About That Plot Hole You Repaired.

Okay. So, you found a hole in your plot.

What to do? Fix it.











A good analogy for the process is road repair. Whenever a pot hole threatens to make the road uncomfortable if not impassable, a road crew is sent out to patch it. The problem is that a poorly patched pot hole becomes a bump which makes the desired smooth passage—well, not so smooth. That is not good road work, and the equivalent plot patching is not good editing.

The well repaired pot hole will go unnoticed. It will be as if the pot hole never existed. So should your repaired plot holes be. The ideal repair of your story will make your reader’s journey so smooth that he enjoys the ride without distracting holes and bumps.

So, what constitutes a good patch? The answer is that it depends upon the nature of the hole. If it is only a small and shallow hole, say you write “before” when it should have been “after,” a simple substitution of the correct word will solve the problem and make the going seamless. However, what if the hole is a gaping chasm? For example, what if your heroine is saved in Chapter 30 by the sudden appearance of a character who died in Chapter 6? This might require the demolition and repaving of a large section of the road. If you do not carefully examine and repair the entire “road” from Chapter 6 to Chapter 30, your story may become so muddled that your reader will quit in disgust.

I know that editing is not as much fun as writing, but it can be very rewarding. A well-crafted story is what we strive for. We begin at the off-ramp (the opening scene) and a destination (the climax), but the story is the journey. There are interesting twists, turns, jolts, disappointments, obstacles to overcome, and successes. These are some of the things that make the journey fun. Things can and should be encountered unexpectedly, but they should not come illogically. Every time our reader has to stop and try to reconcile something he encounters that conflicts with another part of the story, we are taking him on a detour around a plot hole. Do you know anyone who enjoys such detours? I do: a book doctor who is paid to fix a book that perhaps shouldn’t have been written.

Whenever a beta reader points out an inconsistency, we should take it seriously and do the necessary repairs while remembering that we are not being paid by the hour, but by the job. Writing is as much craft as art. Unlike street planners, we writers must not only plot the way, we must also lay the roadbed, repairing our mistakes as we go.