Non Pratt
About Author
After graduating from Trinity College Cambridge, Non Pratt became a book editor at Usborne, working on the bestselling Sticker Dolly Dressing and Things to Make and Do series. She lives in London with her husband and small(ish) child and writes full time. Trouble was her first novel, followed by Remix.
Author link
Interview
REMIX
WALKER BOOKS
JUNE 2014
Non Pratt's debut novel, Trouble, received much critical attention and this month Walker Books publishes her second novel, Remix. Like her earlier novel, this is an honest, warm and often funny exploration of the everyday lives of teenagers.
In Remix, best friends Kaz and Ruby are excited to be spending a few days at a music festival when the unexpected arrival of both their ex-boyfriends brings heartache and trouble. But as the girls each focus on what their former boyfriends mean to them, are they in danger of losing their most important friendship - with each other?
We spoke to Non Pratt about writing Remix, friendships and festivals.
Q: Why do friendships take centre stage in Remix?
A: I read a lot of YA fiction and by and large it's the romantic relationships that dominate the story, or romance is the dominant subplot. The friendships in the stories tend to be idealised or fractured and I don't feel that that reflects real life.
I think that every teenager has probably had problems with their friends, but not every teenager has had a romantic experience and I wanted to write about something more universal than romance.
I am talking about girls not boys here. On the whole boys tend to just get on with the stuff they do with their mates, but I wanted to look at those claustrophobic, supportive, funny, important friendships that girls tend to have when they are teenagers, and to question how relationships can invade those friendships.
Q: We don't often come across the ex-boyfriend in YA literature, so why did you want to explore this?
A: Often in literature the focus is on the 'getting together', will they or won't they?, and it tends to end where they get together. There are some books about break ups but very few when you consider how many people tend to go through them!
So what happens after they have a relationship and it ends and, importantly, what about the lasting impact that has had on your best friendship? So I wanted to look at ex-boyfriends and what it means to have an ex in your best friend's life.
Q: Why did you decide that a music festival would provide the best setting for the book?
A: When I was young I went to music festivals because I really loved music, I still do and it is still really important to me. Music inspires me to write, it is so important to me, and I wanted to see if I could write about how important music is to my characters. I thought a music festival would be a good way to do that.
In YA literature, writers are also always looking for believable situations where parents won't be around. A lot of teenagers go to music festivals and it's often their first real taste of freedom.
The festivals I used to go to were at Leeds and Reading but I stopped going in my early twenties because I had a job in London and I was never that keen on camping... But I went back for a day to both festivals to research for Remix.
Q: Have you used your own festival experiences in Remix?
A: Yes, definitely. I was at a festival once and saw my ex-boyfriend with another girl and I just ran off, like Ruby does in the book. Like her, I wanted to be alone, but I left my friend for nearly an hour and she didn't know where I had gone or what had happened to me. She was distraught. We're still friends though!
Q: What kinds of music inspire you to write?
A: I'll often start writing a book by putting on music but as soon as I hit my writing zone, I have to switch it off because it's too distracting. 'Fallout boy' is a line in an album that really makes me want to write, so does all the pop punk stuff I grew up with and still listen to now. I like listening to things I already know, it's quite hard to introduce me to new music.
Q: Do you discover the story as you write, or are you a careful plotter?
A: I sat down to write Remix only knowing what was going to happen in the middle of the book, whereas with Trouble I knew the first line and what happens at the end of the book. With Remix I just cherry picked my favourite scenes to write but I didn't know how to sew them all together. It's not an efficient way to write a book...
I tend to massively, massively over-write my books. There were 300,000 words in the first draft of Remix and 65,000 in the final book. But what that means is that my characters are very well-rounded because I spend so much time hanging out with them!
I was very interested in Kaz and Ruby's friendship. I have had best friends and I have enjoyed that feeling of being special to somebody and for it to feel super special, for friends who don't just like you for the best of yourself but for everything. None of my own friendships were as close as that between Kaz and Ruby but I don't think a lot of people have that experience. I also tapped into the worst bits of those experiences, those feelings of jealous and insecurity if you think they like someone else more, and I used those in Remix.
Q: You've got a range of diverse characters in Remix, was that intentional?
A: I feel very strongly about diversity in publishing, because everyone needs to see themselves in books. Possibly my strength of feeling is such that the characters in my stories end up being quite diverse because my mind is open to it but it's not me deliberately saying 'I will include a diverse cast-list'. Kaz was always going to be mixed race, Ruby was always short and with a Polish-sounding surname, and Ruby's brother was always going to be gay.
Q: Would you ever follow up your characters, for example from Remix?
A: I might do so, more so with Remix than Trouble, because there are a lot of out-takes that weren't included in the final book and which I'd like to share at some point, things about the characters and Kaz and Ruby who are on the cusp of such big changes in their lives. But I'd have to work it out.
At the moment I'm writing Truth or Dare for Walker, who have signed me write two more books. It's a story about Clare, who is known for being quite quiet and a bit scared of things, and a boy called Seth who will do anything. So I put them together.
Q: What do you enjoy reading?
A: I read what I like because when you become an author, people send you lots of free books and because I talk about books a lot - it's the editor in me - people want me to read their books.
I have just read Sarah Crossan's One, I was very reluctant to read it because the novel is told in verse but within two pages I was blown away. Verse is so easy to read and it's an amazing book, so full of emotions, it's such an efficient way to write a story. Also Say her Name by James Dawson and Moira Fowley-Doyle's The Accident Season, which is very creepy but not quite supernatural.
Q: Where do you write?
A: I write at home in my office which was my daughter's bedroom but we moved things around a bit. It means I now sit beneath two prints of Guess How Much I Love You... I have my granddad's desk where I write by hand into a big A4 pad, and I have notebooks I carry around with me that can fit into a handbag so I can always work on ideas when I'm travelling around.
Trouble
