The reasons were simple in my mind. Or at least I thought so.
Mulan was never meant to be a history text book. It is a romance catered to the larger audience of romance readers of which many I believed would not have wanted to wade through the dictionary to find the meaning of an archaic term or to return twice or thrice to a sentence only to decipher its meaning. I wrote it in a simpler and modern format for the very same reasons Disney had its Mulan characters speaking in modern English- it is meant to be an easy, entertaining read for a wider audience.
 |
| Disney's Mulan |
My purpose of writing Mulan stemmed from the need to see this legendary warrior be given a romance which I missed in most re-tellings. I wasn't quite satisfied with the romance Disney gave me and I can't blame them when their primary audience were children. And the Chinese version was just too darned serious, focusing on her growth as a soldier rather than on the romance.
 |
| The Chinese movie version of Mulan |
As a writer, there were times also where I was conflicted with the many forks I was faced with while writing Mulan. Do I make the characters homophobic as they would have been in Ancient China or socially tolerant of homosexuality?
I decided to opt for the modern road because my primary objective was again Mulan's romance and not on the social norms of Ancient China. I believed that delving in the social taboos would have opened a whole new can of issues and resolutions which would have in turn swayed away from the romance.
On the whole, my journey while writing Mulan had been quite an adventure. And to know that there also have been readers out there who have been searching for a romance for Mulan has been exciting.
If this is your kind of Mulan which you don't mind reading and reviewing, then please feel free to drop in to request for a free review copy.
https://www.clarissacartharn.com/book-reviewers
No comments:
Post a Comment