Tale and Pace

I have been listening to the Radio 4 dramatisation of Mort, and I find
is remarkably unsatisfying. Even if you leave aside the fact that Mort
is one of my least favourite DW books, I find the radio experience
peculiarly flavourless. And yet the dramatisation is very true to the
book - no liberties have been taken that I noticed.

There are probably a number of reasons for this, many of which have been
discussed before and which I will not raise again. But there is one
which has newly struck me, and which I though to mention in this august
forum, This is the matter of the pacing of the telling or the tale.

However closely the adaptor keeps to the book, the speed at which the
plot develops will change when adapted for radio. Dialogue will keep the
same speed, but action and description could get longer or shorter - by
considerable amounts.

For example, in a recent episode, Ysabell bursts into tears. That takes
three or four sobs on the radio. PTerry could have done that in the book
either with a singly sentence "Ysabell burst into tears" or, as he did,
with two paragraphs describing the depths of her misery. Which he chose
was a very positive decision which which changed the shape of that
passage - and one which the radio adapter could not copy because of the
different nature of the medium.

Which points up that superb pacing is a virtue of PTerry's writing of
which I had not hitherto been conscious. We are very conscious of the
great characters, interesting plots and witty references. But underlying
this is some very solid literary architecture. On practically every
double page, as far as I can see, the plot moves forward a bit, there is
at least on sardonic reference and funny remark or punning joke. You
never get lost in wastelands of description, not bored by plot machinery
being relentlessly driven forward, just a steady canter from beginning
to end of the book.

As a contrasting example, it has struck me that Tom Sharpe's novels
consist of a series of comic set pieces separated by interludes of
relatively boring material. He spends thirty or so pages positioning
characters and getting us to believe in the possibility of (fairly
unlikely) behaviours - then lights the fuse for two or three pages of
comic denouement.

--
@lec ©awley

True, but it hasn't always been so. TLF and TCOM were basically a few comic
set pieces strung together. I felt the Mort and Sourcery period books were
rushed at the end. The latest novels, I marvel at the construction and
execution

I enjoy noticing how PTerry has developed as a writer. My wife has just
started reading Night Watch and Going Postal and is delighted, especially
since she found Pyramids and Moving Pictures (which she read years ago and
hadn't read PTerry since) were not as well crafted.

"@lec ©awley" <alec.TakeThisOut@spamspam.co.uk> wrote in message
news:376l70F59n40vU1@individual.net...
 > Which points up that superb pacing is a virtue of PTerry's writing of
 > which I had not hitherto been conscious. We are very conscious of the
 > great characters, interesting plots and witty references. But underlying
 > this is some very solid literary architecture. On practically every
 > double page, as far as I can see, the plot moves forward a bit, there is
 > at least on sardonic reference and funny remark or punning joke. You
 > never get lost in wastelands of description, not bored by plot machinery
 > being relentlessly driven forward, just a steady canter from beginning
 > to end of the book.
 >
 > As a contrasting example, it has struck me that Tom Sharpe's novels
 > consist of a series of comic set pieces separated by interludes of
 > relatively boring material. He spends thirty or so pages positioning
 > characters and getting us to believe in the possibility of (fairly
 > unlikely) behaviours - then lights the fuse for two or three pages of
 > comic denouement.
 >
 > @lec ©awley<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->