I just finished reading Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials Trilogy – and wow, it’s a really beautiful story.

Whenever I regret to close a book because it would mean to leave those worlds and its characters I began to love, then I know that it has been a story that deeply moved me. So it was with The Lord of the Rings, with Harry Potter, with the Belgariad – and now again with His Dark Materials. Even if it has a sad ending, I applaud Philip Pullman to pull that off and not go the easier, lived-happily-ever-after-ending.

One of the lovable features are the Lantern Slides at the end of every book. No longer than a page each slide, they tell short scenes from the character’s background that didn’t fit into the main narrative.

They do, indeed, in a short moment, give even more depth to the story, more background. It is a feature I’ll try to incorporate in my projects as well, as a way to collect all those background tales that make a character a character and not just a cardboard cut-out.

It may also be a way of describing a RPG character in greater detail (which, in fact, is exactly what I’m doing right now). With my way of writing things (with no apparent order, just scraps here and there to be assembled in the end), it’s strange it never occurred to me before.