I love to analyze the flaws of stories. Choppy character development, plot holes and clichés, underexplored themes…These are what occupies my mind after I read a book or watch a show, alongside an unbecoming thought: If I had been in charge, I could have thought up a much more consummate story.
True, I tell myself then, I totally could have. But I probably couldn’t have written it.
Because, writing is very different from thinking about writing. Where thoughts are quick and dexterous, writing has inertia. Thoughts have a bird’s-eye view of the story, while writing starts from the bottom up. Your thoughts belong to you, but writing is a wild, willful entity of its own. It doesn’t want to be polished to perfection, but to occupy its writer, to challenge them. It can be tamed – that’s what skill is – but only to an extent. The finished product is always a compromise.
It’s perfectly fine to address plot holes and lackluster characterization. Critics (and pseudo-critics like myself) are needed. But their job is not to hold works of art against the standard of perfection. It’s to analyze the compromise. What worked out well? What didn’t? How could the creator make a better deal next time? And behind every such analysis, should be gratitude that the work exists at all, for its creation was no doubt a laborious one.
No story is exempt from criticism. But all stories deserve respect for having been written.