Samuel Peterson’s Reviews > Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling > Status Update

"I don't know where the next generation of children's authors is going to come from, but I predict that it won't come out of the ranks of teachers. Young teachers today have too many other stupid things to do to have time or energy left at the end of the day to sit down and write, and the National Curriculum forbids them to do what I used to do, and simply tell stories for the love of it when they want to." Here too.

Some of my favorite stories come from different perspectives. George R.R. Martin, Django Wexler, throw a dart at Star Wars and you'll likely land on an author that tells the story from multiple perspectives. I find that it enriches the world a lot faster than if you were to keep it to one.

"I realised I could use the story to say something about the inexorable nature of responsibility. If you have a child, you should look after him. If you make a promise, you should keep it. If you have a task, you should finish it. If you begin telling story, and people are listening, you should finish it." See, these are themes that are universal, that everyone can understand. Not "don't be a d!%&."

I do hope that the two girls featured in this personal tale have heard of this story and stepped forward to say that they were them.

I love the imagery of an inner magpie and old owl perking up at the mention of someone writing a story nearby.

This essay called "Children's Literature Without Borders" was written in 2001, and there was already talk of Brexit at the time. Interesting that it would be years later before it actually happened and not too long after when the UK population began to slowly realize that was a mistake.

"Meanings are for the reader to find, not for the storyteller to impose...What's more, as listeners grow older, so some of the overtones will fade while others grow more clearly audible." So too does it happen in films and TV.

"If your narrative shies away from a situation because you think it will seem hackneyed, if you wince fastidiously and refuse to follow your characters where they want to go, on grounds that you don't want to be mistaken for the other writers, less good you are,...then the audience will go away and find another storyteller with more vigour and less self-importance." I've seen such examples in my writers' group.

"I don't want my audience to be selected for me; I want it to be as large as possible. I want everyone to be able to listen. The larger the crowd, the more that goes into the hat." Exactly. By limiting your stories to a particular subset of humanity, whether that be sex, sexual preference, race, or age, you're not going to get as much from people as you would when catering to as many as you can.

"Instead of that democratic mix, we have segregation: segregation by sex, by sexual preference, by ethnicity, by education, by economic circumstances, and above all, segregation by age." Yep. And we still do today, only it's not just limited to books now. Films and TV as well has this segregation.