Abbreviated Storytelling

Once upon a time, the A-team would encounter some problem, get locked in a garage, engage in some sort of 'rebuild the van' montage, and improbably fix the problem, all in time for the end credits. In another universe, the Enterprise would be attacked by some menacing special effect, red-shirted nobodies would die, Kirk would snog some alien princess, and it would all be back to normal within 42 minutes.

Gradually, though, things have changed. Series now have ongoing plotlines, where things can and do change, and characters refer back to what has gone before. This is a good thing, since it allows longer and more complex stories to be told, and allows a larger cast of characters to be developed (Star Trek only ever had seven core characters, the A-team four. The new Battlestar Galactica has about two dozen).

However, the down side to this expansion is that it has allowed a lot of really sloppy writing to creep in. This is seen most readily in Lost, where they've thrown out a huge amount of character exposition, and dozens of exciting mysteries to tantalise the brain... but refuse to actually ever explain anything or to move the plot forward. Or then there's the new BSG (again), the most recent season of which starts really strongly, ends really strongly, but utterly sucks for the 50% of the episodes in the middle.

And the same is true in movies as well as TV. The average film now runs somewhere between two and two and a half hours. However, there is very rarely any more story packed into that time slot than was the case when the average was half an hour less. Characters are just introduced more slowly, or given more 'depth'. This would be a good thing, except that the writers only have about half a dozen character traits or plot twists that they actually know how to use, so we already know what's coming. Consider: virtually any Jennifer Aniston film is really just "The Continued Adventures of Rachael" (that being why people go to see them, and that being why they get made), so do we really need to spend half an hour introducing the new 'Rachael' to the audience? Or the token boyfriend, or his inevitable betrayal while they're 'on a break'? We get it - just get on with it!

Then there are novels. I read a lot of fantasy fiction. No, more than that, I read a LOT of fantasy fiction. Problem is, no-one writes a fantasy novel any more. They're all multi-book epics, with an undetermined number of parts, each of which is now longer than "The Lord of the Rings" on average. (Insert standard anti-"Wheel of Time" rant here, except that while Jordan was one of the worst offenders, they're now all like that.)

The original "Dragonlance Chronicles" trilogy was 1,056 pages long. Each part, therefore, was an average of 352 pages in length. The Dragonlance book I read most recently, "Dragons of the Dwarven Depths", clocks in at 608 pages, and is supposed to be comparable to one of those three parts. But much less happens in the more recent book than any of the previous ones. We don't get character development of note - what passes for characterisation is generally yet another explanation that Sturm doesn't like Raistlin because he's secretive. Well, gosh, I didn't grasp that fact when I read the first trilogy twenty years ago!

It's all very annoying. It seems that there aren't any decent editors out there these days. That, or people just like having these yarns spun out endlessly.

I should note that I'm not objecting to the length of the stories - the 'eternity version' of Hamlet runs to four hours, but is well worth the running time. The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is about 11 and a half hours long, and if anything is over-abridged. If the story requires a certain amount of space to tell properly, then by all means take the time and tell it properly.

Just get on with it!