Thanks to the support of *SCAPE, I’ve had the pleasure recently to share about the writing process of our award-winning animated short film You Ci Ke (有刺客). It was at the All-In! Young Writers Festival 2017! With us (Qingping and me), we had Annalee Lee Miao Wen Joann Nicolette Wong on the disussion panel and our insightful moderator Juan Foo.

It was such an humbling and enriching experience for me to learn the writing process of other independant film-makers. It’s a reassuring reminder to know and acknowledge that the writing process is meant to (and forever will) be a struggle.

Of course, we’ve covered the differences in approach between screenwriting for an animated film vs live action film, namely the animation writing process can and should be done both in words and drawings – writing and storyboarding. We’ve also identified that they are fundamentally very similar in terms of having to be constantly aware of the character’s motivations, dramatic arc, introducing twists etc. and more importantly the reason why we even want the tell the story.

I hope the young writers were as inspired as I was when I listened to the stories shared by others and go on to create their very own films!