Category: Editing

The Ever-Dreaded Plotholes

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Today’s post comes from a seemingly simple question from Tia Kalla (@tiakall):

“@JessicaDall Any good advice for plothole/ending problem solving?”

Of course, I’d bet all of us writers wish that were simple, after all, it’s never fun to finish a story, get halfway through editing, and then find out that what the second half of your plot hinges on actually makes no sense. Sadly, there’s very rarely an easy fix, just some that are easier than others. And so for today, we will focus on plot holes, and I’ll attempt to tackle all those sticky ending problems tomorrow.

For those who don’t know exactly what a plot hole is, wikipedia puts it:

“A plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story’s plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot. These include such things as unlikely behaviour or actions of characters, illogical or impossible events, events happening for no apparent reason, or statements/events that contradict earlier events in the storyline.”

Reader or writer, I think we’ve all been there. Even if you’ve never seen a book in your life, you’ve probably experienced plot holes. You’ll find them in movies all the time. Cracked.com even came up with a list of eight movies left with gaping plot holes.

For example, Back to the Future:

“Marty McFly goes back in time, helps his parents get together, invents rock and roll…and everyone promptly forgets he was ever there the minute he leaves.

Nobody notices that a famous clothing brand is later named after him, nobody notices that Chuck Berry releases a song that sounds pretty similar to the one he played at the big dance, and most importantly, nobody bats an eyelid when his Mom has a kid who looks exactly like him.”

Or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:

“At the end of another wondrous wizarding adventure, Harry uses a magical time-travel necklace to go back and save himself and his godfather from the evil dementors… The movie treats time travel like this urgent thing: “We’ve made it to the past! Now we’ve only got a few minutes to go back and stop the dementors!” No you don’t, you have as much time as you need. It’s f**king time travel. If you mess up, just go back and try again.”

Now, I’m sure every writer and/or reader had come across something in a story that seems out of nowhere, or completely out of character (I know I had to change a scene in a story when my editor pointed out that it didn’t make sense to have an otherwise cautious character agree to drive home with someone who might have had a few too many). But what’s awful about true plot holes are that they’re essential to your story. Had that car ride been the start of the story (a story about dealing with a drunk driving death, perhaps) or an essential part of the plot (it leads to a car chase that absolutely has to be there) it would have been a lot more difficult to get around it than having her take a taxi home for the night (which she does).

So just how, exactly, do you get around those annoying plot holes?

1. Acknowledge/Joke about the plot hole: One of the easiest ways to get around a plot hole is to simply acknowledge that, yes, it is a plot hole. For example:

“Wow, lucky this charm we’ve needed was right here where we just happened to be walking in a forest where we’d be lucky to ever find each other if separated.”

“Yeah, what are the odds?”

Not an ideal fix, but it’s better than just leaving it there for other people to pick apart. Personally, I believe this fix works best when a plot hole comes from someone acting illogically.

“Why the heck would you go and talk to that guy?”

2. Go back and change something that’s less important to make the plot hole make sense: For example, using my example of the cautious character getting in a car with someone who may or may not be safe to drive, put in somewhere much earlier that she’s very cautious, except when she’s drunk. That way, it would be easy to say she got drunk at the party and thus wasn’t her normal self. It’s easier to change than trying to rework just how you’re going to start your plot without her in the car and you have the plot hole taken care of.

What you do want to be careful of with this fix, however, is not to throw in the fact too late. Then it seems like a blatant attempt to fix something at the last minute. For example, in a book I was editing a while back there was a painfully obvious “oh, I need to move the plot along” moment that just made for bad writing. It seemed to go something like:

[Author is writing] Hmm, I need to have Generic Love Interest (GLI) jump in to this river and save Heroine who is suddenly going to turn into a Damsel in Distress long enough to have them meet and fall in love. But how can I do that? I’ve shown up until now that she is a completely competent woman who wouldn’t need anyone to save her. Oh! I got it.

Heroine: I know we’ve been on this boat for half a day, but just so you know, I can’t swim!

GLI: Oh, really?

Heroine: Yeah, I sure hope… AH! I just fell overboard, you need to save me since, like I just said I can’t swim!

It’s good the author was trying to fill in a plot hole, but if it’s important that the Heroine of your story can’t swim for that scene, don’t mention it three seconds before she falls in. Add it in earlier, take a little more time to edit and put it in earlier. A couple of references that maybe she’s afraid of water. Heck, even when they first get in the boat, make her uncomfortable. That way you have some precedent for when she falls overboard.

3. Outline: This might be most useful for keeping plot holes from happening int the first place, but outlining can also be a useful editing tool. Write down everything important that happens. Write down all the things that make those important things happen. It won’t take as much time as completely trying to rewrite and it will help you pinpoint where you’ll be able to make changes that will either allow you to make your plot holes make sense, or change them entirely. Is there a minor character you forgot about who could make the plot point work? Add them in so the plot hole makes sense.

4. Total Rewrite: And, of course, the most dreaded of the fixes for plot holes. Completely rewriting the story from however early you need to to get rid of the plot hole. Just considering it is enough to make the writer in you die a little inside, isn’t it? You’ve spent X amount of time writing your sixty, seventy, eighty-thousand word baby (562,000 if you’re Ayn Rand. Yep, that’s how long Atlas Shrugged is) you’ve finally made it through a complete draft, and now you’re basically going to have to start over. Still, if you can’t find any other fix (and you aren’t willing to just ignore it and hope no one very catches on – a fool’s dream) a rewrite could be your best bet. And sometimes it works out for the better. Now that you know exactly what you want to do with your story, and know your characters so well, the second time writing the same story might turn out amazingly better than you ever thought it could be just by going through and editing it.

And so, those are my suggestions for fixing plot holes (at least how I would do/have done it). If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to comment or email me (jesskdall(a)gmail.com) and I’ll add your ideas in as help for other writers.

To all: May your fixes be easy and your plot holes few.

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What’s in a Name?

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Today’s blog post comes from us courtesy of Roxanne St. Claire (@roxannestclaire), a fellow Twitterling (I’m not sure if that’s something we call people on Twitter, but I like the term, and thus it is what I call people on Twitter all the same.

In under 140 characters Roxanne wrote:

“Sometimes just changing a character’s name changes everything. Just did that and heroine feels so much more “right” now.”

Right away, at least for me, that made complete sense. There are some writers out there who can write an entire story with their characters being X and Y before filling in the names. I, personally, can’t. A name means a lot to my characters. Often times, a story idea comes from the name, rather than fitting the name into a completed story. I don’t know, maybe that comes from my not much caring for outlines, but all the same.

Take, for example, Willow. One of the main characters in my novel Grey Areas. To me, she has always been Willow. I’m not quite sure where the name came from at the time (perhaps it’s just that I like plant names. Thinking about it, the Main Character in The Bleeding Crowd is Dahlia…) but from the moment I started writing, she was Willow. From that name, an entire back story came out that her parents had been hippies. Hence the plant names. (And the fact that her middle name became Belladonna). For The Bleeding Crowd, the names are even more set. Dahlia comes from a mother who loves plant names. The twins are Audrey and Zoe (A and Z for the two ends of the alphabet). All the men have biblical names (Benjamin, Jude, Abraham…)

But, ok, those all have plot reasons behind them. It would be a little odd to have all characters in X group have names that start with one letter and stray from that. In those cases, of course names matter. But what about just any old character? Does it really matter if a character is named Jill or Jane?

Of course, to quote Shakespeare, “That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet (II, ii)). Would it really have mattered to the story if Romeo had been named Sam? Or Bill?

Perhaps not. If you wrote the characters exactly the same, perhaps it wouldn’t matter if the play were “Bill and Juliet” but then, the name Bill just brings up a different connotation there, doesn’t it? The 1989 movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure just wouldn’t have sounds the same if it had been “William and Theodore’s Excellent Adventure” now would it?

To quote the great philosophers, the writers of The Simpsons:

Lisa – “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.”
Bart – “Not if they were called ‘Stink Blossoms’.”

Perhaps a rose would still smell like a rose even if it were called something else. But what would someone’s first reaction be if you were trying to give them a Stink Blossom for Valentine’s Day? I doubt many people would want to even try smelling something that says it stinks in the name. And for those who did, you can’t discount the idea of the mind playing tricks. Something along the lines of the placebo effect. You tell someone something’s going to smell bad, less likely they’re going to accept that it smells good.

Personally, I think the same thing happens to a lot of writers. There’s a picture in our heads associated with names. Take Agnes for example. What’s the first thing you picture? Unless you know someone else named Agnes, it’s probably an older woman. Now Laquisha, or Vinnie. There are some names that are just associated with stereotypes – either because they are most common in one group than another, it’s a name used a lot in media referring to one type of person, or because they have been used as a negative “catch-all” for a group of people (such as someone insultingly referring to a hispanic man as ‘Jose’). There’s such a strong mental connection to some names that it doesn’t only affect how a reader sees the character, but it starts morphing even us writers’ ideas about our characters.

And, so were’ back to Roxanne’s point, “Changing a character’s name changes everything.” It’s probably why it can take so long to find a perfect name for one character, and why you couldn’t change another’s name no matter how much a publisher or agent pushes you to. It’s just the character’s name. It’s how you see them. It’s who they grow to be.

And so, a rose might still smell like a rose, but it wouldn’t be what we expect it to be. And that changes everything.

(If you’re struggling to name someone or something in your story, naming sites around the web can help you find something that seems to “fit.” I made a handy list of a small fraction of these sites available here to help point anyone looking in the right direction.)

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Beginning Writer Problems

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Publishing Update: The contract for my new novel, The Bleeding Crowd, has been signed. Look for more updates as its August release date gets closer.

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As a freelance editor, I spend a good amount of time with other people’s not-quite finished masterpieces. Though I have edited for all manner of writers (from the first-time novelist to multiply-published) my three most recent jobs have been for either completely new novelists, or ones with only a little experience under their belts.

None have been especially bad (there are some novels I have gotten freelance which, I admit, have made me cringe) but I have seen some problems that seem to be a common theme. For all those aspiring novelists out there, here are a few things I’d suggest keeping an eye on.

1. “Very” abuse. I can understand it, the music at the club your characters have gone to isn’t just loud. Having gone to clubs, I know the particular level of loud club music is. “The music was very loud” is a “very” weak sentence though. Not only because of the “to be” verb (was) but because “very”, for the most part, just clutters up a sentence. There are such stronger words to use. “The music was deafening” or “my/his/her ears rang, the music shaking the walls” are both stronger (and more interesting).

2. Contractions. People speak with contractions. One of the easiest ways to make someone sounds stuffy/formal/like a non-native English speaker is to have them speak without contractions. Think about the people you talk to on a regular basis. Now think about which of these sounds more like what they would say: a) “I am going to go. He cannot now, so he will come when he is able.”  of b) “I’m going to go. He can’t now, so he’ll come when he’s able.”

3. If people are saying things, use dialogue. As with all of these suggestions, there are exceptions, but dialogue is one of the easiest ways to make your writing quick and engaging. Of course it has to be good dialogue, but even bad dialogue tends to be more interesting than, “he was telling me/him/her about this, and this, and this.”

4. You don’t need to account for every minute. It’s possible to skip time/stop when the interesting part of the scene is done. If you start every scene by a character waking up and end with them going to sleep (and it isn’t a conscious stylistic choice) take a closer look at the scene. Do you really just need the two main characters to meet? You can have “they looked at each other in the coffee shop” as the first line of the scene. It doesn’t have to be “she woke up, took a shower, thought about having breakfast, but then decided to just get a bagel at the coffee shop on the corner.” If it isn’t important/interesting, you can skip to the fun parts.

5. “To Be” verbs. I touched on this a bit before, but “to be” verbs (am, is, was, were…) are weak. Don’t worry about taking out every “to be” verb in your writing, but if it doesn’t need to be there, don’t use it. For example, it doesn’t have to be “The ball was falling.” “The ball fell” is better.

6. Adverbs. I’m hardly one of those editors who is against adverbs of any kind. If you’ve read any of my writing, you know I’m not against adverbs. Just like “very” abuse, the main problems with abusing adverbs is that often they’re used when a stronger word could be. It’s especially bad when coupled with “very” abuse. “He said very quietly.” What’s wrong with “He whispered.”? If you can say something in fewer words, it’s generally stronger.

7. Telling, not showing. Yeah, this saying is overused quite a big, but it does has its uses. It’s just not interesting reading “He was angry.” How is “he” feeling? Or if he isn’t the narrator, how does the narrator see “he” is mad? Is his pulse rising? Is his face turning red? Is he clenching his fists?

8. Vary sentence structure. If every sentence starts with the same word (generally “I” in first person or “He/She/[Character’s Name]” in third person, try to change up some sentences. Not everything has to be filtered though a character (to use an above example, it doesn’t have to be “I/He/She/[Character Name] saw the ball fall” it can just be “The ball fell.”) It’s also possible to change up complex sentences (“She started to walk down the dark street, her foot steps echoing on the walls.” can become “Her foot steps echoed on the wall as she…”)

9. Switching tenses. Something to just watch for, I see it far too often. You can write in present or past tense (there are plenty of debates over which is better, and past is more common, but it’s your choice). Just keep consistent. Few things seem more awkward than when you start a sentence in past tense and finish it in present.

As with anything else in creative writing, take what I say with a grain of salt. There’s a time and place for almost everything. It’s when you do things without thinking, without a reason for them, that it makes someone seem like a novice. All of the above are little things, easily correctable (I’m sure I did more than one of them when I was just starting to write). Writing, like anything else, is a skill. If it isn’t perfect to start, just keep practicing.

Even if something is the best thing you’ve ever written, it only is because you haven’t had the chance to write something even better.

That’s Just…Wrong

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In my last post, I wrote about my own take on the old writer adage “Write What You Know”. When you take it with a grain of salt, I agree, it’s a good thing to do. But, of course, there are always things you can’t know. And, there are things you don’t even think about possibly being wrong, just because we’ve read and seen too many things that tell us that the wrong things are true.

So, for this blog, I will make it my mission to correct at least some of these unknown mistakes that won’t seem to die in fiction. (If you feel I’ve missed an important one, feel free to add it in the comments or message me and I’ll add it.)

1. If you’re knocked out for more than a minute, it’s very possible you will have brain damage. Despite what you’ve seen and read time and time again, if you are hit over the head and are knocked out long enough to be moved to an entirely new location (generally by the bad guys) you aren’t going to wake up a little dazed and then be walking around a few seconds later. It’s hard to get knocked out for a reason. If every bump on the head took you out for 10 or more minutes, many more humans would have been eaten by lions back in yonder-times.

2. Gold bars are HEAVY. Ever dream of breaking into Fort Knox (or the New York Federal Reserve if you want to be different) throwing a bunch of gold into a duffel and heading out rich? It’s a great “bank heist” standard after all. Yeah, gold is dense. The men who move gold bars around wear special toe protectors to make sure their feet aren’t crushed by a dropped bar, and each bar is something like 20 pounds. By all accounts, those 20 pounds being contained in such a small object makes each one feel more like 50 (sadly, I’ve never gotten to hold one to see…) Stick a bunch in a duffel bag and you’re either not going to be able to lift it, or the fabric’s going to tear before you get it out of the room.

3. The Middle Ages lasted for 10 centuries. Look it up, from about 400 A.D. to 1400 A.D. Fashion changed in that millennium. A lot changed in that millennium. If you’re doing a historical fiction (or a time travel fantasy, or…) it’s easy to fall into historical inaccuracies by grouping it together as one cohesive time.

4. “Blowing up” a picture doesn’t make it clearer. There’s only so many pixels in a camera picture. At some point, zooming in is going to just make the picture blurry (try it yourself. Find a small picture and start zooming in, or stretching it, on your computer. It will get bigger, but not get clearer).

5. Defibrillation doesn’t bring people back to life. The electric jolt “shock paddles” give actually are made to stop the heart for a split second so that the heart will “restart” with a regular beat. If the heart’s already not beating, it can’t help.

6. Potatoes aren’t native to Ireland. One that’s more important, again, for historical/time travel fiction, even though they are associated with Ireland these days (what with the Potato Famine and all) potatoes did not exist in Europe (the “old world”) prior to the Columbian Exchange.

7. Cars don’t explode. If you watch Mythbusters, you probably already know this, but cars don’t tend to explode (or catch on fire) when they crash. Not unless explosives have been set inside them. Yes, gas is flammable, but car manufacturers are careful about those things. They don’t want to, you know, kill their customers.

8. Sounds doesn’t travel in space. Without any matter (air) to move through, the sound waves aren’t going to travel. Doesn’t matter if it’s a giant explosion or someone talking, there’s some finagling you’ll have to do in your sci fi for that to work.

9. Just because you aren’t in the fire/explosion/lava doesn’t mean you can’t get burned. Heat travels away from things that cause heat. It’s why, even if you aren’t touching the flame, holding your finger over a candle will still end up with you getting burned. Standing next to hot lava will, likewise, burn you.

10. Elevators doors won’t open onto empty shafts. As a safety mechanism, the part of the elevator that opens the doors is on the car. If the elevator is not at the floor, the doors aren’t going to slide open (at least for newer models, I’m not sure about older ones if someone wants to look into that.) It is, however, possible to get stuck in an elevator. I speak from experience there…

Hopefully those will help writers with any plot holes, and–like I said–if you think I’m missing something important, contact me or add it yourself in the comments. Happy writing.

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