Plot holes are often one of the first things writers (and editors, and readers) look for in a first draft. That character who got mugged walking home from the bar – why was he walking when you mentioned two chapters back that he arrived on a bicycle? That bomb that the villain planted in the hero’s baggage – didn’t he notice that his bag was heavier? And how did the villain get it through airport security to plant it in the first place? That technological thing that’s so important to resolving the plot – sorry, but physics and biology don’t work that way.
There are two general approaches to plot holes. The first is to attempt to plug every last one of them in situ, explaining (often in far too much detail) what happened to the bicycle and why the character didn’t notice (or didn’t fuss) about it being missing when he came out of the bar; giving lots of elaborate details about sneaking the bomb through security and distracting the hero so that he doesn’t notice the extra weight; going into a three-page infodump to explain why physics and biology do so work that way if you have dilithium crystals to force them to.
The other approach is to ignore the plot hole entirely, and zoom along with the story, hoping that most readers won’t notice or won’t care, or will assume that there is an explanation but that the writer left it out on purpose.
The thing that far too many writers, beta-readers, and formal crit groups don’t realize is that either approach, if relied upon as the sole way of dealing with plot holes, can kill the story.
It’s like being in a sailboat far from land, and realizing there’s a hole in the bottom of the boat. The first group of writers tries to plug the hole with whatever material is available. Sometimes, they succeed…but by the time the hole has been plugged, the wind has died and the boat isn’t moving. They’re becalmed. They can start moving, slowly, if they’ve been smart enough to bring along some oars, but odds are that any passengers are going to jump ship at the first opportunity and never take another trip in one of their boats again. And if they didn’t pack oars…well, the boat is dead in the water.
The second group of writers takes the opposite approach; as soon as they realize there’s a hole, they add sail and speed up, on the theory that the faster the boat moves, the less water will get in, plus the passengers will be so busy enjoying the wild ride that they won’t notice any problems until after the boat reaches shore. This can work if the wind is strong and the hole is small, but the bigger the hole, the more likely the boat is to sink before it gets to shore. Also, any passengers who notice the hole after the ride is over aren’t likely to want to climb into that particular boat again, and may very well not want to go sailing with that particular writer any more, even in another boat. And readers and writers do not always agree about what constitutes a tiny, ignorable hole versus an enormous critical one.
Basically, if the writer spends too much time and word count fixing the hole, the plot stops moving and the story stalls, but if the writer ignores the hole, the story may sink or the writer may lose a bit of reader trust. A writer who has an established record (and therefore a lot of trust built up among readers) may be able to afford to lose a little trust. A writer who knows how to write really entertaining infodumps, and whose audience likes that kind of detail, may be able to get away with plugging a few holes with long explanatory passages, especially if the explanation arrives at a point when the reader is ready for a bit of a break from frantic action.
Much of the time, though, what needs to be done is either a complete repair, or a patch. A complete repair involves taking the boat back to dock, hauling it out of the water, and rebuilding the part with the hole – in other words, doing a major rewrite so that there is no plot hole any more. The character bikes home from the bar without incident, security finds the bomb immediately, that technology thing doesn’t have magical properties that contravene current physics…and the rest of the story goes in a different direction from what the writer planned, frequently meaning that the author has to come up with a different climax and solution. Consequently, this fix is usually the most work, and the most strenuously resisted, even though it is also usually the most reliable and effective method.
A patch means that instead of ignoring the plot hole completely, or attempting to plug it up with a three-page infodump, the writer provides a couple of sentences that imply that there is an explanation, but there isn’t time or space for a full explanation and the reader will just have to trust that the writer did think about it and does have a solution. Patching rarely works on more than one plot hole per story, and if the writer uses it in multiple stories, readers are likely to lose trust and wander away – a bit more slowly than if the writer ignored the matter completely, but just as inevitably. If the writer can manage to insert an explanation/solution later in the story, they may not lose much at all, though this, like most after-the-fact explanations, really isn’t as effective as planting clues before the plot-hole-generating incident comes up (which usually means something more like a full repair).
The main exception to the above is the plot hole that is the result of the writer knowing stuff that never got on the page. The bike was a rent-a-bike, and when the guy left the bar, the rental stand was empty, but the writer was so clear on this that she forgot to mention it. The bomb was planted in the suitcase by the villain’s agent among the baggage loaders, who never appeared in the story. This sort of thing can often be completely fixed by adding a few sentences that put the missing bit in, without requiring a complete rewrite.
The really difficult part is figuring out which technique for plot-hole-fixing is going to be most effective for a given hole in a particular story. If there are a bunch of holes, a complete rebuild is usually necessary, but if there’s only one small one, ignoring or patching it may be the best alternative. And if there are several related holes, inserting one explanatory passage or a new scene that covers it may be the quickest and most effective fix.
The boat example is perfect for this 🙂
My first instinct is to look for a quick repair (rewrite so the character walked to the bar instead of taking the bike). Second is to try an in situ plug of the hole, or something that is halfway between an in situ plug and a quick repair (the character is mugged while riding his bike back home). The idea of hoping the hole won’t be noticed makes me wince.
The very notion of allowing a plot hole to remain makes me grow hackles just so I can raise them.
Ok – this brings of the question of what reason (other then simple laziness) would necessitate a mere patch, plug or ignore of plot holes in your story. Can we have a Part 2?
I’m fairly sure the answer boils down to a variant of “nothing can be perfect” but specifics would be nice.
@Kin – At least one reason can be that the level of rewrite necessary to do a complete repair would eliminate one or more things that were part of the original idea-kernel — in short, one of the reasons the writer wanted to write that story in the first place. Take that away, and the story might well be dead to the writer.
Laziness is of course another reason. But don’t knock it too hard; by the time you’ve bashed your way through to the end of a novel, a little laziness can look awfully good!
I suspect most of my plot holes tend to be of the “never got on the page” variety. Sometimes it’s character stuff that I think is self-evident (and it is, if these people have been living in your head for a decade). Sometimes it’s research that I’ve spent so long in that it seems everybody must know it; everyone knows the childhood history of the current leader of North Korea, right?
This is handy, because, as you say, it’s usually a straightforward fix; the supporting structure is already there, and the rest of the book is shaped to fit with the explanation because in the writer’s head, it was already there. But it absolutely requires good beta readers to catch, the kind who will tell you when they step in a hole rather than jumping over it and moving on, but without bogging down turning over every pebble.
That’s my most persistent error. I’ve gotten better over the years at getting more onto the page, but I definitely need good beta readers. I’m in the middle of revisions on WIP right now and have encountered some critically important “didn’t get on the page” bits that my first reader pointed out.
I’m attempting NaNoWriMo this year, and just realized I had character A tell character B that villain X has escaped his confinement, and then when I wrote villains Y and Z freeing him, I also had them blow up the building. You’d think character A would have mentioned that, as well. And yet, I really need something dramatic like that building blowing up–and for characters A and B not to know about it yet.
Too much re-write to do in the middle of NaNoWriMo, if I try I’ll never make my word counts. I added a little note about how I want to change it and have continued writing as if I already made the changes, but it just keeps bugging me.
I ran across a book with a plot hole recently that was more of a wart than a hole. The author included a minor detail that, for me, essentially took a sledgehammer to the believability of a major part of their world building. The detail came up two times that I remember so may have been an easy thing to remove if anyone had noticed.