
Photo by Kyle Johnston on Unsplash
Plot holes are every writer’s bane. While I’d love to be the kind of writer who trusts that he can make the story zip along so fast nobody notices, the written word suffers from one fatal flaw that movies did not share until the invention of rewind and freeze frame. A reader can always choose to read slowly or reread a scene a second time.
My experience has been that I’ve gotten better at noticing problems in my stories and nipping them immediately, either in the first draft phase or on a second or third read. I draw a vertical line in the margin of my hard copy, and scrawl the word “fix.” That’s usually enough for my subconscious to get to work writing me out of that particular box.
When I was younger I used to fret more when I spotted these sort of problems. I took them as a personal creative failing that could easily upend the premise of an otherwise tight 3,500-word story. But as I witnessed myself seal up one hole after another, my confidence grew.
Plot solutions present themselves in one of two ways. The classic pops into your head when you’re doing a completely unrelated activity. You’re squeezing peaches in the produce aisle. You’re in the shower. You’re flossing. Whatever. The solution presents itself, often solving a problem you didn’t yet realize you had. Those moments feel like magic; the closest I’ll ever come to a lightbulb moment.
The second solution scenario is far more prosaic. The idea comes to you while you are immersed in the creative process, writing your story. You notice the problem, you ignore it for now, you type a few hundred words more until it’s time to take a break. You circle back a few grafs to see how things look, and you suddenly you know exactly how to fix the damn thing. And that feels wonderful.
The only method that doesn’t work is sitting with a sheet of paper and pencil and telling yourself: “I need to fix this plot hole. Time to brainstorm.” In that situation, my brain is useless. In fact, it’s more likely to cough up an idea for a new story than solving the problem I have in hand.
Novels can be far more problematic. More words, more plotlines, more characters all add up to more ways to screw up. In some cases, I have ignored an acknowledged hole for weeks and weeks, knowing I had to fix it but not quite sure how to do so. I have officially hit the Wall of Insecurity. The problem festers, and takes on disproportionate power in my mind. It begins to feel like avoidance not to deal with it.
You know what batters down that wall? The same two techniques: either the idea pops into my head full blown, or it occurs to me while I am again engaging creatively with that problematic scene.
The first time I handily fixed a problem scene in a novel, I was so stunned that I’d come up with a solid solution that I scoured my desk notes, wondering if I had scrawled the fix down and forgotten that I’d done so. How could it be that an idea that never occurred to me should suddenly pop until my head, free for the taking, while I was actually writing?
This question is laughable, of course, because it summarizes the essence of all creative work. Nothing exists until we make it. Duh. But it’s a lesson I have had to learn and relearn again and again.
I’d love to brag that I’m confident in my ability to fix holes that pop up, but the record shows that there’s such a thing as being too confident. A few years ago, I told myself I could easily circle back and fix a problem I’d spotted early on in a novel I was working on. When I circled back at the end of the first draft, the problem refused to budge. In fact, it was such a major hole that it sank the book. That manuscript is entombed forever on my hard drive.
Writing gives me life, but writing is not life. A while back we discovered that the previous owner of our home drilled holes in the exterior brick to attach some object, which was later removed. But the holes remain, and offer shelter to returning insects summer after summer.
“Are you going to caulk those holes?” my wife said.
“I’m thinking about it,” was my cagey response.
I have mulled over plugging those holes for seven years. Strangely, this has not fixed the problem.
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See you in three weeks!