Beach Read writer/director Yulin Kuang teaches us the art of romance

Yulin Kuang is a lifelong devotee of the romance genre. Having a passion for passion is why she was tapped to adapt two of Emily Henry’s bestselling novels, People We Meet On Vacation and Beach Read, the latter of which she’ll also direct. Tackling BookTok’s favorite romances is a tall order, and the appetite for those films is so fervent that the internet was sent into a froth when Kuang and Henry reposted a picture of Paul Mescal and Ayo Edebiri on their Instagrams. But “we’re still very much in the development stage. We are not having those conversations yet,” Kuang tells The A.V. Club.

The conversations she can have are about her own debut romance novel, How To End A Love Story, in stores this week. (It’s heavy on the angst, but don’t worry, you’ll get your HEA). She can also talk about the fanfic-to-traditional publishing-to-film pipeline, the merits of historical romance, and the process of adapting the most popular romance novels on the market. As a fan of romance in all forms, she remembers what it was like to pick apart every bit of casting news and morsel of information on adaptations of her favorite stories. So she bravely battled illness (“You can also tell them, ‘Yulin Kuang is very sickly. She died of consumption about two novels in’”) to share some love story recommendations and tease what she has in store for all the book lovers (no pun intended) out there.

Yulin Kuang: I started because I wanted to write a feature for myself to direct. But it was October and NaNoWriMo [Ed. note: National Novel Writing Month, the challenge to write a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November] was all over my feed and it gave me the thought of, I had always wanted to write a novel, and I never found the time. And I had reached a point in my career where everything else I was working on was adaptation. I was working on Emily’s books, and I was also doing like a 27 Dresses reboot, I was pitching on some other things. I had done an adaptation of this book called I Believe In A Thing Called Love. I had this moment where I was like, “Is there anything original left within me?” So I wanted to chase my own taste and see what kind of story I would tell if I didn’t have to convince a room full of studio executives and producers and actors and all of these other people. I didn’t wanna ask for permission. So that’s kind of where I started.

I knew I wanted it to be something I could do without a lot of research, because I am the kind of person that can get kind of lost in the research stage and then nothing ever happens. So I was like, “What would cost zero research on my end?” And that was of course adaptation. So I knew I wanted it to be about a screenwriter and a novelist. The premise that it all hinges on, which is this tragic accident that connects them, that didn’t come until pretty late in the game. It was maybe two days before, which is when NaNoWriMo begins. At the time, I thought it was just a way to have a more compelling beginning. But looking back at the end of it, it was like the manuscript I ended with was not the book I set out to write, but it makes perfect sense to me that that was what came out of me, given the things that were going on in my life at that point in time.

I wanted something that would give us a romance with high stakes and something that didn’t necessarily feel like a rom com. Because I wanted angst. I’ve always loved angst. I used to read and write a lot of fan fiction, and I always loved the things that had high angst factor.

AVC: Could you talk a little bit about the different muscles that are required for writing an original novel versus adapting a screenplay versus directing something?

YK: I’d say adaptation is kind of like a Rubik’s cube where you’re getting handed a manuscript and it’s like, “Do you have a take on this?” Early in my career, I would pitch on books that I really, really loved and I would walk into the room and I’d be like, ‘Just make the book into a movie, just change nothing.’ And I wouldn’t get those jobs. And I can see why now, because you can’t really just make the book. You can’t really just film 400 pages and have it be exactly the same even if you were like super, super faithful, because the things that work well in a book don’t necessarily translate well to screen. I think in order to do a good adaptation, your loyalty has to be to the screen adaptation, not to the book. I would say the skill set is like looking through it and seeing what is the essence of this story. What is it that drew me to the story, and then what can I play with in this other art medium—that is one of the youngest mediums. Like, film, the entire history of film, is only [about] 100 years old. And that always really excited me because you can experiment with so many different things.

Writing a novel, conversely, the thing that excites me about novels is it’s one of the oldest art mediums out there. I’m like, “Oh cool, I have something in common with like Jane Austen now.” I think what’s fun about it is in 100,000 words, you’re gonna dig a lot more into, “How am I going to set down this thought or this idea? How am I gonna describe something?” And once you’ve bound it to words, you see things a little bit more clearly, which I think is really fun and interesting. It definitely felt more like gardening. I think screenwriting feels a lot like architecture to me where every scene is its own piece. And when I write a screenplay, I’m working off of an outline I’ve already created that tells me what every single scene is going to be. Whereas in the book, I kind of like set up all of these chess pieces and then it was like, “What’s gonna happen down the line watching it all unfold?”

So, with directing—specifically with directing something that I’ve written as well—it’s getting to see that entire thing come to life. And then it’s working with all these other people, because filmmaking is such a team sport that it’s like, you get to see what the alchemy is when you take all of these people and all these ideas together. And when it works, there’s nothing like it. I would say writing a novel was harder than writing a screenplay, but I think directing a movie is, is potentially harder than writing a novel.

AVC: I know you’re just a huge fan of the genre in general, so what made you fall in love with romance and what keeps you coming back to it?

YK: I think it is the way it made me feel. I would watch these things and the best ones would always give me these heart pounding, swoopy, swoony, clinching feelings and it was kind of like getting butterflies over somebody else’s love story and it was just such a thrill. I think I got into it because it’s the same reason some people get really into roller coasters: I was addicted to the feeling that they gave me.

AVC: What do you think are the elements of like the crucial elements for a successful romance?

YK: Tension, for sure. There’s gotta be a compelling “Why can’t they be together?” I think Susan Elizabeth Phillips has this quote where she’s like, “If your hero is a firefighter then your heroine better be an arsonist.” I think there is something to that.

But I also feel like—I started doing this thing where I would write down my id level tropes. Like, forced proximity, marriage of convenience, these things that I am just drawn to on a lizard brain level, that I couldn’t really explain to you why. But I step back and I look at that list and I’m like, I don’t know that there are hard and fast rules to every romance to make it a good one, but these are what make a romance compelling to me. And I look at that as, like, my spice cabinet whenever I’m in the kitchen. I’m like, okay, we wanna throw in a dash of forced proximity, a dash of like, we mustn’t energy. There’s something about a we mustn’t threat that I find really appealing.

I love when I am in the hands of a storyteller who I can tell really understands and is in touch with their own id, because then I can see what they love about these certain tropes and dynamics and fall in love with it, even if it’s not like something that I naturally gravitate towards. And if I’m lucky it awakens something in me. So I would say a deep understanding of your id makes for a great romance.

AVC: I saw somewhere that you’re a fan of historicals. I think it’s interesting, given the success of Bridgerton that there’s not more exploration of that in Hollywood. What do you think the industry can learn from the historical space?

YK: Oh, God. Everything. They could learn everything. They should give Lisa Kleypas’ Again The Magic to every single studio exec trying to make a romance. I think that historicals, they do this thing where they’re really great at life and death stakes. I am primarily a historical reader rather than contemporaries in my downtime, and that’s because I’m just so addicted to the stakes of historicals. It’s like, ‘They can’t be together’ or ‘He’s trying to ruin her family.’ There’s something about that that’s just like—that’s the good stuff! You can absolutely do it in contemporaries, but you have to remember to tap into that. And so I think what we can learn from historicals is really just tension and stakes and, yeah, id level storytelling.

AVC: As someone who comes from like fandom spaces, what is your take on this current trend of the fanfic-to-romance novel and sometimes to movie pipeline?

YK: Overall, I’m always for it because I love fandom. That is the primordial ooze from which I emerged. I discovered fanfiction in, like, 2002 when it was illegal for me to have an account on FanFiction.net, but I created one anyway. And having watched it evolve, it has been kind of fascinating anthropologically. Because we went from Fanfiction.net, and then there was this Wattpad/Archive Of Our Own period. And I feel like the money went to Wattpad first, where you were seeing more fics coming out of the Wattpad space get turned into traditional publishing and then get movie deals. And I feel like Wattpad had more RPF [ed. note: real person fanfiction]… it was more of the band self-insert fic kind of thing. And that almost makes sense to me in a way for the trad pub-to-film pipeline, because I think that that you can file off the serial numbers easier if it’s like, self insert fic about me and my favorite band member of One Direction than if you were to try and do a trad pub of like a Twilight or Harry Potter fanfic—which, people have also done those.

I think it’s really interesting to see the art that comes out of it, because I think sometimes you can explore things in fanfic spaces where, if you don’t have a lot of patience for world building, it’s kind of like “Just imagine this cast of characters.” But what I’m really interested and compelled by is this dynamic. I think that there’s a certain vocabulary, or vernacular almost—like, we talk about in architecture, there’s vernacular architecture that is typical of an era or of a location. And I feel like there is a fanfic vernacular that develops. So when you look at things that are birthed in fanfic and they go to trad pub, you can still kind of see the fic vernacular there. I think that’s so compelling and really interesting. And I love it, personally. I’m for it.

AVC: There’s something about romances that lends itself to the protagonists being creative—an interesting bridge between Beach Read and How To End A Love Story is that everybody’s a writer. What do you think makes those creative professions so popular in romance?

YK: I think it’s always fun to consume art about creative people. I think there’s also probably some degree of self-obsession that all artists have probably where it’s like, yes, I am the main character of my own story. So if I’m gonna tell the story, it’s gonna be about me, and somebody like me. There’s probably that at play.

But for my book, I would say, yeah, there’s definitely a meta layer. I always connected to that in Emily’s books as well. So I would say, if I’m looking at it in terms of where I feel like that’s coming from, I think I’m talking to the creator track readers. I’m talking specifically to the people who probably also have a novel inside, or a movie or a screenplay. I feel like I am always compelled by the people who are making the art that makes me feel things and that’s who I’m talking to.

AVC: Reading your book and Emily Henry’s books, they share a real pathos that kind of goes beyond the simple relationship obstacles that you sometimes get in contemporaries. In your writing and the adapting, how do you balance the more emotional aspects with the happily ever after that you have to get to?

YK: I think that that’s a part of life. I think the problem is not with me. I think that when we talk about rom coms, that label can become a flattening one, where people think that the genre can only be kisses and jokes and happily ever afters. When I think of my favorite rom coms—like, of course, I am thinking about like the Nora Ephrons of the nineties, and you look at those and I think people remember the kissing and the jokes and the happy endings. But Sleepless In Seattle begins with this kid calling into a radio station because dad’s so sad over his dead wife, that he needs a new mom. That is pathos, that is yearning, that is grief. I think that part of what makes the genre so compelling to me is the rollercoaster that we can go on together where it’s like, yes, life has all of these sad, tragic things. But also, isn’t it wild that we can go from there to here? I have never thought that rom coms could only be comedy and kissing and happily ever afters.

I will say, I think that the Hollywood that I work in does seem to have forgotten what the genre is capable of a little bit. So I’m hopeful that that the popularity of romance as a genre in the publishing space will open some eyes in terms of what’s possible. Because I very much went into these adaptations with my pitch like, ‘Why can’t a rom com feel like a romance novel?’

AVC: You’ve spoken about the challenges of adaptation. How do you handle specifically preserving Emily’s voice and what makes her stories so intensely beloved right now, versus the demands of making something new and different that works for the screen?

YK: The way that I approach it is in my first draft, I feel like I’m copying somebody else’s homework. I literally have the book open next to my laptop and I am going pretty much as word for word as I can. Then I end up with a draft that’s an insane page count. You could never film that and nobody would ever greenlight it. And then I read that, and then I look at it from the perspective of somebody who’s never, ever read the books and is only here for the movies. And then I go and I slash and burn my way through it. That is where I find the balance. I try to preserve, I try to walk on the side of giving as much of the book as I can to the movie. Then I know that I’ve tried that, so that as I move forward from that draft of the script, I am working with the new thing that we’re creating in mind.

AVC: I know you said things are still in development, but is there anything that you can tease about the scripts for the fans?

YK: Oh man, I really do remember like being such a book fan and watching the news trickle down and turn into rumors and like, biting my teeth hoping that they wouldn’t fuck up my favorite books. And everything I’m saying to you, I’m just so aware of how I would have torn it all to shreds when I was younger.

What can I tease about it? I mean, we’re still in very early stages to be honest, like we’ve only had one draft into the studio so far. I can tell you that my intention going into Beach Read is to create a cinematic experience for the viewer that felt like reading their favorite book for the first time. So I want people who are readers to feel like that piece of things is being acknowledged in Beach Read. Because the meta aspect of the book really does lend itself to that kind of homage. But how am I doing that remains to be seen in the movie.

AVC: For the romance lovers out there, what are some of your favorite classic romances? And what are your favorite recent ones?

YK: So there’s this silent film from the 20s called Sunrise that’s kind of an unhinged premise. This man is having an affair with a woman from the city and she’s like, “Couldn’t your wife get drowned?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I guess so.” So he rows his wife out on a boat and he’s gonna go drown her, but then he has a crisis of conscience and he’s like, “I can’t do it.” But his wife now knows that he was fully gonna murder her. She runs away from him into the city and he runs after her because he’s like, “She’s never been to the city. I have to protect her.” So they go into the city and they have a lovely day together. Like, they have a nice date, they watch another couple in the church get married. And then when they’re on the boat back, there’s a real storm and she almost does get drowned. And this man goes feral searching for his wife. It won an Oscar for artistic excellence back in the day, and I think it was one of the only times they ever had an Oscar in that category. But I really do recommend that one, it’s crazy.

And then, if we’re going through the eras… there’s some really great films that aren’t in English. Like, one of my all time favorites, Hors de prix [Priceless], it stars Audrey Tautou. [She] plays this gold digger who, professionally, is seducing men at a hotel who are very wealthy. And then one night she accidentally seduces this guy who she thinks is a millionaire, but he really is the bar man, at this hotel. And then one of the guys that she’s with throws her out once he realizes that she cheated on him. And then, she’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna throw it all away and go in with this millionaire.” But then she’s like, “Oh, no, you’re a bar man, I have to go hunting again,” but he’s really into her. So then he becomes a kept man at another hotel as well in order to just be around her. And then they become friends as they’re like gold digging together and then they fall in love. That one I love so much. It’s so great.