[인터뷰] Writer “W” Song Jae-jeong, “Fun to watch and fun to write are on different levels”

Photo courtesy of MBC

Interestingly, the scene that came to mind while designing was similar. “The main character I come to and who shoots me. was also a scene where my creature hated me. Usually, like the Pygmalion mythos, I fall in love with the being I created. But I thought he might hate me too much. I thought of a fine art painter and a sculpture, but it looked like an old style, so I thought of a webtoon which was all the rage at the time. , where the webtoon author and the main webtoon character risk their lives, came out like this. But why was he so immersed in the motif of “I attack myself”? “I’ve been doing sitcoms for a long time. It is the same with , because once you do it, you do it for three years. Second, the characters I write really resemble people I know. When I worked with PD Kim Byeong-wook, I often came to sad endings. My heart aches like someone close’s work and I felt like I was destroying the things I worked so hard for. can we do this? What will these characters think? I’ve always had doubts, and I think that’s where I come from.”

“It’s a covenant. We die together and live together. Let’s go all the way together.”()

– Nevertheless, , And did not have a completely happy ending.

= I write this because I sincerely believe that this character can only go there. At first, it seemed like me, the production team, and the viewers were going in one direction, but as the story progressed, it felt like it was going in a different direction. When I got close to the end, I don’t think I was immediately convinced by the director who received the script and said, “I think so too. (Laughs) Even so, it’s something I can’t do. You have to compromise or write lies thinking people will appreciate it if you do that, but that’s not easy either. I got a lot of flak about the ending, so now I often ask people to guess what they’re thinking. Even to the assistant writers, “I’m fine, how are you?” and keep asking. (laugh)

If you can feel real emotions in a fictional world

– Are you drawn to stories that feature new materials or technologies?

= As a viewer, I like traditional human dramas. Recently I enjoyed watching and American drama . I really liked Kim Soo-hyun’s dramas where the characters are emotionally connected. I think what’s fun to watch and what’s fun to write are on a different level. When I write a screenplay, I like to tell a story in a complex puzzle-solving style. In the case of , there are several limitations. Incense which only has 9 and burns for 20 minutes. It’s fun to create sequences in such a way that those conditions limit the character’s actions and emotions, and the character somehow solves a problem in the situation. You have to dig traps well and design well-designed doors to escape. Weaving a maze like this is fun in itself. It’s purely for writing stories, but actually I don’t like escape rooms, games or investigations.

– Even when making a sitcom, each writer must have had a different organ. For some reason, I think the writer was more interested in creating a play than the humor or the characters.

= I have heard a lot about it. When I was young, I didn’t know what I was good at. “You are good at creating situations” After people recognized me like that, all the elements that required complex situations came to me. The objects to put oneself in embarrassing situations and to get out of them were mostly entrusted to me. I’m interested in creating unrealistic situations and making people believe, and making people feel real emotions in my fictional world. It’s a lot more fun than trying to describe something that would happen in the real world.

What if I’m stuck writing? keep trying “Use this case, try this case. Submit 10 ideas. Rather than explaining it in words, I write it quickly and show it in a script. Then the other side will also have an opinion clear. I don’t think I can break through doing anything else. The only way is to keep selling.

– How do ideas organize themselves when unrealistic imaginations turn into concrete stories?

= It is difficult to answer. I have a system in my head, but when I pull it out, it’s disorganized, so assistant writers struggle. I recently read by Haruki Murakami, and there was a story that I could relate to. I was talking about making lots of drawers in my brain and indexing them well so I can pull them out when I need to. Ultimately, I think the most important thing for an artist is to know what category of drawer to put newly acquired knowledge or information into and when to pull it out. For example, when you discover a murder case or related facts, put it in the human drama drawer, not unconditionally, depending on the situation. When I was asked how I wrote I said I found it while watching the clip of of A-Ha, but in fact, it was not only that. The imagination on the myth of Pygmalion mentioned above and this and that in the drawer are intertwined. So, from your childhood experiences to the latest information, you need to organize your drawers well so you can pull them out and use them. My stories are, after all, a combination of things I have seen or experienced somewhere for 50 years.

– I’m curious how the author organizes his drawers.

= As you can see in my library, I have many indexes for each book. When I read an article about a new technology, I find a story to relate to it, and I look back at the indexed ones. I also go through my old memories. Like that, the strong passages that I have seen in my experience and my books, the author’s philosophy, and the latest technologies that I have encountered through news and trends. We often weave these things together. Instead of forcibly connecting them to find gear, it’s a way to calmly wait for the moment to connect like a fisherman while eating, traveling, and going about their daily lives with the index displayed. When I read a book in a completely different field or learn something new, when I come across something, I try to write a plan like this.