Pacing, pacing, pacing.

[mrissa]

I have watched the first four episodes of Slings and Arrows S1 with my workout this week, and there are only six episodes in each season of it, so it's not entirely unfair of me to talk about it at this point in the viewing. And there are good things about this show--well, okay, the main good thing, actually, is Paul Gross, who once again has a way of playing characters who are passionately committed to a reality that is at about a twenty degree angle from consensus reality. (If you don't watch S&A, you might know Gross as Benton Fraser from due South; otherwise the odds are against non-Canadians knowing him at all.)

But the thing that's really striking me is the same thing that's struck me about the worse class of novellas I've read in the last few years. Better novellas have their own pacing. Worse novellas have the setup of a novel and the payoff of a short story. Do I need to say that this is not satisfying? This is not satisfying. I don't mean it only in terms of plot. Plot is not the only thing. I mean that when you spend the entire first third of a thing saying who everybody is and where they are and what it is they're doing in general, before you even start the rising action, you have to have an incredibly charming voice and intriguing premise before you ever go anywhere with it in order to make the audience feel that something satisfying has happened. Not only should plot not wait until the middle to start, but neither should character arc, neither should any change that's happening in the setting, neither should thematic development (instead of thematic exposition).

I keep seeing this, and it's like the professional version of that thing that happens when you go to tell someone a funny thing that happened to someone you know very well. If you have to explain four things about the year you were 12 before you can get to a one-sentence punchline...either the four things also need to be interesting and funny, or you should probably save the story of the funny thing for someone to whom you can say, "You know Kelly? Well, Kelly said...."

In fiction, you have to convince people that they know Kelly. Fast. Or at least you have to convince them that they want to.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Worse novellas have the setup of a novel and the payoff of a short story.

The world of letters could do no better than to adopt this sentence and repeat it endlessly to authors attempting novellas. I know I'm going to steal it for future conversations.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The first few eps were very rocky and rough, yes. But it found its feet. And each season was progressively better.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Since all three seasons came in one package and thus I already own them all, I'm glad to hear this.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got it the same way and was somewhat dismayed, but I soon got caught up. (YMMV)

[aliseadae]

Hmm. I quite liked Slings and Arrows. I don't really remember troubles with exposition but I don't know if I was paying strict attention to that and I last watched a year ago. I tend to have troubles remembering details of things a year later.

Who does Paul Gross play again? I remember character names much better than actor's names.

I think if I were to look at Slings and Arrows critically I would have had to have done so right when I was watching it. I do not remember my opinions on it now, only a vague sort of "I enjoyed watching this".

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Paul Gross plays Geoffrey Tennant. The director who had a nervous breakdown onstage playing in Hamlet several years ago; the person who is the main character, basically.

[aliseadae]

Ah, gotcha. I sort of figured, based on what you said.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I certainly have this infinite (or at least excessive) regress problem telling stories sometimes. As I'm sure you know :-).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, and this is more literarily relevant than it might seem: if you like someone enough, or if they are charming enough in the telling of the setup, you will give them more leeway in this matter. Your dear friend, your sweetheart, a relative that you like--unless they have abused this privilege too much, you're more interested in the four things that happened when they were 12 than you would be for the average person off the street. Favorite authors the same: I am much more likely to say, "Let's see where she's going with this," of, say, Lois Bujold than I am of someone whose novella I've just picked up because it was in a magazine I was reading. Sometimes this is even just, because on average Lois really does turn out to have more narrative skill than J. Random Writer. But that's a reason to tolerate the suggestion of this behavior from the reader's side, not a reason to make your readers suffer through it from the writer's side.

[dancing-crow.livejournal.com]

Thank you for clarifying for me what was so frustrating about the beginning of this show. It may also point to why the second and third seasons are so much more satisfying: all the exposition is out of the way, and the rising action starts instantly.

I started it because of Paul Gross, but (once past the choppy start) I liked it a lot. It helped that the high school was putting on Hamlet (with my help backstage) while I was watching the first season also - the resonance made me laugh.