Yulin Kuang has been thinking up romance stories since she was 11, back when she was writing Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley fanfics in her childhood bedroom. Now, all that practice has led to her debut novel, a contemporary romance titled “How to End a Love Story,” which released this month on April 2.
“How to End a Love Story” centers around novelist Helen Zhang and screenwriter Grant Shephard, who have a prickly history after an accident in their teenage years left them both devastated. Thirteen years later, fate pits the two of them together once again, as they find themselves in the same writer’s room, working towards adapting Helen’s popular YA series, “Ivy Papers,” into a television show.
On the film front, Kuang has directed episodes of “Dollface” and “The Healing Powers of Dude,” the latter for which she was nominated for a 2020 Daytime Emmy. Next for Kuang is writing and directing the adaptation of Emily Henry’s novel, “Beach Read,” for 20th Century. She is also the adaptor of Henry’s “People We Meet on Vacation,” which is in development at Temple Hill and 3000 Pictures.
Kuang chats with Character Media in anticipation of her debut novel, sharing with us her love for romance, as well as the differences between writing for the screen and for the page.
CM: It’s your debut novel. How are you feeling?
Yulin Kuang: Oh, God, I’m sinking slowly into madness. [I feel] all the normal anxiety. It’s a very personal story and so that means I care a lot about how it’s received. And that’s not always a recipe for glowing mental health. But that’s part of the charm of being an artist.
CM: What made you decide to write a novel?
YK: Normally, I’m a screenwriter and director. I wrote this at a time when everything else I was working on was an adaptation of something. It felt like nothing was original anymore. I love adaptation and I loved the things I was working on, but it was still…
Read the full article here
