Hear from EL Norry
Robyn, Scarlet and Will represent three young people facing and trying their best to manage different but equally complex sets of circumstances, why do you think it is important that young readers encounter situations like these in the fiction they read?
Showing the complexity of the reality that many young people face is important to raise awareness and foster empathy. When children see their experiences reflected back at them, it can encourage them to be more open about what they’re going through. Instead of thinking their situation is unique, they might come to realise that they aren’t alone and that they don’t have to cope alone, either. And sometimes books will give us answers to questions that we didn’t even know we needed the answers to — we may not know that there is an organisation who gives away cheap/reduced food at the end of the day, for example Save Good Food From Going To Waste – Too Good To Go – Too Good To Go . I believe that reading stories can help us in many ways. One of those ways is by letting us know how someone else handled a certain situation. Then, if/when we might one day face a similar experience, we’ll have that knowledge of how someone else tackled it and that information may come in useful for us.
Their friendship begins in unusual circumstances and develops somewhat differently for each character, how did the multiple narrative structure allow you to develop each character’s journey into the friend group at their own pace?
Sometimes in fiction, the representations of group friendships strikes me as unrealistic and idealised and doesn’t reflect what I see with the young people I work with. I’d like to write more about shifting friendships at those key ages. It can be hard especially in a group of three, or any odd number, because sometimes someone might be (or just feel) left out, especially depending on what’s going on at home. Not everyone has the same things in common, or responds in the same way. I tried to show that in the way I structured Outlaws (for example, Robyn not having her phone for a while allowed Scarlet and Will to naturally become a little closer), and the way that Scarlet struggled with the decisions that Will made.
