Law School Alumna Pei-Yu Lin Living up Her Life as Screenwriter

On March 25^th, 2020, Soochow alumna Pei-Yu Lin shared her experiences in taking a totally different career path in her speech titled “The Story of a Screenwriter: From a Law Major to a Playwright of Boy’s Love.”

Invited by the Soochow Co-Site, the famous senior scenarist who wrote quite a few TV drama hits such as Two Fathers, Best Interest, HIStory2, etc., talked about her journey of transformation from a graduate of law school into a TV screenwriter in her early thirties.

Back in high school, Lin just wrote romance fictions as a pastime without considering being a serious writer at all. After becoming a law student in Soochow University, she once dreamed of being a lawyer after graduation like many law majors do. However, failures in the national exams for lawyers had pushed her to try jobs in other areas (including making soaps!) before she was introduced to the world of TV drama production with a chance for script-writing.

Lin said she worked so hard in the first four years that she didn’t contact any of her friends but just focused on writing scripts. There were times when she was requested to write extra episodes with very few hours for sleep while traveling in Japan during the chilly winter. “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” she joked, seeing every challenge as an opportunity.

Lin also explained the job contents of a TV production crew and shared some tips of script writing. She encouraged students who are interested in this profession to read more  for cultivating their creativity and reminded that a good play would always need to have a central theme or core value.