Everyone's a Critic

I used to love watching Margaret & David tear into new movies like a comedy duo. That's entertainment in itself. I was young & foolish, though, & didn't understand the nuanced message, merely accepting that their role on media was to critique ... or criticise.

As I wrote more, I started looking into what was in my writing, how to improve it, how to make it more ... something. I worked on different aspects like relevance, factual content or believability, insight, & also flow, from episodic chapters to longer stories, arcs, multi-book development, etc. It's easy to read your own work & do cursory criticism to define an improvement & refine the content. In my case, it was somewhat iterative, but I believe that's usually referred to as 'drafting'.

That makes me a better writer. However, the consequence of being a better writer is expecting more of others, the published. In believing that my own work was publishable, I started making comparisons, not just to fiction, but also to the scripting of movies & series, on the basis that some of my stories 'could' be viable movie subjects.  It wasn't just book adaptations, though, because they're sometimes 'difficult' by definition, where you have to cut corners to tell a story within a time limit. I'm OK with that.

The holes I had seen in my own work - missing sequences, illogical consequences, unbelievable events - stood out more glaringly in the work of others. Those deficiencies must have always been there. I know I would once burst out laughing at the worst such, but simply accept that's how things went & move on, drinking in the entertainment value. Now, my attitude towards watching was slowly changing. I don't think my tastes had, though, because I sought comfort in what used to sate that need for light entertainment. I wasn't looking for intellectual stimulation, although I still appreciate it.

Maybe it came of bingeing on Flixnet & the like, watching whole series over a weekend, getting frustrated with bad acting ruining a story. Mysteries are worst, because you can't tell if someone is acting badly or else acting really well to give you a clue that they are performing a bad act. You know you're in trouble when you watch Nicholas Cage play Nicholas Cage & realise that he's quite good at it - but he's still acting!

It comes down to quality. Being more introspective makes you see quality as a thing, without going all Zen Motorcycles. It doesn't make you expect better quality, as such, but it allows you to see beyond the superficial, the gloss, the expensive sets & clothes, to recognise quality, sometimes in attention to detail or depth in representation. I remember watching a sumptuous Turkish series set in WWI that let itself down with a character who was supposed to be a British General, but he wore the rank of a Captain, because someone had confused British & American insignia. That's minor. However, it makes you pause & look at the rest of the setting. Was that music appropriate? Anachronisms are easiest to pick. When it comes down to it, if getting the rank insignia wrong was the worst I was to see, then they did a pretty good job of a period piece. The story wasn't too bad, either.

I'm a critic! I should have just enjoyed the original story, the cultural references that somehow came through with the dubbing (I don't speak Turkish), & the historical context I knew so little about ... causing me to read a book on the birth of Turkey in the modern sense. That's surely a good outcome - it made me want more.

The question remains, however: do we, in general, get more laser-focused on detail with age or exposure, or else is it a consequence of self-criticism?