Source: blogspot.com

4. Crazy = Lazy

One of my favorite College Professors was my sociology of deviant behavior professor. And the above was his first rule of analyzing why people do odd things.

Just saying “well they’re crazy, that’s why they did it” is lazy analysis. And it’s lazy writing. People have internal rationale for why they do what they do and keeping that straight makes for better characters.

But it’s frustrating when people just write The Joker as crazy because he’s crazy. What does he want? How is he working to achieve those goals? Why are his actions justifiable to himself? That’s kind of key and super important in many many ways. And forgetting to write him that way just leads to a caricature of “crazy” behavior that isn’t justified or made sense of in any way.

And that’s bad writing because, remember, Crazy = Lazy.