I hear this term thrown around a lot, particularly in circles where audiences can easily scrutinize the workings of the writers that present them with material. It always irks me when I hear it from fans, and what some of them think constitutes written content of being ‘lazy’. My guess is that lazy writing, from a audience’s perspective, just means that they can easily determine the conventions that the writer employed and figure out the mystique, if you will, behind whatever they were writing—whether it be characterization, plot structure, backstory…the list can go on for ages.
A lot of the time these fans throw around that term to classify a certain writer as being bad, whether it be for that show, that film or that comic (screenwriters less so since they get relatively the least amount of attention). Now, my assumption is that being fans they have had a lot of material that they’ve gone through, so obviously they’d be able to pick up on the conventions common to that genre or even broader, that medium, given that they are a devoted fanbase. Now, I’m not going to particularly bash those fans in question, but I will take the side of the hypothetical ‘lazy writer’.
There’s a connotation with that term that makes it extremely loaded. Now, my bias may stem from the fact that most of those fans that complain about lazy writing are the same fans that fester and boil with rage at the slightest inconsistences that they perceive violate the sanctity of their favourite characters, or key components of their favourite fictional universe. So to address those complaints, in itself, may be not the most pressing issue, but I’ll tackle it because somewhere down the line someone is undoubtedly accuse me of committing to said ‘lazy’ writing.
Fans are fans because the consume the material, not because they partake in it. They read, watch, and participate to a capacity, yes, but they aren’t involved in the creative process for good reason. They don’t know what it entails. Especially the writing process. It’s gruelling. I’ve been lucky enough to not experience it in its full horror. I hope to though, but that’s another story.
I’m thinking on my feet here, but I’d say such accusations stem from two main categorires when someone cries wolf with this sort of thing:
Awareness of Convention & Transparency of Content
Fancy capitalized words for some pseudo-academic setting, but bare with me, I’ll try not to bullshit you to death.
The first, awareness of the convention, is essential on both creator and consumer end when it comes to creative/narrative media. What most writing professors will teach us is that we have to respect the audience. It’s a key element—you disrespect the audience, your show or film or comic will be complete shit, the audience will pick up on it and they will tear it to pieces. It happens every week, most likely.
*cough* Green Lantern *cough*
Audiences, being bombarded by the entertainment industry every second of the day, is saturated with narrative. We already find story in everything, but its constantly shoved down our throats anyways. We swallow genre like a daily diet pill—we ingest convention and our minds piece together, with enough exposure, what these genres do to present story a certain way.
We all know in crime thrillers, the authority usually captures the criminals—in capers, the masterminds outsmart the ‘Man’. Horrors: black guy dies first. Fantasies: an otherworldly/supernatural threat jeopardizes the peaceful escapism that is shoved in our faces. My understanding of genre may be rough at this point, I’m sure I’m broadening it somewhat, but you get that genre conventions compose the meat and tendon of story.
The role of the writer is to hide that obviousness behind good narrative composition—audiences will be forgiving if they’re presented with a strong enough story. But ‘lazy’ writing comes into play here, if audiences aren’t respected, to a certain extent, their suspension of disbelief will dissolve away.
All the normal conventions that you employ, without consequence, will suddenly become bare naked in the sunlight. The flaws within the script scream out of the screen, or the page. Everything’s wrong. Fans are in a ruckus. It sucks.
Which brings it to transparency of content—writing any kind of fiction is essentially one thing: telling a series of lies to expose a universal truth. Call it theme, controlling idea, moral of the story, or what have you. Characters are fake, scenarios are fake, emotions are fabricated by some people cooped up in a room with gallons of Starbucks and potato chips. And I’ll assume safely that not may fans who say ‘lazy writing’ are all to knowledgeable to that fact.
I guess when fans catch a whiff of that coffee or those potato chips behind that major plot development or this character’s death, they feel betrayed above anything else. The words ‘it’s not real’ dominate their thought process. At that point it may become an unbearable read or a laughable experience, knowing that everything you invested in the story and its characters are for naught. Transparency kills the narrative. The content stays the same, and it can be completely competent writing, but those ‘superfans’ and dedicatedly intense audiences can sever their ties with a particular story and its writer, swiftly and absolutely. It’s their superpower.
But, lazy writing implies there would be something called diligent, or hard-working writing. Like the act of writing can be a humanistic quality in itself. Lazy people can be good writers—take me for example. This very well could be a useless argument regarding the semantics of a 4chan comment that I was somewhat bothered by, however it’s still important to discuss (if that means one long blog post) this issue.
But no, there’s no such thing as hard-working writing, or lazy writing. There’s just writing. Not to mention that fiction writing is by definition an artform (don’t even deny that), the notion of ‘lazy writing’ is already subjective, there’s no right or wrong. God forbid, there’s someone out there who loves The Phantom Menace, or thinks the new Catwoman ongoing series is the best thing ever to happen to the character.
Sure, convention may be misconstrued for cliché, or rightly so accused of being formulaic and overdone, to the writer’s extent. But there is no lazy convention. Just convention. Good writing incorporates convention invisibly, cleverly, to serve the story. Bad writing misuses convention and causes all those complaints by whiny fans of lazy writing. But again, subjective. The only objective way to take this is that lazy writing may as well be somewhat-energetic-but-still-full-of-spunk writing.
Hint: that’s called a voice. Writers can have more than one. It’s kind of their thing.
Condescendence aside, I earnestly hope fans minimize their usage of ‘lazy writing’ against works of fiction they don’t like or don’t agree with. Not to say it’s not the writer’s fault that it didn’t hit with them, but for God’s sake be more specific and aware of your criticisms.
Lazy vocabulary, for example, would be legitimate—the writer should verse themselves in a dictionary more closely to express their ideas better (I am so guilty of this it’s unbelievable). Don’t put a giant clamp around the complexity that is the act of WRITING to bash a work.
But hey, when was criticism ever constructive on the Internet?
So fans, you can stay fans, but don’t talk about things you most likely have no idea about. And writers, always strive for better writing—and playing with convention, not just using it, it’s a key part of that. And bitchy-ass whining neckbeard elitists?
Yeah, go fuck yourself. Only thing ‘lazy’ is you.
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