Alice Wu, who directed the movie, wrote the script several years earlier while working as a program manager at Cinemania and Music Central, Microsoft's CD-ROM entertainment department. She originally started writing a novel inspired by her experience coming out as a lesbian to her middle-aged mother. Wu came out to her mother in her last year of college and remembered her reaction as “she basically said, 'I don't think you're gay, and I never want to see you again.' We didn't talk for two years. But I never doubted her love for me. It had everything to do with her willingness to make changes in her own life to be happy." Since then, Wu and her mother grew very close, resulting in Wu dedicating Saving Face to her mother because “[she] wanted her [mother] to know it’s not too late to fall in love for the first time. [Wu] want[ed] her to leave the theater feeling that sense of hope.” She has also explained that although she has a lot in common with Wil, the situation of the film is not based on her life. Alice Wu later realized that her novel would be a better fit for a movie and drafted the first script in three days during a 12-week screen writing class at the University of Washington. As advised by her instructor, Wu gave herself five years to make the movie, quitting her Microsoft job, moving to New York, and taking a filmmaking class taught by Alan Oxman.
