In conversation: Alice Oseman

Isabel Popple speaks to 19 year-old début author Alice Oseman about her book Solitaire.

Alice Oseman is 19 years old and about to start her second year at University, but this summer her first book was published. Solitaire is remarkable, though, not because of Alice’s age, but because of it’s depth, the intricate, character driven plot-lines, and how perfectly it captures being a teenager today. Solitaire’s voice is as authentic as they come, with characters full of passion, humour and conviction, and who are probably more self-aware than the average adult.

When I meet Alice, she is quiet and considered, pausing for thought rather than leaping into answering my questions. Although we should certainly not be surprised by what she has achieved, clearly being the same age as her protagonist and living in a similarly internet-intense modern world has enabled her to approach and present contemporary teenage life and culture in a way that few older authors would be able to.

Introduce us to Solitaire…

It’s a contemporary story set in a school. It’s about a 16 year old pessimist called Tori Spring who turns up to school one day to find that an online group has decided to prank the school. Tori doesn’t care at all, but on the same day she meets Michael Holden, who is very interested in what’s going on – and the book is about their adventure.

How did Solitaire get to be Solitaire – how did it begin for you?

I started writing it, or started coming up with ideas when I was in year 12. I’d read a few coming of age stories, like The Catcher in the Rye and Looking for Alaska, and I really enjoyed those. Coming of age was a genre that I really enjoyed, and I couldn’t really find any that had female protagonists: a coming of age contemporary story with a girl in the centre. I know now that there are loads around, but at the time I couldn’t find any, so I thought, I’ll just write one myself.

Can you tell us a bit about how blogging and social media feature in Solitaire? Tori talks about blogging a lot, and the Solitaire group use a blog for their pranks…

Yeah, it’s a big part of the story! I always imagined the blogging site they use to be Tumblr because I’ve had Tumblr since I was 15 and used it loads ever since then. I always found on Tumblr that people are more willing to talk about their private lives – you know, their feelings and things like that. So I read lots of people’s stories about their lives and it really opened my eyes to the things that people put on the internet, so I think it links in quite well with the themes of Solitaire – coming across as one thing, whereas inside you’re feeling something else.

Has blogging influenced your writing?

Definitely. I think Solitaire is an inner monologue, basically. And that’s what people write like on the internet. So having gone through my teenage years online and seeing people’s stories and reading people’s stories and me writing my own posts, that’s definitely influenced the way I write.

Blogging is a massive part of online culture today, how big a role do you feel it plays in teen culture?

I think teenage culture online is a world that sometimes adults completely don’t understand – they have literally no idea what’s going on.

None of it really existed when I was a teenager!

Yeah, exactly. It’s a really new thing, particularly things like Tumblr. I got Tumblr when Tumblr first came around and now it’s a massive online community with its own personal jokes. It’s just its own sort of world.

Tori is cynical, pessismistic, hates school, and has a pretty bleak worldview. Do you think we would like her in real life?

Ooooh. Um, I don’t know! I don’t think you would actually dislike her, that you’d be like, ‘oh my god she’s so horrible’, because she doesn’t actually say any of the things that she’s thinking. I think she would more blend into the background because she doesn’t actually say very much, so you probably wouldn’t notice her.

Aside from Tori, the two characters that really stood out for me were, of course, Michael Holden (Tori’s sort-of love interest), but also her brother Charlie. Charlie is lovely, but he’s got a lot on his shoulders. Was that very difficult to write?

It was definitely something that I knew I wanted to write about because it was something that I came across so much online. Like Tumblr: people often used it to talk about their mental illnesses, what was going on. I knew quite a lot about it from reading what people were actually going through.

Other teenagers?

Yeah, definitely. And I really wanted to show how serious it is. So often you see mental illness romanticized, but I just wanted to show it in all its true horror. I don’t know how confident I’d feel writing a book completely about mental illness, because there are so many books that do that, and do it really well. But it’s not the main thing about people, so with Charlie I didn’t want it to be that that’s all he is, his mental illness – it’s just a small part of him.

I think one of the most outstanding things with Solitaire is how perfectly it captures being a teenager. How important do you think it is to be true to teenager’s real thoughts, feelings and experiences in Young Adult writing?

In contemporary writing, definitely really important. Teenagers are going to know immediately when a book fails to properly capture what teenagers are thinking – and how they talk particularly. I think sometimes some Young Adult books can seem quite patronizing to teenagers, particularly when they write these trivial, silly teen characters, whereas when you are a teenager, you don’t feel like a young, inexperienced, silly person – you just feel like a person! So I think when you’re writing teenage characters you have to just write them as serious, rounded characters, and don’t think, ‘oh, I’ve got to write in a specific way to make them sound like a teenager’ – because teenagers don’t think they sound like teenagers, they think they sound like people.

The tag line for Solitaire is “This is not a love story”, which it certainly isn’t – it’s quite dark. But how would you define Solitaire? More of a thriller? Or just a story about contemporary life?

If I had to put it in a category, I’d say it was a coming of age story, because even though there is this mystery side of it, and there is a little bit of romance in it, I think the main thing about it is Tori’s character development. So I definitely call it coming of age, but I like that its got all different parts to it – that’s the thing that I really like in books, for books to encompass lots of different things.

Because that’s how life works.

Exactly!

I’ve heard you say that what matters most to you is writing. What is it about writing that you love?

What do I love so much about writing? I think just being able to create. The amazing thing about writing is you can literally think of anything – it’s one of the art forms where you have the least amount of things that are going to stop you making you want to make. With film and visual art it’s more difficult to get what is in your head into a visual form… With writing, it’s just so cool to be able to think of people and stories and then make it appear on a page. That just never fails to amuse me.

What’s your writing process? With Solitaire, for example, did you plan or did you just dive in?

I planned. I cannot just dive into a book. People do that, but I have no idea how they do that! I planned Solitaire really carefully, except I didn’t quite know how the ending was going to play out, but I was so eager to write, I was, like, no I’ll just work it out later.

You’ve kept diaries for over ten years, how much do you think this might have helped shape your writing?

It’s definitely made my writing more confessional, more willing to delve into human emotions and feelings. I think it’s made me more interested in characters and figuring out emotions rather than trying to tell some kind of amazing story where loads of amazing things happen. I’ll always be more interested in the people side of it.

Can you tell us anything about the next book that you’re working on?

I change it all the time! I’m planning it at the moment. I’m pretty sure its going to be vaguely about education and how teens today are being really let down by education – stress from school and things like that. But as for the actual story: still working on that.

You wrote Solitaire for yourself, but now you have a contract to fill. Does this make writing your new book feel very different? Or do you have to turn that little voice off?

It’s definitely different. It’d be silly to try and pretend that it’s not going to be different this time, because its more what I’m doing for work rather than completely for myself. But I still want to keep in mind that I need to write what I want to write, not what I think other people want to read – that’s the most important thing.

Tori doesn’t like books, but I’m guessing that’s probably not true for you. Are there any books in particular that have influenced you?

I read Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis. That was the book that made me write this book in the way that I did. Because that book, it’s so difficult to explain! It’s all kind of in a monologue, but the protagonist never really explains what he’s actually feeling, and that just seems to make it more – you feel more sympathy for him. And that was something that made me love it so much, I was like, I really want to write a book that makes you feel something for the character without the character having to go on and on about how sad they are.

There are lots and lots of young writers around, do you have any advice for them?

I always say, write literally exactly what you want to write. Don’t try and be like anyone else, because if you just write what you love then it’ll be better. I genuinely think having passion for your writing makes your writing better. And things that are unique are more likely to stand out to agents as well. And don’t give up!