Regina Brooks > Quotes

“Today’s young adult readers, having grown up using the Internet and playing high-speed computer games, will skip those paragraphs and pages of dense prose, flipping ahead to find where the story action starts again—or skip the whole novel.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published

“An author who adds a prologue to his novel is kidding himself if he thinks the reader won’t recognize it for what it is: backstory.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published

“A deus ex machina climax should cause the reader to consider suing the author for storytelling fraud.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published

“As social animals, we are largely defined by our relationships.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published

“Young adult readers expect a story to move along quickly and are not interested in literary flourishes or exhibitions of the author’s erudition.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published

“The serious writer is one who focuses on his or her own achievements and will strain heart, muscles, and nerves to get to the top.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published

“Some people think stories can be found, but they cannot—the universe gives them to us. Once your ear is attuned, and if you keep an open mind, story ideas will rush to you. Accepting the gift of story can be as much of an adventure for the writer as it is for the reader. How can we discover the story that is in us?”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults

“Vivid, exact, concrete, accurate, dense, rich: these adjectives describe a prose that is crowded with sensations, meanings, and implications.”
― Regina Brooks, Writing Great Books for Young Adults: Everything You Need to Know, from Crafting the Idea to Getting Published