About Sarah Jinhee:
Born in Seoul, Sarah spent 17 formative years living in Malaysia, Singapore, and Canada, experiences that deeply shaped her multicultural perspective. She earned her diploma in Graphic Design and Visual Communication from Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore. Upon graduation, she launched her career at Oak 3 Films, one of Singapore’s leading production houses, where she produced a range of award-winning television dramas and infotainment series.
Eager to deepen her expertise, she later pursued film production studies at York University in Toronto and a master’s program in Film Studies at Dongguk University, South Korea.
Her unique storytelling voice has been recognized by several international programs. She was selected for the NAFF Film School of BIFAN 2012, Talent Campus Tokyo by Berlinale Talents & Tokyo FILMeX 2013, and the KAFA-Indonesia Co-Production Prebiz 2014.
In 2015, her Korea-China co-production project won the Project Development Grant from the Next Masters Support Program organized by Berlinale Talents Tokyo & Tokyo FILMeX, and was presented at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Film Market the following year.
In recent years, she has expanded into literary fiction. She has just completed her first sci-fi manuscript, which received mentoring from the Incheon Fantasy Convention’s Future Film Production Program 2020. In 2022, she was selected for the New Novelist Program by the Korea Creative Content Agency, and her debut crime-thriller novel was published in South Korea in 2023. Her next book, a science fiction anthology, is scheduled for release in 2026.
What inspires you to write?
This is my first romance novel, but I think from my first screenplay, I’ve always been writing about love or relationships. It isn’t just about that feeling of attraction, but what it takes to allow yourself to be vulnerable to that feeling, to take action and carry out the interpersonal activities to reach a level of great empathy between two people, to be brave and open to change for the better.
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
Some of my favorite authors are actually filmmakers who write and direct their own films. They include Chen Kaige, Wong Kar Wai, Bong Joon Ho, Denis Villeneuve, and so on. I do have a tendency to try and read up on classics and novels by acclaimed authors. Such as works by Oscar Wilde, Keigo Higashino, and Albert Camus come to mind. But I usually read factual books to learn about what is happening around the world. They include various categories of books in the field of anthropology, philosophy, economics, politics, history, humanities, etc.
Tell us about your writing process.
I usually start working on a story that I haven’t created till that time, I like to create something new and fresh if possible. Once I know what genre, characters, main event, and message it entails, I write a synopsis. From there, I flesh out the details, research, develop more events, and map out the entire plot as a treatment. The final writing can either be in a screenplay or novel format. The above process is never linear; they usually go back and forth, over an indeterminate amount of time. So I usually set myself a deadline step by step, sometimes for a writing competition or development lab I wish to participate in. This gives momentum and motive to work faster. It also helps if I can bring the first draft to a market and meet producers or editors who can enlighten me about the potential of the project.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I think I picture the character in my mind. I would determine their exterior and interior as a person. I try to imagine how this person would think, feel, and act after setting the scene.
What advice would you give other writers?
I just hope you believe in your story and keep at it no matter what.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
It was when COVID-19 hit and I lost all sources of income. I had to find better ways to monetize my work and reach the audience/reader as quickly as possible. Screenwriting does not always pay, and films sometimes do not get made. But I realized I can attempt novel writing right away, so I challenged myself to finish a novel and self-publish it first, to see how it can be done. Luckily, it was selected for the New Novelist Program by the Korea Creative Content Agency, and my first crime-thriller novel was published in South Korea in 2023. This opened doors for my literary journey.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Korea has a great pool of writers, traditional and new. The visual creative industries are moving hand in hand with written works, which means novels get made into webtoons, movies, or dramas, or vice versa. So publishing is no longer a stand-alone field; it will probably affect and be influenced by the visual media as well. At the same time, the written word has its own charm and its special way of reaching the minds of people. I hope book publishing continues to survive into the future world of technology.
What genres do you write?: Romance, SF, Crime Thriller
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Your Social Media Links
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
