‘I loved this story’: Alice Oseman on saying goodbye to Heartstopper

Ahead of two events in Aotearoa to celebrate the final volume of Heartstopper, author Alice Oseman tells Tara Ward about the impact the bestselling YA comics have had on her life. 

Every morning for 10 years, Alice Oseman woke up and stepped into the Heartstopper universe. The British writer and illustrator would begin her day by sitting down to work on her latest YA comic about teenagers Charlie and Nick, bringing their world to life with each careful stroke of her pen. She worked on a new page each day, slowly building chapter after chapter, volume after volume. “It was such a peaceful and simple activity for me,” Oseman says of those blissful mornings spent with Charlie, Nick and friends. “It was such a nice way to start my day.”

Now Oseman needs to find a new morning routine – after a series of free webcomics, six award-winning volumes of graphic novels and an Emmy-winning Netflix TV adaptation, she has decided to call time on the story that changed her life. 

Heartstopper is a coming-of-age tale that follows the relationship between English high school students Nick and Charlie, and the lives of their friends, families and teachers. Audiences were drawn in by Oseman’s mix of gentle storytelling, LGBTQ+ romance and real-life themes of sexuality, relationships and mental illness, with the fifth Heartstopper book breaking records to become the UK’s fastest-ever selling graphic novel. 

A decade ago, however, Oseman never anticipated that two supporting characters from her debut novel would go on to capture global attention. Her first book Solitaire was published in 2014 when she was just 19, but after it hit the shelves, Oseman couldn’t stop thinking about the lives of two of the story’s minor characters, Charlie and Nick. The pair intrigued her: how did the relationship between the rugby lad and the gay nerd start, and what was their story? And so in 2016 Heartstopper was born, and Oseman began to tell the story of the teens’ blossoming romance in comic format, originally published on Tumblr.  

Those early Heartstopper webcomics built such an online following that when Oseman launched a Kickstarter in 2018 to publish her comics in print, she reached her funding target in two hours. It proved to the shocked author that not only did readers like her work, but there was an appetite for sweet, comforting YA LGTBQ+ stories like Nick and Charlie’s. Oseman grew up at an all-girls school with an all-boys school just across the road, just like in Heartstopper, but says she didn’t expressly set out to write about two young men falling in love.

“I didn't have the perspective of ‘I'm going to write this thing that's never been written before’,” she says. “But I did want to see more queer stories, and I loved writing about queer characters. I wrote Heartstopper because I loved this story.“ 

Oseman believes Heartstopper’s mix of optimism and realism is one of the reasons why her work has resonated so strongly with so many readers. She admits it was often challenging to balance the comic’s light and heavy themes, but essentially, Nick and Charlie are two ordinary boys with an ordinary love story. Some of Heartstopper’s most beautiful and relatable moments are its simplest – the touch of a hand, a stolen glance across a room. “It's nothing outside of the scope of most people's real lives, and that's another way that people feel connected to those characters.”

Heartstopper reached a new global audience in 2022 with the launch of the Emmy-award winning Netflix TV series. Fiercely protective of Heartstopper, Oseman had always vowed to only let the book be adapted for television if she could be closely involved, and as the show’s creator, writer and executive producer, Oseman felt comfortable making some “brutal” changes to the original story to create the best TV show possible. “I always felt that adaptations shouldn't necessarily be a complete one-to-one copy of a book,” she explains. “If it's just a copy, what's the point in doing it? Just read the book.” 

Now, with the final volume on shelves and the last episode screening on Netflix, the story has come to an end. When she first began writing Heartstopper, Oseman anticipated it would take two years to finish the series – but it ended up taking 10, simply because she wanted to spend more time with Charlie and Nick. The series stretched beyond the planned five volumes and into a sixth – and then, Oseman knew she was done. “I felt like this is it. I explored everything that I want to explore with these characters… it feels like the right place to say goodbye.” 

As Heartstopper concludes, Oseman is excited by the thought of returning to write prose fiction for adults, but she’s hugely appreciative of the impact the YA series has had on her life. Just like in Heartstopper itself, some goodbyes are harder than others. “I feel really proud to have ended it in exactly the way I wanted to,” Oseman says. “It's amazing that this has been my life for so long, to write this story that I love every single day,” she says.

 “The success of Heartstopper is just beyond my wildest dreams.”

Alice Oseman visits Auckland and Christchurch this week to celebrate Heartstopper volume six. Find tickets here.