Printfresh x Simon & Schuster Book Club: Meet Author Duo Christina Lauren

The main character in The True Love Experiment is an effervescent woman named Fizzy Chen. Although True Love Experiment can be read as a standalone, it exists in the same world as another one of our books titled The Soulmate Equation. In Soulmate, Jessica Davis is the main character, and Fizzy is her best friend. But as we were writing Jess’s book, Fizzy would steal literally every scene she was in. It felt, to us as we were writing, like Fizzy was shouting, “Do I get a book too?” Indeed when we went on book tour for Soulmate, at every event readers would ask us if Fizzy’s book was coming next.

We hadn’t planned to write Fizzy’s book—in part because she’s a riot as a side kick but was so self-possessed and happy in The Soulmate Equation that we weren’t sure how to get to vulnerabilities and fears as a main character. But perhaps more importantly, Fizzy is Chinese-American, and we aren’t, and we would never want to tell a love story in a cultural context that isn’t ours to tell.

But we were so inspired by our readers and their enthusiasm that we promised them if the perfect, universal love story came to us for Fizzy, we would write it. That story did come to us, and we did write it with the help of some of the most amazing Chinese-American pre-readers, and it was honestly—like Fizzy herself—one of the most joyful experiences we’ve ever had.

The writing process itself looks a bit different every time—sometimes we write in tandem, sometimes we write two books at the same time in parallel, sometimes one fast-drafts and the other does a polished draft and we revise together—but the one thing that stays the same is that we always outline in person. There’s just a magic that happens when we are together bouncing ideas off each other and seeing what sticks.

Oh, for sure. Every writer has their blind spots, but we always joke that’s what makes co-writing our superpower. In our case, a blind spot doesn’t have to be a liability. If we get stuck, we can just leave those parts to our partner to come in and execute. For example, Christina is great at describing physical setting; if you’ve ever read a Christina Lauren book and feel like you can imagine the entire scene in front of you, that’s probably Christina. And if you’ve ever read one of our books and felt an emotional gut-punch, that’s probably Lauren.

This is probably the most boring answer possible, but it’s the honest one: if we have different ideas about where to take a story, we just talk it out. Like any best friends or business partners we do argue, but it’s rarely ever about the books. It’s one of the things that’s great about being Christina Lauren. We aren’t Christina and Lauren – we’re combined into one entity, which means that it’s easy to leave the individual egos at the door and do what’s best for the book. Sometimes Christina’s idea will make more sense, sometimes Lauren’s will. Either way, it’s never a big deal and we’re always happy when we find the right path forward, because nothing feels worse than being stuck.

As most people know, the only genre requirement for romance is that it requires a happily ever after at the end. One could argue this makes it particularly hard to write, because the readers all know how the book is going to end—with the primary couple together and happy. But the truth is, the way romance keeps readers engaged is by taking them on a journey of comedy or angst or adventure or betrayal before landing them in that happy ending. This journey is the meat of the romance and the part that really requires the most finesse. So even though we know that the couple ends up together, we rarely know HOW that looks in the very last chapter. Because of this, we never outline the ending anymore. We used to outline every chapter and how everything would go down, but we’ve learned that, as we write their story, our characters do and say things that surprise us, their journey takes unexpected turns, and often their circumstances are so different by the time we get to the end that the original ending doesn’t fit who they are anymore. So now we outline about three-quarters of the way, and then we regroup at that point and talk about who these characters are and how to best get them to their happily ever after.

The True Love Experiment is our love letter to the genre. Romance holds a very powerful place in publishing; many readers may not know that it is the highest selling genre in fiction, outselling the next (crime/thriller) by nearly double. That means that romance readers, which are predominantly women, have enormous economic power in publishing. And yet, in many cultural spaces, romance is still seen as frivolous entertainment or something to downplay as a “guilty pleasure.” But there is no guilt about joy, especially female joy, which is infectious and community-building. We wrote this book because we realized we had finally created a character who was able to say all of these things we wanted to say about romance and how proud we are to write it. We hope readers love Fizzy and it makes them want to go out and pick up another romance novel, and then another, and so on.

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