David A. Adler Quotes

'EIla Enchanted' began in a marvelous writing course at New York City's The New School.

The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.

I think that whenever a book is not a challenge, I'm telling the wrong story.

I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you're going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by.

I want to tell a story that makes the reader always want to see what will happen next.

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing.

People have told me that they cannot put down 'If I Stay' after reading it, and readers have become very invested in the love story between Adam and Mia.

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

The important thing about any book is that you have to have a good story and that it has to be exciting. Then it's nice to add other levels underneath that people can pick up on.

The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader.

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

Remember, if you don't feel passionate about the characters and subject of your story, your readers won't either.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.

I find it heartening that readers are still excited about diving into a world.

As a reader I want to be present and entertained. I don't want to be taught lessons, and I don't want to be spoken down to. I want to be treated as a peer and to be made to feel welcome.