Ali Hazelwood on Trusting Her Own Voice After BookTok Fame

Posted by Sharon on August 1, 2022
Ali Hazelwood’s debut novel, The Love Hypothesis, was a quick hit, debuting on The New York Times bestseller lists, placing second in the Romance category for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards, and becoming a viral trend on TikTok. The book’s hashtag on the platform currently has more than 300 million views.
 
The author-slash-professor has since released an audiobook-first trilogy titled The STEMinist Novellas and is gearing up for the release of her second novel, Love on the Brain. Sticking to the scientific theme of her first project, Hazelwood’s new book follows neuroscientist Bee Königswasser and her nemesis engineer Levi Ward as they team up on a dream project working for NASA. When things start to go downhill for Bee, Levi swoops in to save her, in more ways than one. Confused by Levi’s perceived change of heart, Bee has to figure out whether she’s ready to put her heart on the line yet again. 
 
Hazelwood first got her start writing fan fiction. The Love Hypothesis is loosely based on a story she wrote about Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars, and the fandom world is where she found her voice and was first discovered by her literary agent. While she doesn’t have much time to contribute to that corner of the internet anymore, she still dips in and out when she can.
 
“I watched the movie Persuasion yesterday, the new adaptation, and afterward I was like, Oh, I wonder if there is fan fiction of it yet,” she tells us. “I’m just the type of person that, when I watch any type of media that I like, I want to know more about the story and characters. I want to stay in that universe, and fan fiction is how I get to do it.” And to her readers in that space anticipating her return, she adds, “I still love fan fiction, and I know that I will write fan fiction again because it’s just my jam.”
 
Hazelwood spoke with Goodreads contributor Taylor Bryant about asking for help while writing, the dark side of academia, and her next project. Their conversation has been edited.
 


Goodreads: What was your inspiration for Love on the Brain?

Ali Hazelwood: I actually wrote the book while I was on submission with The Love Hypothesis. My agent was pitching the book to editors during the pandemic for many, many months, and literally no one was interested, so one of the things that my agent suggested was, “Why don't you just write another book? In case no one buys The Love Hypothesis and it never gets published, we have something else to pitch to editors.”
 
I was mostly a fan fiction writer before, so Love on the Brain, in many ways, is the first book that I've ever written from scratch. I kind of didn't even know where to start, and my agent guided me a lot. She was like, I would love to read an academic rivals-to-lovers story, and then she was like, I’d love it if maybe these rivals are communicating but they don't know that they're communicating. She gave me a bunch of tropes that she wanted me to build the story around, which was really, really helpful because I am very indecisive and had no idea what I was doing.

GR: So, where did you start? What was the writing process like for this book?

AH: It was difficult for me, I'll admit, because writing fan fiction is much different. I had to read a lot of craft books, like, for example, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Books that tell you how to fill the story with plot. That’s something that fan fiction doesn’t necessarily have to have. It’s mostly about the characters and their interactions, so you don't need to have a story with a first, second, and third act and the beats and character arcs.

There was also a lot of going back and reading all my favorite romance novels and trying to figure out what I loved about them and what the arcs were in them and trying to kind of mimic them.

And then, of course, there was a lot of asking all of my friends—who are also writers and readers—to read the book, tell me what was wrong, and what I should fix.
 
At some point, we did sell my first book to Berkeley, so I had my amazing editor help me get that story [and this one] into shape. It was truly a labor of a million people helping me get this book to a decent state. There was a lot of asking for help. That's my process.

I hope that, as I write more and more, I'll become a little bit more independent and I won’t have to harass people, but, as of right now, I'm still at a phase in my writing where I really need a lot of help and a lot of guidance. I definitely need all of the hand-holding that I can get!

GR: What’s the most challenging part of writing a novel versus fan fiction, and what’s the most rewarding?

AH: Starting with rewarding, I think there are fewer constraints. When you’re writing fan fiction, you're trying to write about certain characters, so you’re following the personality of those characters. When you're writing stuff that is original, you can really go wherever, so that’s kind of cool.

But there are definitely pros and cons to that, too. I'm a very obsessive person, so writing within the constraints of fan fiction and the constraints of characters that have already been created is kind of reassuring just because I am such a scaredy cat. [Laughs.] I second-guess myself a lot, and I think that's what makes it so hard for me to write original stuff. I'm like, should I change this? I literally could go whatever direction because it's my book, it's not anyone else's, so I could change this…but would it be better if I did this other thing? So I think, for me, part of what's hardest is just committing and deciding that I can be true to myself and to what I want.

GR: You also come from a background in academic writing that I’m sure is more structured; there isn’t much room for imagination. Do you prefer that more?

AH: There's definitely something about it that is less scary just because, as you said, it's very structured. Scientific language is kind of always the same, so once you've been doing this for a couple of years, you know exactly what to say and what to write. It’s completely different, but at the same time, there are things that academic writing and fiction writing have in common, which is more this idea that you have to pre-plan what you want to write. You have to figure out what you want this specific part or sentence to convey. As I practice and write more fiction writing, that helps me with academic writing and vice versa.

GR: You’re a professor and have a background in neuroscience, similar to the main character Bee in Love on the Brain. Is there much overlap between what she does and what you teach and studied?

AH: I don't do her type of research now; she does brain stimulation, and that's something that I did during my master's program. I actually worked in a lab that did brain stimulation and always thought it was really cool, so I definitely wanted to write about it.

My doctorate and my thesis are different from what she does, but we are in the same overarching area of neuroscience, which is cognitive neuroscience. We are both interested in how the brain and behavior map onto each other. So that was really fun, taking my favorite things about the brain and about neuroscience and merging them in the book. Her love of neuroscience is similar to my love of neuroscience.

I’m gonna be real. I was also like, Oh, if I make my main character a neuroscientist, I wouldn't have to do a whole lot of research. [Laughs.] So there was a bit of laziness there.

GR: I'm guessing you still had to do a lot of research!

AH: Oh yeah, 100 percent. Since brain stimulation is not my main area, I definitely had to look into that. I used that technology during my master's, but it's been, like, eight years, and neuroscience progresses very quickly. We know so little about the brain, we learn a lot every year, and what is considered state-of-the-art changes. I also don't know anything about engineering, and the main male character is an engineer, so I had to figure something out there.

GR: Love on the Brain also touches on the dark side of academia, including the sexism that's prevalent. Why was that important for you to write about and incorporate into the book?

AH: It really started from fan fiction. Even back when I was writing about Star Trek characters, I would set them in an academic context, which I know seems weird. I think I started writing fiction when I was in the final year of my Ph.D. and I was writing my dissertation, and I was feeling very much overwhelmed by the academic culture and the sexism. I am a woman in STEM, which of course is the minority, but I am also privileged because I am a white woman in STEM. Being a woman of color in STEM is like 70 million times harder.
 
There was this feeling like I just wanted to take my experience and my struggles and make fun of it a little bit: write about it in a way that would exorcise some of the worst parts of it. It feels to me like if I can take these hardships and these difficult moments that I experienced and put them in a context that I can control and can make a little bit fun of, and if I can give my characters a happy ending, it can kind of be cathartic for me.

GR: Twitter plays a big part in the book. What prompted you to bring social media into the mix?

AH: I wanted to have a You've Got Mail trope going on, and Twitter seemed like a good way of having my two characters become friends before they even knew who the other person was. Academic Twitter is very active, and that's where a lot of conversations about academia are going on, so it just felt like a good setting. My favorite academic account is Shit Academics Say, and that's kind of what I modeled both Bee and Levi's accounts after. These are places where you can find community, but also take a look at academia in a funny way and in a jokey way.

GR: What’s your personal relationship with social media like?

AH: I'm gonna be honest. All of my best friends I found through social media back when I was in fandom. It's really great because you get to find people that share your interests. There were a few years when I was an adult that I didn't really have many friends, and I think that's because I was working all the time and I didn't really have a whole lot of time to cultivate other interests. Once I started getting really interested in fan fiction, that's where I met a bunch of people, and now I have some of the best friends I've ever had in my entire life. I'm incredibly grateful.
 
I definitely try to set boundaries. For example, right now, I really couldn't keep up with like five different platforms, so I'm mostly on Instagram. I still have my Twitter account and a Facebook page, but I don't really go to other social media. Also, for me, social media can become addictive very fast, and I can truly waste hours. I need to set boundaries so that I can be a productive adult.

GR: I know that The Love Hypothesis kind of blew up on TikTok. What was your reaction to that?

AH: That was amazing. I wasn't very familiar with TikTok at all. I remember my good friend Jen telling me that a video about my book had, like, a million views. And I was like, What is going on? I couldn't even comprehend it. BookTokers are just so creative. The way they talk about books is so engaging and fun.
 
I actually really like TikTok, I have to say. I get really into it when people bake cakes. I really like anything that is crafty. Like literally can spend five hours just watching people do stuff. I love it so much, it's really a problem.

GR: You mentioned earlier that you read a lot of romance books leading up to writing your novels. Are there any authors or specific books that really influenced your writing?

AH: I read Lisa Kleypas a lot. I remember thinking I wanted to write a story that's similar to hers.

One of my favorite books, ever, is The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang.

Sherry Thomas is my favorite because she writes a lot of historical romance novels in which the main characters fall in love because of a shared interest, and many times the shared interest is something within academia or STEM. The way she writes about it is something that I was trying desperately to mimic.

I also finished for the second time a couple of days ago one of my favorite books that I’ve ever read, which is Pride and Protest. It’s a Pride and Prejudice retelling by Nikki Payne that's publishing this November. I’m literally going to stop people on the street and tell them to read it. It's just a masterpiece. It’s so, so good.

GR: Are there any other books that you're reading and loving right now?

AH: I recently finished Chloe Liese’s book Two Wrongs Make a Right [also out in November]. It made me feel so seen. She writes characters who are neurodivergent, and I loved it so much.

I'm currently reading Sally Thorne’s Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match. I’m about halfway through, and it's such a ride. It’s so funny and unique, I truly haven't read anything like it. It’s very romantic and sexy, which is weird because he's like a zombie. She makes it work so well.

I've read recently Farrah Rochon’s The Hookup Plan, which was amazing, too. I love it because the main character is a doctor, and she's just so badass. It’s my favorite trope of "we hate each other but the sexual attention is so high there that they just end up having sex." And then Denise WilliamsDo You Take This Man also has a similar trope.
 
GR: What’s next for you?

AH: We're actually still editing my third book, so I'm kind of reluctant to talk about it because I'm like, are we gonna change everything? But the title is Love Theoretically, and it's a book about two rival physicists. She is a theoretical physicist, and he is an experimental physicist, and they both think their discipline is better. They end up falling in love, but it’s also a weird twist on the fake dating trope in the sense that she ends up with the brother of the guy she's fake dating. I don’t think that part is going to change about the book, but I don’t know. We’re still very deep into editing, so more to come. I promise.

 

Ali Hazelwood's Love on the Brain will be available in the U.S. on August 23. Don't forget to add it to your Want to Read shelf. Be sure to also read more of our exclusive author interviews and get more great book recommendations.
 

Comments Showing 1-18 of 18 (18 new)

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message 1: by MK ( MaKayla) (new)

MK ( MaKayla) my favorite trope of "we hate each other but the sexual attention is so high there that they just end up having sex." That's the unhealthiest , most toxic thing I've ever heard. That's not romance ,that's porn .


message 2: by Samantha (new)

Samantha Echeverria I Love Ali Hazelwood, I will be screaming when they announce that we have a future movie!!! She is my favorite author, she is amazing I really connect with the character that she write, anybody that read this and know that is going to be a movie please contact me I will be so happy to be an extra or to give water bottles to the cast!! I just want to meet her and talk to her about how she feel when she is writing, how she feel after finishing a book, because I imagine that is difficult to see how her books (babies) are around the world, but let me tell you! Be proud! Because you change reader’s life’s!! You change my life for better! Is good to be reading stories when your life is not what you expected, and laugh and smile to the screen of my phone is a therapy, the funny moments make you see have much you miss smile and I’m grateful, Thank you for making feel alive with your stories! So please don’t stop writing! (I hope you can read this, and I hope I make you smile just a little bit with all of this)!🫶🏻

Att.: Your stories of enemies to lover’s (the best thing alive!!) but let me tell you that I’m obsessed!! I start college next week (biology) at UCR, I just hope to have a Adam, or Liam in my class because I really need an excuse to go!😂😂

Love,
Samantha E❤️


message 3: by Aniela (new)

Aniela I can’t wait to read “Love on the brain”! I loved “the love hypothesis” so so, so much, that I’m sure I will love this one too! <3


message 4: by tehniatreads (new)

tehniatreads ummm just so u know, i only started working so that i could buy ali's new book


ebru&#x1f574;&#x1f3fb; Can’t wait for this one!!


message 6: by Lucy (new)

Lucy Meechan i’m so excited to read this new book!!


message 7: by Darielle (new)

Darielle Allia I am so ready for Ali Hazelwood's latest book and I have already pre-ordered it with my local bookstore since June!!!


message 8: by Serli004 (new)

Serli004 My most anticipated read!! I love Ali Hazelwood so much!!! She mixes my 2 favorite things: science (I love anything related to it) and romance!!


message 9: by Charlotte (new)

Charlotte Ortega I'm so excited for this new book and the fact that Ali Hazelwood announced a third novel, so we know that more is on the way! I just finished "The Love Hypothesis" a few days ago, and it's the first book I've ever read with the fake dating trope. It was such an intriguing story; I never wanted to put the book down! Something that is so inspiring about what Ali Hazelwood shared in this interview is when she explained how she needed help on her side in order to provide to us these amazing novels. It really shows to aspiring young authors and just young people in general that even the best of the best need help, and that's it's okay to ask for assistance and it's okay to not always know what to do on your own! As a young reader, that was just really cool to hear from such an amazing author. I look forward to reading more from Ali Hazelwood, and I hope she knows how inspiring and cool she really is!


message 10: by Eshasreads (new)

Eshasreads Ali books are some of the best, her beautiful way of writing which showcases traumas and deepness alongside happiness and banter is something that leaves me in awe. Whenever I read her books I find it extremely difficult to put it down! I cannot wait to read love on the brain


message 11: by Kiki (new)

Kiki Ooh the premise of her third book sounds a bit like while you were sleeping


message 12: by bookchronic (new)

bookchronic I m gonna read every book of hers bcoz come on who doesn't like "we don't know we love each other but we secretly do" trope it's the best 🤌🏻


message 13: by Clare (new)

Clare Brick Great interview!!! I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my pre-ordered Love On the Brain!! I LOVED The Love Hypothesis so, so much!! ❤️


another_bookstory Such a great interview! 😍 i love her even more if thats possible. Yesterday I received Love on the Brain and i cant wait to read it! Been waiting for way to long!


message 15: by Alba (new)

Alba Un libro y un Café solo Can’t wait for this one 💙


message 16: by Sorrowka (new)

Sorrowka Interesting to get know more of her and her works! Now I'm eager to wait for the third book, because the premise (theoretical vs experimental) is something collide against, another perfect match for enemies to lovers trope!!


message 17: by Dessi (new)

Dessi Hey Ms. Ali maybe you should not be writing fiction if you don't have a single original thought or any idea of how to write a story????

Is this for real? This "best-selling" author gives an interview in which she confesses she wrote her book based on a bunch of tropes her agent fed her - which isn't that surprising considering her first novel was based on mediocre, incredibly OOC fanfiction and that literally all of her books and novellas so far have the exact same tropes. And people are actually clapping and saying they want more books from her!? I'm begging you all to read better stories, I promise you there are many of them out there.


message 18: by Anna (new)

Anna Pesce Ali Hazelwood has been my inspiration to start writing so I will support her <3


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