Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

I have found a video on You Tube – a documentary – on Philip Pullman, and I’m glad I did, because it does not just discuss his work, it discusses how he works, and how writers do the things they do is something I’m always very interested in.

What caught my attention was the talk on third person perspective. He discussed the power of the narrator, and the usefulness of writing omnisciently; how it’s possible to pop in and out of minds, and go here, and go there. It offers so much more than the narrow confines of the first person perspective.

Until now, I haven’t paid this too much attention. It is natural for me to write in third person, so that’s how I write. I write in a very matter-of-fact way, and, it occurs to me, there is always a narrator’s voice present. And it’s true: it allows you do say things that younger characters just wouldn’t say, and it’s an incredibly useful tool.

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Elsewhere, there is a scary news story here. Especially if you are frightened of spiders – the only thing more frightening than spiders is undead spiders.
It must have come to quite a surprise to the man experimenting with them, to see them rising from the dead. But then, I suppose, it serves him right for conducting an experiment where he kills things.

Zombie spiders. Somehow, I never really expected to use those words in the same sentence.