I work as a coach on a swim team. I used to swim on this team and have seen several coaches come and go. Many of these coaches weren’t there to coach but to make money. They didn’t do their job because they enjoyed it, but to earn an income.
Because of that mindset, they didn’t care about the swimmers. They only cared about getting their hours in and going home. It was frustrating because I had nothing to learn from them. The coaches I learned the most from were the ones who were there because they loved coaching and they loved competitive swimming. They enjoyed their job, and they cared about their swimmers. They didn’t simply give them instructions and let them do what they were told to do. They actively worked with them. They encouraged them. They cared about them.
What does this have to do with writing?
Because we authors don’t typically meet our audience, it can be easy to see them simply as numbers. When those numbers are high, it’s good. When they are low, they aren’t good.
But your audience isn’t a group of numbers. They aren’t there to blindly buy your work. They’re people like you and me. They aren’t going to shell out ten bucks to read a boring, unoriginal story and leave a five-star review. Caring about your audience is one of the best ways to get more readers, and it is moral. You aren’t shoving a book into people’s faces and telling them to buy it because you want money. You’re developing a community and showing people you care about and love them.
It’s always a frustrating experience when big studios and companies create something that makes a lot of money because it is genuinely good, only to make a sequel or reboot with little to no effort behind it for a quick buck. They don’t listen to their fans, and they don’t try to do anything to make them happy. They know it sells, so they’re going to make more.
In an age where IP is everything, this is becoming more of a problem. Most companies believe they can sell their products through name recognition alone, and the truth is they can. The new “Lord of the Rings” show made a ton of money, and the story was slightly less than average. But people didn’t care. They wanted to watch it because it had “Lord of the Rings” in the title, myself included. The show wasn’t even consistent with Tolkien’s mythology. It changed whatever it wanted because it was easier that way. The only two reasons it made as much money as it did were because it’s based on Tolkien’s work and cancel culture.
Cancel culture has also played a significant role in this world that is focused more on money than making good art. When “The Last Jedi” was released, fans were furious. YouTube was filled with videos of “Star Wars” fans bashing the movie for its horrible, unfocused plot and its vandalization of the original characters and lore. However, instead of taking this criticism and learning from it, writer and director Rian Johnson constantly called the fans who disliked his movie “sexist” because they were intimidated by a strong female protagonist.
If that were the case, the original “Star Wars” films wouldn’t have been so beloved and popular. Princess Leia, who was part of the story from the beginning, is a strong protagonist and a woman. It never bothered anyone. She quickly became a fan favorite. She is a fun and likable character with human emotions and struggles. Ahsoka Tano is another excellent example of a strong woman in “Star Wars.” She went from an annoying, juvenile sidekick to one a tough Jedi, becoming a key commander in the Clone Wars and a fan-favorite character.
Because of these two characters in “Star Wars” and more, it became clear that the problem with “The Last Jedi” wasn’t because it had a strong female protagonist. It was because it was a poorly written film. Rian Johnson and the others in charge of the film used cancel culture to convince people that their movie was good and that the people who didn’t like it were horrible.
Instead of making creative, engaging, and original art and appealing to people who enjoy the art they create and engaging with a community, most artists today, especially the big companies, decide to make excuses for making lazy art rather than working hard to create something spectacular, appealing to costumers and talking garbage about the communities surrounding their work. I would rather watch an original, exciting film that I had never heard of than watch the next great story from franchise X. I enjoy art created for creativity, not money. I want to see the passion and love that the artist puts into their work. But if the artist looks at their audience and only sees numbers, then passion and love will never be found in their projects. Only empty, hollow ideas with lazy execution.
Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.