What I would say is, don’t even look at a screen. Get a notebook and pen. For me, I always prefer to start writing with a pen. For me, the blank page… - Jenny Han

I think that with a book, you can excavate a story so much more because you're really in the character's head and you can go into much deeper detail. In a movie, what you might spend pages describing, you can do that in a flash. But there's also a feeling that you have to really streamline a movie too so it stays on the right track. And I think I would say that there are definitely changes made, but I think that to me, the spirit of the story is there. And that was what was most important to me, was just that people walked away with the same feeling that they had when they read the books, which is just, I hope, feeling a warm-hearted, cozy feeling.

I'm not one of those writers that drafts out 500 pages, and then cuts a bunch of stuff, and then does new stuff on the fly. I'm just a lot more slow. And my process is every word pretty much gets used. I don't really have a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor from the books. I mean, some conversations and smaller scenes, but I don't think there's any big plot point or anything that I wrote but didn't use.

There’s something very compelling about the immediacy and urgency of adolescence. As a storyteller, I’m drawn to first times and to how intense all of those emotions can feel in the moment. What’s interesting for me is being able to honor that and treat it with respect, and not think that because it’s about young people, it’s somehow less important of an experience.