It's About A Lot Of Things Dept.

Matthew Buscemi had a great point in the comments:

... even when a storyteller gets past conceptualizing their novels as strings of plot, trying for something more is still a dicey proposition. I think the "complex yet incoherent" problem would manifest itself in the form of filling in the blank with a complex string of ideas, e.g., "My story is about love and life and art and the natural world and how people can drift apart and then back together, ..." and so on.

Confession: I laughed when...