Alice Oseman
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Alice, welcome to Waterstones.
Hello, thanks for having me.
You've been here before, of course, but this is the first time we've had a chance to sit down and talk about Heartstopper. And we're doing it as Heartstopper comes to its Volume 6 conclusion. Indeed. It's been quite a journey. You must be exhausted.
Yes.
Slash excited. Yes. What I did the other day was to ask online if the Heartstopper fans had any questions for you. I cannot even begin to explain to you how many questions came in. Just in the space of 24 hours, question after question, I mean hundreds of them, I had to stop taking screenshots because it said that my memory was full on my phone. That's where we were at. And so what I'm going to do is I'll be asking you some questions from the fans alongside my own. And in fact, I'm going to start with a phone question because it takes us right back to the beginning. And this comes from Sophia Dibble 0312. Thank you, Sophia, for your question. What was your main reason for creating Heartstopper and who inspired you?
Wow. Well, I mean, to answer that question, I have to sort of explain the origin story of Heartstopper, which is that Nick and Charlie were originally characters in my very first book, which is called Solitaire. Solitaire is not a graphic novel, it's just a prose novel. Nick and Charlie were supporting characters because the book is about Tori Spring, Charlie's sister. And in Solitaire, Nick and Charlie are in a relationship, in a very strong, loving relationship, but we don't really learn a lot about their backstory or how they got together or how they're in this wonderful relationship at such a young age. And so when I finished writing that novel, I had fallen in love with these characters and I knew I wanted to tell their story somehow.
And I tried to do it in various ways and eventually landed on a webcomic. And so Heartstopper was born.
So that's really interesting because the first, as you say, Solitaire is a normal prose novel. Why did the story of Nick and Charlie make more sense for you as an illustrated story rather than a prose one?
Well, I tried to plan it as a prose novel initially, because that's what I knew, that's what I'd done before. But I found that the story that I wanted to tell just didn't quite fit into a traditional novel structure with a beginning, middle, end. It had much more of an episodic structure to it. And so it suited being more of a serialized story. And I'd always loved drawing. I always loved drawing my characters. And I'd long harbored a dream of wanting to make a comic. And so I sort of felt like this was kind of the perfect opportunity to do that. Yeah.
I was wondering how, when you're creating something like that, almost in a vacuum, and then sending it out into the world as a webcomic, what's that feeling like? Because you're sort of publishing that and then waiting for the response. Is that a little bit scary or...?
Yeah, a little bit, but also that's kind of part of the fun of it for me is getting that immediate reaction and feedback when I post a page or an update of the webcomic. It's like an event, you know, it's a fun moment that I get to have with all the readers where everyone gets to share their thoughts. But yeah, it's a little bit scary because, you know, they might hate it.
Yeah.
I mean, they clearly didn't. I absolutely loved it. And I wondered how quickly were you aware that there was this fantastic response to it? Was it immediate on sort of first publication?
It's hard to say. I think it took a bit of time to build up. I think it was able to build up like that because I already had an audience from Solitaire. There were already readers who really liked Nick and Charlie. They wanted to know more, and so they were really excited about the prospect of a webcomic. But at that time, it could only have been... you know, 100, maybe 200 people that were sort of vocally engaged in that way. But I think having that foundation allowed more people to discover it. And so it just kind of grew naturally.
I know that the fans will have favourite panels or pictures from the story.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:21
2
What inspired Alice Oseman to create Heartstopper?
4:21–10:07
3
Why did Alice choose to tell Nick and Charlie's story as a graphic novel?
10:07–14:08
4
How did Alice feel about releasing her work as a webcomic?
14:08–17:12
5
What has been the fan response to Heartstopper over the years?
17:12–25:48