Still sick. Le sigh. But, we push forward. We persist.
I might have pushed a bit too hard today. I was feeling better. I walked the pups, I did a bit of cleaning, I did a walkthrough for a unit in our building with the Ho…and it earned me a fever in the evening 🙄
I did have a bit of a lengthy discussion online today about a story-telling term, and what it means, what it doesn’t. The term was “plot hole,” and there was a back and forth about it. It wasn’t exactly the best forum to have a back and forth due to limitations of the technology, but these were my takeaways:
“Plot hole” can be used as a catchall for an element of a story that someone doesn’t like. That’s not strictly correct. Oftentimes, a poor response from an audience is because of a plot hole, but definitely not all the time.
So, what makes a plot hole?
A “plot hole” refers to (1) a story element that is contradictory or illogical. On this in the online discussion, we agreed unanimously.
Where the point of contention came was on (2) a story element that is unexplained or unresolved, or is otherwise jarring and inconsistent with the logical flow of the plot. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s my understanding of the gist of it.
To be honest, going into the discussion, I’d never really thought about whether this second part was a plot hole or not, but I looked it up on the internets, and sure enough, it was included in the definition. It is both when something occurs that we’ve shown previously was not possible, AND when something occurs that may be possible, but is under- or not-explained.
In the end, the conversation kind of centered around this one example of The Dark Knight Rises where Bruce (spoiler) escapes from a pit prison and staggers out into the barren desert…and then we jump to Gotham where he shows up with no mention of how he got back, or any other acknowledgement of what he just went through.
Now, that definitely doesn’t match up with definition part 1. It’s not on the face of itself contradictory.
But, it does match up with part 2, at least to those of who *did* find it jarring, and that’s not an insignificant number; large enough for it to be a rather well-known point of contention, it seems.
But, honestly, that’s beside the point. Not all story problems are the same size, and it’s always the audience that decides how big they are, and how fatal or inconsequential. For me: the pit controversy is meh. I remember it bugged me. It still does – it’s lazy storytelling – but it didn’t make or break the movie. No, that particular ship sailed on very different winds.
A debate over whether or not it’s a plot hole, thus, would seem to hinge on whether or not that lack of explanation was a problem in the story for you. If it wasn’t, you’re not going to see it as ‘unexplained,’ ‘unresolved’ or otherwise ‘jarring’ and ‘inconsistent.’ If it was…well, then you do see it that way, and it meets the criteria for a plot hole.
In the end, at least for now, we seemed to have reached an impasse. I’d be interested to know what you think, if you’ve watched The Dark Knight Rises. Was Bruce’s escape from Bane’s prison pit satisfactory, or was it a hole in the plot for you?
To move beyond the debate around “plot hole” and it’s definition, however, because this also came up, how do we as storytellers handle what to show/explain, and what we can leave out? Because, again, the audience is always right, y’all. Always. Just like every note we ever receive is legitimate (as long, of course, as the person giving it is being honest, which isn’t always the case)…I know it hurts to accept that as true. It hurts me. But it *is* true. So…what do we do? How can we possibly patch all our plot holes without our manuscript being 1,000 pages and boring AF?
Not all plot holes need to be filled. Not all questions need an answer.
BUT…and here’s the thing I’ve learned: we need to know which plot holes need filling, which questions need answers, and which beyond those just need to be acknowledged and moved on from.
The barometer for that is our audience.
It’s their expectations we must meet and exceed. If they’re asking a question (like: Wait, how did Bruce get back so fast?), it means we have to either answer it, or somehow otherwise deal with it. In Dark Knight Rises, for example, a simple “You look sunburned.” “I don’t want to talk about it.” may have sufficed. Or, perhaps, Bruce looks up at the top of the pit and sees an airplane flying overhead. We don’t need a monologue about how he escaped, or a 20-minute sequence. With how long that movie was already, definitely not.
But, what you CAN’T do is just ignore it.
Opening loops and not closing them will always, always drive an audience nuts.
That’s what feedback is for before a project goes “live.” To root out all the questions our audience has that we were too close to the work to see. There are few things more frustrating when consuming a story that raises questions it ignores. It feels like the storyteller is a step behind their audience rather than a step ahead. And, again, not all audiences are the same. We need to know ours, and make them happy.
I *guarantee* that someone brought up the pit prison problem in a screening of Rises, and when that happened, they probably deemed it not serious enough to go back and change anything. Or maybe they couldn’t. Shit like that happens in films alllll the time. It’s always triage. Save what can and needs to be saved 😜
But it was still a plot hole…for me. Not for everyone, apparently, but for me.
Anyway…that all made me think a lot today about storytelling, and I hope this ‘essay’ is somewhat understandable.
Oh, and one last thought and/or clarification: I’m not sure whose advice it is particularly, but I’ve heard this one over and over again concerning notes and whether to listen to them. ‘If one person gives you a note, feel free to ignore it. If several people give you that same note…it’s a problem. Fix it.’
‘Night!