Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Lesson from Mike Carey

"The question of the narrative voice…in novels, the omniscient narrative voice has long and honorable tradition and is so universal a convention that it's become almost invisible. In comics, it was similarly ubiquitous right up until the eighties, but then there was a strong reaction against it which has made it the exception rather than the norm - and all of this was recent enough that an omniscient narrative voice, unless it's handled very carefully, can make a comic feel dated and awkward. The protective shield of invisibility provided by long ingrained familiarity just isn't there in the way it still is in prose."
-- Mike Carey, Introduction for Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere collection (Nov 2006)

I recently attended a class by Carey and he said exactly the same thing. Which means the craft of writing is never far from his mind.

We need more writers like Carey in Singapore who thinks long and hard about the craft. Too many people take writing for granted.

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