ELLE interviewed Yu Wo a few months ago. This is a translation of the interview. As this was translated by an English proofreader, not a translator, there are likely some inaccuracies and what you read should be taken with a grain of salt. Thank you to [PR]Dahlys for elucidating Yu Wo’s background.
The Novelist Strikes Back! Yu Wo: Real Girls Have a Personality—They’re Not Fairies or Just a Pretty Face
Text: June Howell 2016/05/05
Photo: Miki Chang
(Go to http://www.elle.com.tw/lifestyle/news/nv4 to see the photos and the original article.)
Just what is a light novel author’s world like? Beneath the surface, is it a life that’s as dramatic as a light novel? Let ELLE bring you into an author’s secret daily life!
She started publishing her works at qidian.com before graduating from the foreign languages department, and soon became famous. Currently, she is one of the few Taiwanese novelists whose every book has sold over twenty thousand copies. Her works are mostly fantasy, such as Kill No More, The Legend of Sun Knight, No Hero, and her newest work, Dominion’s End.
The female leads Yu Wo has written are full of personality and are extremely capable of putting up a fight. Yu Wo said laughingly, “Male authors write girls as just pretty faces, each of them beautiful and kind-hearted fairies, but in general, girls aren’t like that. So I wrote my own.”
ELLE: How many hours a day do you spend writing?
Yu Wo: It’s not fixed. Sometimes there won’t be a single word. The record for the most consecutive hours was seventeen, and I wrote twenty-one thousand words. That was the first volume of Dominion’s End. I wrote about eighty thousand words in one week. At that time, I wrote until three in the morning and felt that I was a nutcase. In about one week, I’d finished that entire book, and then afterward started writing very slowly, haha.
ELLE: While you’re writing, what cravings do you have?
Yu Wo: I must have coffee. Sometimes, I’ll also sneak some potato chips. (Laughs.)
ELLE: If your works were turned into movies, who would be your ideal director?
Yu Wo: My dream would be to have Batman’s director, Christopher Nolan, a highly prestigious director. I believe he would be very suitable to adapt my works No Hero and Dominion’s End.
ELLE: If ELLE were a woman, what kind of woman would you imagine her to be?
Yu Wo: She’d be relatively lively, but also somewhat sweet. Her age would be about twenty to twenty-five years old.
ELLE: What was your greatest accomplishment in writing light novels?
Yu Wo: When my readers talk about the characters I’ve written in my light novels and they treat the characters as real people. It makes me feel like I’ve given birth to a child. It’s a feeling of great success.
