Anna Staniszewski

Last night I watched the pilot of the new ABC series “V.” After some initial skepticism, I must say I was rather impressed. The writing was generally strong and the amount of information revealed in the first episode was refreshing. After one hour, we already know why the aliens are there and what their intentions are, but we’re also introduced to some characters who add even more complexity to the plot.

In fact, so many different parts of the story have already been presented that I almost wonder if too much has been revealed. (When is that ever a complaint?) I wonder where the show will go from here now that so many things have already been established.  Because the premise of aliens appearing on earth is so interesting in itself, the show could have easily dwelled on that for a couple of episodes before jumping into anything. But they chose to go full-steam ahead, which was a nice change of pace.

The introduction of so much info at the beginning made me think about revealing information in books. In general, writers don’t have the luxury of revealing a lot in a short amount of time. For one, words take longer than images, so conveying all that info physically takes longer. Also, putting so much info into the first few chapters of a book would take a lot of telling, which we know is usually a bad thing.

However, I do think a similar effect can be achieved in books as in films/TV shows. It just so happens that after watching “V” last night, I started reading Gone by Michael Grant. The book gets us right into the action and the pace charges ahead at a very satisfying rate. With the story developing so quickly, it’s almost inevitable that some facts will simply need to be stated instead of slowly worked into the narrative. Surprisingly, this didn’t bother me because the story was moving along so quickly. It was almost like the narrator was trying to bring us up to speed as quickly as possible so that the story could keep going.

Now, this isn’t a technique I would recommend in general. You need to have the perfect balance of action and tension in order to get away with this much telling. But so far Grant has found that balance. He sets up so much in so few pages that the snippets of backstory are acceptable because they only pull us away from the action for a moment. If the pace were to be slowed down just a bit, that info probably could have been worked in some other way, but then the book would have had a slightly different feel.

I’m interested to keep reading Gone as much as I am to watch “V” in the future. Both have a lot of potential and have already created worlds and situations that have piqued my interest. I’m curious to see how the pace will continue and how the stories will twist and turn from this point on. I’ll be sure to report back on both in the future.