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Writing for teenagers and 'the power of language'

26 July 2004

'The one thing you have to do for this age group is to be direct and get straight to the point. You can have deep, interesting ideas, but the story must be there. When I was trying to write for adults I thought people would just love the sound of the words, and that the story didn't matter at all. But it does. No one reads anything without a story to carry them through...

'Every culture throughout history has had stories, and very often anthropologists find that they're linked in ways that can't be explained by people travelling from one place to another. There seems to be almost a collective consciousness tying us all together, and I wanted to say something about that, about the power of language... and the politics of the power of language and privilege.'

Nicola Morgan, author of Sleepwalking, in Publishing News