Heartstopper Creator Alice Oseman Says Success as a Writer Was ‘A Wonderful Surprise’ (Exclusive)

Alice Oseman, like many young readers before her, had a teenage phase of reading classic literature. “I thought it was important,” Oseman, 29, tells PEOPLE. “It’s a smart thing to do. I was very much in love Catcher in the Rye when I was about 15 years old. Read it a few times.” Oseman, who uses the pronouns she/they, also adds that JD Salinger’s 1951 classic influenced her own writing career.

“All this in a way led me to write Solitairemy first book, which I wrote at the age of 17,” she says. Now, Oseman is a best-selling author of books for young adults, including an acclaimed series of graphic novels Heartstopper. As the series celebrates its fifth anniversary, Oseman looks back on his writing career and looks ahead.

Young reader and writer

Alice Oseman.

Scott Garfitt/BAFTA via Getty

Raised near Kent, England, Oseman came of age during the youth literature boom, when authors like Stephanie Meyers and Suzanne Collins ruled. “John Green, I think, was the first time I saw a contemporary YA author write serious drama-style books that I ended up writing myself,” says Oseman. She sold her debut novel, Solitairein 2014 when she was only 18 years old.

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Oseman’s novels have since gained a large fan base, particularly for her realistic portrayal of teenage life and LGBTQ+ representation. radio silence, which was released in 2016, stars two classmates who start a podcast, and in 2018. I was born for this focuses on a teenage pop rock band. without love, which will be on the shelves in 2020, gives an insightful look at one teenager’s experience of starting college.

Of her beginnings, Oseman says she simply wrote stories about a world she didn’t often see presented at the time – life at an all-girls school in the UK – and that age was on her side.

“I wrote a lot about the world and life that was familiar to me,” says Oseman. “As far as people like me, people like my friends … it was just very cemented in the life I was living at the time.”

Birth of ‘Heartstopper’

Joe Locke (left) and Kit Connor in the second season of ‘Heartstopper’.

Netflix

Solitaire, which follows teenager Tori Spring and her mental health journey, also featured two supporting characters who might sound familiar: Tori’s younger brother, Charlie, and his boyfriend, Nick. The two will later become the protagonists of Oseman’s web comic, Heartstopper, which the author wrote, illustrated and published online, before the story was published as a graphic novel series by Hachette Children’s Group. Oseman initially financed the limited run of the web series herself. “I tried to plan for a long time [Heartstopper] as a prose novel like Solitaire, but I just couldn’t make it,” Oseman recalls. “In my mind, it didn’t have that beginning, middle [and] the final structure of the traditional novel. I really wanted to see every stage of Nick and Charlie’s school life together, which would suit the serialized story.” The first printed volume was published in 2019, and the final book in the series became the fastest selling graphic novel in the UK. Heartstopper gained a whole new wave of fans when it was adapted into the acclaimed Netflix series 2022, starring Kit Connor and Joe Locke.

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Oseman wrote the teleplay for the series and revealed that she enjoys writing scripts because of her penchant for dialogue. However, there were other challenges that arose with the move to television. “The hard part is the structure of the TV show – getting the episodes to be the right length, balancing all the stories, making sure that the end of each episode encourages people to keep watching,” she says.

“I don’t write autobiographical fiction”

Oseman on the set of the movie ‘Heartstopper’.

Netflix

Another difficult aspect of the writing process, Oseman says, can be introducing self-care as an author. “I’m not very good at it,” she says. “I’m definitely not good at that kind of work-life balance. It’s hard because I really want to express myself in my writing and it’s hard to find a healthy balance between that and putting too much of myself on the page sometimes.” While Oseman writes about topics and characters that are familiar to her, there are limits to how much of herself she can put on the page.

“In terms of what I write, I like to explore issues and ideas that are relevant to my life, but I always try to do it in a fictional way,” she says. “I don’t write autobiographical fiction. I explore things through characters who aren’t me and through events that didn’t happen to me. And that helps me keep a little distance.”

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It is important for Oseman to include asexual and aromatic representation in his work, which he explores in Without love and TV adaptation Heartstopper. He prefers to show his characters’ experiences with discovery, as opposed to showing a person already at the point of acceptance, because “it’s helpful to see the whole journey of figuring out who you are.” “If you’re an ace or an ace person, there’s really no way to sum up that experience when there are so many ways you can experience being an ace or an ace,” says Oseman. “So I just have to write a character that I can and I know won’t represent everyone.”

What’s Next for the ‘Osemanverse’

A scene from the Netflix adaptation of ‘Heartstopper’.

Samuel Dore/Netflix

Before her rise to YA fame, Oseman found community online. She originally published her work on the website Tumblr, where she began to grow a following. While the author has previously stated that she doesn’t get to interact with fans as much as she used to, she’s not stingy about sharing material from the aptly named “Osemanverse” — her website features plenty of goodies, including fictional Wikipedia pages and additional short stories about her characters. As for what’s next for Oseman, there’s news for Heartstopper fans. The author stated that she is working on the sixth, and last, continuation of the series; something he admits makes it “a little scary” as he anticipates readers’ reactions. He is also thinking about completely new writing ventures.

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“I’m really looking forward to writing about adults,” she says. “It’s something I’ve never had the chance to do… I’d love to try writing more for film. I’ve really enjoyed writing the TV show and I’d love to do more of that, whether it’s something original or I’d love to try to adapt someone else’s book. I think that could be a lot of fun. It’s all a mystery right now, so we’ll see.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. However, the success of her work, says Oseman, remains “beyond my wildest dreams.” “I don’t think any author can predict that,” she says. “That was the biggest surprise, but it’s a wonderful surprise.”

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education