maybe we know how the story ends
"heart's content" by brandi carlile & how to end a love story by yulin kuang
I LOVE reading books on vacation. I have an extremely good memory for what books I read on which trip, like something about the act of pairing them together makes this indelible connection in my mind. I went to Gatlinburg like five years ago, for example, and can STILL tell you I read My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren; Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert; Story Genius by Lisa Cron (I was trying to break open a new novel idea!); Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery (a comfort reread); and Jeff Tweedy’s memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), which I’d gotten out of a Little Free Library because sure, why not, I’m a Wilco fan, and I ended up enjoying so much more than I even thought I would.
Anyway, all of this to say that a couple months ago I was in Georgia with the family, and I read an early copy of Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story in that beautifully leisurely way you can read a book on vacation.
This is one of those books that I would say stayed with me even as I was reading it. Hard to explain but it’s just so thorny and complicated and angsty and tense and tender and real. I really enjoyed it, but also “enjoyed” feels inadequate because it knocked me on my ass a little. For one thing, the “inciting incident” of the book — a tragic event that binds Helen and Grant together in a way they never would’ve asked for — happens to be one of my biggest fears. It made me read the first chapters of the book with my heart going a mile a minute.
Helen and Grant are also writers, so there was a lot about the book that resonated with me on that level — creativity and collaboration, pressure and anxiety, yeah. It resonated. It was one of those books that made me really want to talk with the person who wrote it, and then I realized . . . oh yeah. Maybe I can lol.
So I reached out to Yulin about doing an interview for my newsletter, and I’m grateful that even amongst the other promotional stuff she has going on, she took time to answer some questions! Below is our interview, where my questions/comments are in bold and then Yulin’s answers are in regular font.
AT: Since this newsletter is “the same songs over and over,” what’s a song you particularly connect with How to End a Love Story, and why?
YK: Heart’s Content by Brandi Carlile was at the top of my writing playlist all the way since the beginning, when the working title was still Good in a Room. Something about the cover art of that album really appealed to me, and I liked the song as a tonal reference for background music on this book. It was a little sweet and a little sad and very wistful. Bonus answer would be Orange Juice by Noah Kahan, which feels very home-visiting-the-parents-core to me, and I looped it a lot while writing and revising some of my favorite chapters of the book. [AT: This is a great song and I TOTALLY get the vibe for HTEALS!]
There’s a scene in the book where you show everyone in the writers room sharing their “icebreaker” anecdote, and you’re so observant about why people share the kinds of things they do in those situations. What’s your go-to “icebreaker” anecdote, and why is it the one you go with?
It depends on the situation I’m in! I like to share things that feel a little vulnerable and mostly relevant. Lately I find myself talking about my past in fanfiction a lot, which probably feels vulnerable to me because it’s inviting investigation into my two-decades-old digital footprint. Fandom has gone pretty mainstream since my early days trekking across fanfiction.net and LiveJournal, so it’s been fun and unexpectedly healing to be met with enthusiasm instead of blank stares when I talk about these things.
In general, I love that this was a book about writers (I mean, duh — of course I did!), and the conversations you were able to have around creativity and mining your life for art. At one point, you say that Helen once asked a more successful writer, “What do you do about imposter syndrome?” I won't share the response in the book, but I’m curious what yours would be. What do you do about imposter syndrome?
I once took a figure skating lesson with legendary skating coach Frank Carroll (I put in a request for a lesson just to see if he’d do me the honor of rejecting me, and he said yes instead), and he told me, “You have as much right to be here as anyone else. Now go show me your forward stroke!” That’s really stayed with me. And when that doesn’t work, therapy is great!
I also loved that this book was a lot about the ways that your past is always a part of you but you also have to find ways to move forward from it. I’m curious — what was high school Yulin like? What would surprise her about who you are now?
High school Yulin was leading a kind of double life. She was friendly with the artsy stoners and theater kids and desperately wanted to be one of them, but spent most of high school moving in a large clique of mostly Asian overachievers — there was a sense of security in numbers and we could all commiserate about the occasional shared pressures at home we had in common. I think she’d be surprised to see I made my way back to the artsy, theater kid stoners in adulthood.
I thought Helen and Grant’s tension was so visceral and hot. Because they’re working on a show together, you actually get a little meta about sex as a craft choice when breaking a story. How did you think about the sex scenes in this book and how they furthered Helen and Grant’s relationship?
I had never written open door sex scenes before (not even in my fanfic days), so I was a little uncertain going into the drafting of the book whether I would actually be able to go through with it, ha! I knew I wanted each sex scene to be necessary to the plot in the sense that each scene was furthering the emotional beats of this romance. I wanted to take Helen and Grant from ‘having a thought they couldn’t even fully acknowledge to themselves because it felt illegal’ to being full blown in love with each other and yet unable to say it in words so they had to express it through their bodies.
The other thing I really wanted to write was Grant masturbating over a scrunchie, but I wasn't sure initially where it would go - it was a scene I dared myself to write and I was so delighted when I found a place for it! [I for one am DELIGHTED you found a place for it.]
Maybe one of the biggest things I appreciated in your book was that you weren’t afraid to let it get dark. Like, possibly this is a spoiler? You tell me? But the entire premise of how Grant and Helen first knew each other was that, back in high school, Grant was driving the car that struck and killed Helen’s sister, who’d purposely crossed in front of the car. My upcoming book, The Art of Catching Feelings, also features a main character who lost a sibling to suicide and his grief over that event, so this is something I think about a lot. How do you balance those darker elements within a romance? And why do you think it’s important?
I wanted to tell a story that felt emotionally true to life, and in my own personal experience of life thus far, you take the light with the dark and hope the ratios work out in your favor. I’ve known a lot of people who’ve gone through serious mental health struggles, and I’ve struggled personally as well. I wanted to write about the experiences of the people left behind in the wake of a worst case scenario like this, as a vehicle to work through some of my own complicated feelings on the subject. I also wanted to write about two different perspectives on a shared wound, because I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what shared wounds I might have with the authors I’m adapting, and the artists whose work I most resonate with.
You’re currently adapting Emily Henry’s Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation, both of which I am so excited for!! What do you think are the unique challenges of adapting a romance or romcom novel for the big screen? What do you think makes a novel particularly “adaptable?”
I believe the purpose of adaptation is to bring new audiences to the source material, not necessarily to satisfy only the die-hard book fans. That means my loyalty is to the screen adaptation first, and my hope is that I’m successfully conveying what I love most about the book to new audiences. The challenge is always showing all that lovely interiority of a novel onscreen in visually compelling ways. In terms of challenges unique to romance, I would say the genre is so dependent on chemistry between your leads and your audience either sees it onscreen or they don’t — it’s very much a pass/fail test in my viewing experience, so of course that’s the big challenge to get right on the filmmaker side of the equation.
What makes a novel particularly adaptable: a good screenwriter and a great premise.
Since we're on the subject, what's one of your favorite niche romcoms and why? (By “niche” I just mean one you think people may not know or have heard as much about! I'm interested in your deep cuts!)
Down with Love (2003, dir. Peyton Reed, screenplay by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake) is a criminally underrated romcom and something I’d consider a modern classic that was not appreciated enough in its time — except it’s not really trying to be of its time, because it’s a period comedy take on the zany Doris Day-Rock Hudson sex comedies of the 1960s. It stars Renee Zellwegger and Ewan MacGregor at the top of their games, the production design by Andrew Laws is like visual candy and the costume design by Daniel Orlandi is pure escapist magic in clothing. The script is a propulsive delight and every detail is directed with such care, I can’t recommend it enough. [I fucking LOVE this movie!]
Hors de Prix (2006, English title ‘Priceless’, dir. Pierre Salvadori, screenplay by Pierre Salvadori and Benoit Graffin) is a French romantic comedy loosely inspired by Breakfast at Tiffany’s which follows a gold digger who accidentally seduces the broke barman at the hotel where she conducts her business. He takes up with a wealthy widow in order to keep up with her, hijinks and romance ensue. Starring Audrey Tautou and Gad Elmaleh, this is one of my ‘get to know my taste’ recs.
and this last one isn’t a romcom, but I’m reccing it anyway —
Far From the Madding Crowd (2015, dir. Thomas Vinterberg, screenplay by David Nicholls, based on the 1874 novel by Thomas Hardy) is a romantic drama set in 1870s Britain, starring Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts as a flighty, independent young woman who unexpectedly becomes a land-owner and the still-waters-run-deep farmer who lives next door. It features all the pastoral loveliness and sweeping emotions Thomas Hardy was known for and Vinterberg captures it all so beautifully. It’s like falling into the setting of a toile wallpaper and discovering every character inside is living a high stakes personal drama while you were just admiring the bucolic picture on the wall. One of my all time favorite end-of-movie kisses.
At one point, you mentioned that Helen writes using Scrivener, a writing tool that I have TRIED to use and just CANNOT seem to figure out for the life of me! What’s your writing process? And if you use Scrivener, please, help me to understand how you use it?
I was introduced to Scrivener much the same way that Grant was: by working near a novelist friend and looking over her shoulder to see a whole new writing software I was completely unfamiliar with. I use Scrivener for a first draft, and I organize my various notes-to-self under the research section. On the screenwriting/directing end of things, I create a Scrivener doc for each project where I log notes from meetings as ‘chapters’, which makes it much easier to organize all my thoughts for one project in one place.
In your acknowledgments, you mention that you wrote Lisa Frank fanfic for a school assignment and I would be remiss if I didn’t ask for more details! What can you tell me about this fanfic? Did it involve the pandas with the paint-stained overalls? Is there any surviving pictoral evidence?!
The title was “The Lost Treasure of Lisa Frank” and I was exploring some second grade feelings about an evolving friendship dynamic (there were three unicorns, and one of them couldn’t fly as high as the other two). The illustrations leave something to be desired for a picture book, but I tried my second grade best.
I was trying to be respectful of Yulin’s time and so kept it to 10 questions lol. But I’ve been doing this a lot more lately — talking to writers when in conversation for events, etc., and it’s got me daydreaming about starting a podcast where I can go really deep with a writer about one of their books. Like, dig into it on a scene level, a sentence level, without worrying about spoilers or anything like that. I want to know where they were when they wrote a particular scene; I want to know the continuity error that still bugs them; I want to know WHAT they imagine was behind a particularly unreadable expression.
Which, speaking of podcasts, I am VERY excited for this one that Nikki Payne and Adriana Herrera just announced! Not only are Nikki and Adriana two of the smartest people I know, but they both have INCREDIBLE voices. I could listen to them talk about anything on both a content level and a sheer-enjoyment-for-my-ears level. Their podcast is called Unbound and is all about the intersection of romance and BIPOC cultures and histories. Their first series is going to be all about the West, including a look at books by authors like Beverly Jenkins and Rebekah Weatherspoon and related films and music (Cowboy Carter!!!). I’m psyched.
But while I’m contemplating my Podcast Era, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that I’m almost 100 posts into my Newsletter Era!!! If you have any questions for me — about the newsletter or otherwise — please just reply or comment with them, and I’ll try to answer some in next week’s newsletter for the big 100!
Currently reading . . . I am rereading The Prospects by KT Hoffman in preparation for his event THIS FRIDAY at the Brooklyn Ripped Bodice location, and having the best time. One, because you know I love this book. Two, because I was *just* saying to several people that I wanted to try to make more time for REreading, because I used to do so much more of it and I really miss that comfort of falling back into a familiar and beloved book. And three, because look at my current reading conditions, while I spent some time in a friend’s apartment to hang out with her cat while she was out of town:
watching . . . I’m into the fourth and final season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which means I’m in the home stretch. And I definitely remember *some* of this which means I must’ve watched more of the show originally than I thought lolol love to have such a bad memory for these things that a show can feel brand new to me again?
listening to . . . I’m on the Maura Murray episode of The Casual Criminalist and the WAY I am obsessed with this case. It really is just the most perplexing mystery — what happened to her?! I was lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, and thinking, “If I could get one question answered at the pearly gates, would I rather know for sure what happened to JonBenet or to Maura?” I guess I should use that question for something about the meaning of life, huh.
preordering . . . I definitely have Myah Ariel’s debut When I Think of You on my radar for April 16!! I mean, you KNOW this book is going to deliver some sexy, swoony tension just from this cover alone — the way he’s looking at her mouth! The strap sliding down her arm! Ugh I’m ready to lose myself in it.
The way I would GIVE MY SOUL for you to start a podcast!
I can't wait to read Yulin's book! Also, "Period Sex" is the second funniest song written for TV of all time, thank you Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!!