adapted or will ever adapt. It's so hard to write 100,000 words.
KO: Do you feel like it's pulling out either different sides of your brain or different sides of your personality? Like, how are those two processes working for you side by side?
YK: I'll tell you this, I am saving basically every idea that I know is too unhinged for me to pitch with a straight face for publishing, because the story of How to End a Love Story, I would never have pitched that. That is a very execution-dependent storyline and that's kind of how I'm looking at it, at the publishing career, anything that I think might need to take an extra little bit of convincing for anybody to get onboard.
So, with the screenplays, it's very architectural. I am creating an outline and then when I work off the outline, it feels like I am leaving no room for surprise for myself, because I don't ever want to be in a situation where I have writer's block. Because if I do, then that holds up the entire train track of production, and that would be death to a movie or a TV show.
With the books, I was finding that I would plant these seeds and then I would just kind of water them. And then I would see them bloom, like, "Oh, wow, that did surprise me. My mommy issues really bloomed into something over there that I didn't expect." So, I think that's the main difference for me is that there is a lot more room for surprise in a novel to see what was inside of me at the start and then see how it kind of shifts at the end. I think books are kind of magical in a way. I think they do change people from the inside and they do reveal things to you as you're writing them. Maybe it's the writing down of a thought, which you can't really do in screenplays because we have to be so economical with our words there. Whereas in books, you can chase down a thought and then once you've written it down, it's like, “Oh, what's the next thought after that then?” And so, in a way, that was a different kind of excavation.
KO: Yeah, they do take on a life of their own in a sense. And it's almost like you enter into your own conversation and relationship with the work. But the unhinged fandom that you are building over here, we’ll be ready and eager to see whatever that second book is. If you could have listeners take away one thing from How to End a Love Story, what would it be?
YK: Oh, gosh. I hate answering those questions because I do, as a consumer of art, I always kind of believe the artist's intentions don't matter. That's kind of between you and the text, and I don't want to be very prescriptive there. I'll say, like, my favorite moments in literature are always when it feels like there's a thought that I've had before that I maybe feel some shame about or I'm a little bit afraid of and I haven't been able to admit to myself, and that I see it reflected back at me by a stranger I've never met, and I feel less alone. And that is the greatest feeling. And I guess I hope that there are moments like that within the text for readers. I hope that there are moments when they hear something that they've thought before and, yeah, feel less alone.
KO: That was a beautiful answer for a question you don't like getting. Well, congratulations and, again, we can't wait to see what you do next. Listeners, you can get How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang right now on Audible.
