The list of ways to go wrong with a story has been added to and debated endlessly for century upon century upon century. The debate on plot alone is a few libraries of its own, honestly, and I don’t pretend that I’m adding much new to it. No, today I’ll point out three problems I personally have seen afflicting stories, failures of plot we’re all vulnerable to. All three of these problems share on central theme: the failure to matter. All three come at this central theme in a different way, and all three are of immense danger to the unwary. All three, to be honest, I have been guilty of, though (I hope) in unpublished drafts, not finished work. They’re easy to fall into. Plot holes, irrelevancies, and failed promises are all dangerous, and I hope that by showing why they hurt- and how we often fall into them- I’ll help us all avoid them.

The basic problem which underlies all three is a failure to make the story matter to the reader. Making a story that the reader doesn’t care about is easy. How many of you are on the edge of your seat when you read a first-grade reading primer? The story is simple, the characters uninteresting, the words desperately in need of their illustrations to have any sensory impact. If you turned the page and found that instead of finding her ball, little Suzy had just had a seizure and died, you would be startled, certainly, but the startlement would be at the book itself. You’d say, “I’m surprised that they put that in a children’s book,” not, “I’m sad that happened to Suzy.” In fact, three minutes later, you’d remember the story only as ‘that weird one where the girl dies at the end’. The story just doesn’t make you care.

Contrast that experience to the one you get when you read something really and truly good, maybe That Hideous Strength, Declare (read the review here), or The Flying Inn. When the plot takes a turn in one of those stories, it matters to you, not as a distant observation of an oddity in the structure of something irrelevant but as a direct emotional response to the events. You treat the story, in fact, almost as if it were real, almost as if it were a present event, one still unfolding and undetermined, one you yourself are all but part of. When Frodo and the hobbits are approached by the Witch King of Angmar, you don’t think, “Yup, tall wraith king fits very well into this story’s milieu.” You’re too worried about what the fictional king is going to do to the fictional hobbits, if he’ll take the fictional superweapon. The story matters¹.

The first and most famous of our three problems today is the plot hole. The plot hole can be found just about anywhere a new writer has been², devouring stories and kicking otherwise excellent ideas into the dumpster of ‘it doesn’t matter’. Generally speaking, plot holes arise from two ideas: ‘I don’t have time for that’ and ‘I don’t care’. In the first case, writers spend too little time considering whether the events they’ve written out actually make sense, assuming their first ideas are their best ideas and leaving revising to the grammar software. In the second case, a writer might be aware of the plot holes, or at least their potential existence; he just doesn’t care, assuming the other merits of his story will tide him over. They may actually do so, if he’s good enough, but the story will undeniably be lesser for the lack of care.

Plot holes make stories not matter in one very simple way: they turn the necessary events of the story into arbitrary decisions made by a distant (and much less interesting) writer. If Tolkien wrote a scene wherein the ring-wraiths blocked the passage to Rivendell by standing in the midst of the ford, then followed it by having the nascent Fellowship walk straight across the ford, brushing aside the ring-wraiths with hardly a struggle, the reader would justifiably revolt. The story has, after all, broken its own rules. The ring-wraith were supposed to be formidable enemies, ruthless and terrifying, but apparently they’re worth diddly-squat. If this can happen, why not anything else? Why don’t they just walk through Sauron’s front door, kick him in the groin, and chuck the Ring into Mount Doom? Limitations change from the established state of the world, fictional as it may be, to the arbitrary restrictions of the author. The internal truth of the story has been stripped away; the veneer of reality, has been removed. All that’s left is a puppet controlled by metal cables bigger than its arms, walking on a stage where all the props are pieces of printer paper with ‘tree’, ‘rock’, and ‘misc. people’ scribbled onto them.

The second problem is the irrelevancy. Irrelevancies, simply put, are parts of the story that don’t need to be there, which serve either no purpose or noticeably less purpose than the rest of the story. They’re a lengthy description of the taste of a meal the characters never eat or even notice the existence of. The inclusion of such irrelevancies is another newbie writer failing, particularly when he has a wordcount to meet. He wants to write something, and he wants to write a lot of something, so he throws in every detail and every bit of worldbuilding he has (because that’s what’s interesting), along with every side-story and every tangential thought. I’ve certainly done it. I ended up with a lot more writing than story; reading this type of narrative is rather like eating Styrofoam with a few chocolate chips stuck in the middle, as well as a random gold coin (which would be lovely, if it weren’t in a something that’s ostensibly meant to be eaten). Other writers, even experienced ones, fall into this trap out of haste or lack of perspective; they assume because something is interesting to them, it’ll be interesting to everybody else.

Irrelevancies are dangerous not because they directly affect the rest of the story but because they themselves don’t matter. If part of the story simply doesn’t matter to the rest of it (particularly if it lacks any interest in and of itself), if part of the story seems to the reader to be busy-work, he’s not going to care about it. He might even lose interest altogether, set the book aside, and forget about it. Even if he does keep reading, the irrelevancy will dilute the effect of the story. Your reader might care about the character, but after fifteen pages of description of his favorite jacket, he’s going to be bored, no matter how intriguing pages sixteen and seventeen are. He may even conclude, reasonably enough, that the next chapter is probably going to be boring (even though in actuality that’s the most intriguing part of the book and absolutely necessary to the climax) and skip it. The irrelevancies simply don’t matter to the reader, however appealing they are to the writer.

The third and final problem is the problem of failed promises³. A failed promise is when a story either promises and fails to deliver or delivers something it failed to promise. Imagine, for instance, the story of a group of friends, one of whom has been captured by the evil overlord. For six long months they have toiled to get the supplies they need for a rescue attempt, to find the enemy’s lair, to train the necessary skills. Even so, the story assures you, this rescue will be dangerous in the extreme, vulnerable at a thousand angles and only possible by the grace of God. The day of the rescue arrives. You look at the book, note how few pages are left, and shrug. The build up has been amazing; you have faith in the author. Five pages later, the protagonists walk out, burning husk of the enemy’s base behind them, leaving the evil overlord baffled by the sudden turn-around. The plan, it turns out, went off pretty well, A few problems arose, but they were easily handled, certainly nowhere near fatal to the rescue. How do you feel?

I have to admit, I did exaggerate a bit there, but I’ve encountered situations like this too many times for my liking, in books I generally forgot about a week later, no matter how well written otherwise, largely because of the ending. The story promised a great confrontation, a devious scheme with twists and turns where the protagonists make it out by the skin of their teeth, ragged and bleeding, but alive and victorious. Instead, I got the equivalent of a PB&J in the swimming pool- wet, gooey, and unappetizing. I was told I was going to care about something and then I was given a bad facsimile of that something, like getting cheap from-the-carton ice-cream when I was promised a double serving of my favorite flavor, freshly made by the best ice-cream maker in town. Maybe I’d enjoy it if it were all I was expecting, but it wasn’t, and so I rather dislike it.

The second variety of a failed promise works along a similar vector, just in reverse. In this case, the story gives you something you weren’t promised. It kind of makes sense, and it’s certainly in the story, but it’s not clear why it’s in the story, why it matters. You got something that might have mattered but doesn’t, because the story hasn’t told you why it should- like a heartfelt reunion between the hero and his wife, when the past 500 pages contained no hint as to her existence. Both types of failed promise can rise from an author forgetting to tell his readers (quietly and carefully) what to expect from the story. Perhaps he’s forgotten that twists have to come from what’s before, not spring up out of nowhere. Perhaps he’s promised to build a castle when he only intends to build a cottage. Either way, the story is lesser for lack of intentionality in making and fulfilling promises.

In all three cases, the central problem is the destruction of the reader’s investment in the story. The plot hole, rising from haste or lack of care, tells him the story doesn’t matter anyway. The irrelevancy, whether originating in inexperience or lack of perspective, tells him the story might matter in some parts, but a lot of it isn’t worth worrying about, is a waste of time. The failed promise, built by a lack of intentionality, gives the reader something he might have cared about, under different circumstances, but doesn’t, because he hasn’t been given a reason to. All three are damaging; all three can be fatal (though every reader’s level of tolerance will vary). Take heed, take care, and remember the purpose of the story, the reason we cannot just churn out half-baked stuff and hope it sells: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – All of the examples I’ve offered have, it is true, character connection as their most obvious motive for their emotional weight. Other (though generally less effective or more specialized) connections do exist. Setting, for instance, can sometimes be an important part; plot (particularly in heavily action-oriented stories such as G.A. Henty’s) can provide interest (though I would argue that it can’t provide more than superficial interest without characters to accompany, a topic, perhaps, for another day); theme (theology) can even do some heavy lifting on occasion (as in the case of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and The Holy War, both excellent books which rely in large part upon the theological statements to enmesh readers).

2 – It can also be found trailing behind the Hollywood script writer like a duckling after its mother.

3 – This article contains a lot of stuff on promises; this lecture by Brandon Sanderson is another source on the topic.