Los Angeles-based writer and script supervisor Jiayan He works across language, culture, and production, bringing the intensity of Chinese short-form drama into English-language vertical-screen storytelling.
As vertical dramas, also known as mini dramas, continue to expand across global platforms, the format increasingly depends on creators who can move between cultures as fluidly as they move between script and set. In this fast-changing space, He has built a body of work that connects Chinese short-drama structure with English-language storytelling.
Based in Los Angeles, He has contributed to vertical-screen drama projects across DreameShort, NetShort, PlayLet, DramaWave, ShortMax, ShortsWave, and Dramabox. His work reflects the international nature of the industry: stories shaped by Chinese short-form melodrama, adapted for English-speaking audiences, and produced for platforms where every episode must move quickly, land emotionally, and end with momentum.
As a script supervisor, He has worked on productions including Caught Between the Mafia Brothers, Love, Lies, and Christmas Surprise, The Forbidden Love with the Young CEO, Daughter’s Dying, and He’s Still Lying, Fated to the Alpha Who Left Me, and Lycan Princess Marries Her Nemesis. These projects span many of the most active genres in overseas mini drama, including billionaire romance, contract-lover stories, hidden identity, forbidden relationships, family melodrama, and werewolf fantasy.
On set, the script supervisor’s work is often quiet but essential. In fast-moving vertical productions, continuity is not only about matching movement, props, or wardrobe. It is also about protecting the emotional chain that carries viewers from one episode to the next.
He’s background as a writer gives that work another layer. A vertical episode may last only a few minutes, but it still needs to introduce conflict, shift power, reveal desire, and create a reason to keep watching. For He, tracking the script on set also means protecting rhythm under pressure.
That same rhythm defines his writing. His writing credits include Falling in Love with My Ex Husband Again, Callboy Punishes Me After Sunrise, Mute But Deadly, CEO’s Kansas Sweetheart, Triplets Alpha, and the AI vertical drama The Forgotten Iron Wraith.
In discussing vertical drama, He often returns to one idea: emotion has to travel faster than plot. The audience may be following a betrayal, a revenge setup, or a hidden-identity twist, but what keeps them watching is usually more intimate — the need to be chosen, protected, or finally seen.
That belief shapes his cross-cultural approach. Many of the engines that drive Chinese short drama — humiliation, sacrifice, family pressure, power reversal, and cathartic payoff — are specific in form but widely recognizable in feeling. Rather than simply converting those structures into English dialogue, He reshapes them through natural speech, clearer motivation, and performance rhythms suited to overseas audiences. In that process, bilingual writing becomes more than language ability. It becomes a creative method.
His film training at Syracuse University and ArtCenter College of Design further supports this production-aware approach. He thinks of scenes not only through dialogue and plot, but also through blocking, camera movement, editing rhythm, and how each moment will function inside a vertical frame.
For He, vertical drama is not simply a shorter version of television. It is a form built on compression, momentum, and emotional immediacy. Through his work as both writer and script supervisor, He represents a new generation of international vertical creators, bringing Chinese short-drama intensity, English-language performance, and production discipline into the same mobile frame.