Are plot holes the end of the world?

That just means you need to try different explanations What have you tried so far?

Wrong If something starts as a bad idea, and if other writers drop the idea because they don't think they can turn it into a good idea, but if you turn it into a good idea, then that means you're doing something unique that other writers never tried before, and your readers will love how fresh your story is

I love those kinds of explanations, and I loved the movie for it

 

I'm an asshole. I fell asleep in the theater so I still don't know the movie well. I got to the scene where her father comes out to confront the space nazis, looking like a jedi, ready to throw down - then he says, "I'll never join your bureaucracy" and gets arrested. I was like "nope" and fell asleep.

 

I wish they would have gotten on with doing star wars stuff about twenty minutes sooner.

NOTE - I can think of a time when they "pointed at a plot hole" in Star Wars. Remember in episode 7 when they fired the world gun at all the other planets and destroyed them? Now, I didn't want to get into how it didn't make sense, but I look at my wife and whisper, "I don't get it. I need a scale map of this area drawn cause it should take about a hundred years for the beam to get to its target."

Well not more than two minutes later, Han Solo is up there (and I swear the actor sounded apologetic) and says, "the enemy fired a faster than light laser," or something. I don't remember. Anyway, I died inside. I still liked the movie because I like both Rey and Han's son, but man, faster than light lasers take the cake.

 

So the question becomes "how do you come up with an explanation that's good enough for it not to be a plot hole anymore?"

 

That's one type of structural damage.

Here's another: you find a hole in the wall next to the door. You could patch up the hole, or you could build a window around it

 

... I'm not convinced we're talking about the same thing anymore.

All I'm saying is that if there's an in-story reason for something to happen, then it isn't a plot hole, and if something's happening in the plot that doesn't have a good in-story reason for it to happen, then you tweak the story so that there is a good in-story reason for it to happen.

 

Eh, it depends on the plot hole. Some could exist because of a limited POV which is fine to me. But mostly, I think some can really bend the fabric of ones universe and ruin it.

Personally, I look back on each chapter I write asking the questions of "Who, What, When, Where, Why and How" as to make sure the holes don't exist.

 

I agreed 100 percent. While some plot holes are errors in logic or continuity, others are something that is underdeveloped or not placed yet. A plot hole could be buried treasure.

 

So far I haven't run into any plot holes in the books I have read.
For the most part there has been a few with plot demands (or
deus ex machina, if you prefer). That right there is much more
of a writing offense, than plot holes are. It just irks me when
things just always work out in the most contrived of convenient
ways, so the protags never really have a chance to fail.
Easier to notice plot demands over plot holes. IMO.

 

Fortunately time travel plot holes are the easiest to fix. Characters seriously get infinity chances to fix all the mistakes they made the first time by going back in time and creating another timeline. It happened in Back to the Future II where Marty got run over by Biff in the tunnel and Bill and Ted has the most excellent examples of these time shenanigans in the finale.

 

If you're really good you can use the time travel to EXPLAIN the plotholes. Example: Doctor Who is full of continuity errors, but there was this huge Time War, and a Time War is basically people going back in time and trying to change the war's outcome, and it basically never ends, so the whole thing gets locked into a certain place in time and space so nobody else can get in or leave (there are a lot of exceptions as the plot requires.) Because of all the time changes in the war, things change in the show. This isn't really explicitly stated in-universe but it's the creators' way of dealing with things.

In fact, this opens up an insane theory about the Daleks. The First Doctor first encountered the Daleks having been the product of a war between the Dals and Thals. The Doctor had arrived millennia after the war, when the Thals were living in fear of the Daleks in the jungle away from the city the Daleks built.

However, after many adventures in which he fights the Daleks, the Doctor's fourth incarnation travels to the Dalek's inception, where the war is between the Kaleds and the Thals instead of the Dals and Thals. Also, the Daleks did not evolve from Dals as a result of irradiation from the nuclear war, but were genetically engineered by a Kaled scientist named Davros. (Also, as a side note, the Dalek planet, named Skaro, is portrayed as a wasteland instead of a jungle. This may be the result of the war, which has apparently been going on for thousands of years.) Davros programs the Daleks genetically, removing their ability to feel superfluous emotions (unlike the Cybermen who cybernetically engineered themselves to remove all emotions.) He then used a missile to destroy the Kaled city so that he could justify committing genocide against the Thals, which he used the Daleks to totally exterminate. The Daleks turned on Davros and the remaining Kaled scientists, killing them all and rendering the Kaled species extinct as well as the Kaleds.

The Doctor had travelled to this time to ensure the Daleks never existed, but found himself in a moral quandary (the one about killing baby Hitler, though not explicitly in those terms) and decided to allow the Daleks to live. Years later, the Daleks learned the Time Lords had sent the Doctor to attempt to prevent their creation, and in retaliation initiated the Time War.

Well, basically, the theory is that the Daleks basically retconned their own origins by screwing around in the Time War and a self-fulfilling paradox occurred. It's all complicated and there's a lot of handwaving needed for it to make sense-- like pretty much everything else in Doctor Who. But the handwaving makes its own kind of sense, too, if you can wrap your head around it. Not like The Flash. Ugh. That show's time travel makes no sense. It basically ignores everything about speculative time travel rules and it's basically anything goes. So when they say Thawne was erased from existence... they basically just mean he died, because absolutely nothing happens to his past self. Which is why he shows up again later even though his ancestor killed himself to prevent Thawne from being born. It's a big mess.

 

They really tried to make sense of the different formats for the plans mentioned in the original-- how can transmissions be beamed to a ship by rebel spies if the plans are on datatapes? And Leia gives R2 a disc, what the frak? But Rogue One's all like, "Oh yeah, the original archive was in datatape form, the contents of which were beamed to the ship and burned to a disc, which was physically delivered to Leia." Totally ties it all together and cover's for Lucas's poor writing (not that the writing overall is poor, it's just little things like that.) The only problem I can see is that the datatapes were destroyed on Scarif, so when Motti challenges Vader to "conjure up the stolen datatapes", I can't really see how he would expect Vader to do that (even accounting for the fact that Motti didn't believe Vader could do it anyway) especially since the datatapes weren't even that stolen. Sure, they removed it from the archive and took it to the transmitter, but it never left the planet, so does it really count as stolen? I dunno, maybe Motti was under the impression that the tapes were physically delivered to the Alliance instead of having their information transmitted to the rebels-- somebody must have missed that part of the briefing when they filled everyone in. But the creators made their best effort to maintain continuity of the plans' format, among other things, and you can really tell, no matter what Rogue One's detractors might say.

 

I'd say @Homer Potvin 's concept of 'pointing at a plot hole' can come under the banner of 'handwaving.'

This happens a lot in sci-fi and fantasy, and to some extent the readers of those genres don't mind. The 'faster than light' issue is one of them. Another of the major 'handwaving' issues is how different races or species communicate with one another.

I mean, here on earth we can't communicate well with people from other countries if we don't learn their language. So why is it so easy for the large caterpillar aliens from the planet Nazgor to speak to Earthlings the first time the two cultures meet? That's a huge plot hole, which is either ignored or handwaved in most sci-fi stories. When reading sci-fi or fantasy, we will suspend disbelief and put up with pretty lame devices to allow communication, so the story can unfold.

However—and this is a big however—this kind of handwaving is much more difficult to pull off in a story set in the real world.

I have a bigger problem accepting plot holes in supposedly realistic stories than I do in fantasy/sci-fi.

 

Me? I'm a sucker for translator microbes.

 

That's not a plot hole. That's a big hole.

 

I'm currently finishing a science fiction short story. The difficulty of interspecies communication developed into a satisfying plot twist.
There are many variables in dealing with plot hole. At what phase of writing is it discovered? Someone mentioned the Daleks and their plot holes. That's an example of a continuity plot holes created when their use expanded beyond the original story. It wasn't bad writing or planning. Terry Nation had no idea the antagonists in that story would become the arch villains of a decades running series.

 

Or that Daleks might want to use stairs....

 

If you know there are plot holes, you should do your best to address them.

With a time travel story, for example, readers who enjoy them tend to notice continuity issues, especially if they are not at least tangentially addressed.

How major of a concern depends on how relevant the holes are with respect to the plot. A house built with a closet door missing and the spigot for the outdoor hose isn't connected would be of a lesser concern than, say, missing the stairs to the second floor and the picture window not being installed.

That said, someone renting the house, even if not attaching the spigot is 'minor' the renter is going to be very annoyed if they go out to water the garden and discover the problem not addressed by the builder.