Biggest Plothole Plugs?

Hey writing gang! Another question for you all: what's the biggest plothole plug you've ever made? What I mean by this are details you invented (which fit into the plot nicely) purely to cover yourself when you realized you'd left a plothole.

I'll use my own writing as an example. I have, more than once, created entire characters with their specific personality/backstory tailored to answer a question for readers. It sounds extreme, but in my experience it comes off as "knowing what I was doing all along", once that character who answers the question shows up. *wipes massive bead of sweat from forehead*

What extreme lengths have you guys gone to, to plug a plothole?

 

Creating a character to fill a plot hole sounds like you're potentially creating more problems for yourself. Readers get emotionally invested in characters, which means they often need their own arc, own development, and some accountability as to what happened to them when they leave the story. If you've managed to do all of that, I wouldn't necessarily call it a "plot hole plug" - I'd rather just call it all part of the organic development of a novel? Because isn't that how we create our stories? As you develop your ideas, you realise you need X and then you think of a way of putting it in.

The way the term "plot hole plug" comes off is similar to "infodump" to me. Something that's not skillfully done, something that's contrived. Imagine a yellow patch covering a hole on a black jacket. It does cover the hole, but anyone can see it doesn't really belong there and was pulled out of a hat because the author needed to.

Much like dropping in necessary back story and information in a skillful manner is called exposition, whilst the same thing done badly is called infodump, it sounds like the principle belongs here. When done well, it's natural development. When done poorly, it's a plug.

 

You weren't the only one

 

I've killed characters over this

 

None so far, don't have any plot holes. So I guess my stories are
water tight as a frog's ass.

Though if you have to plug a hole, make it look flashy and distracting.

Spoiler: NSFW-ish O_o

 

Just saw a 'marketing rep' for those

 

I haven't had a large plothole like that in many years because I plot so heavily beforehand.

 

Malchoir is the MC and a ship's captain for the Constellar Imperium.
Zandakar is the leader of the rebellion, and responsible for the recent capture of the galaxy's largest fuel processing center.
Miranda is a smuggler and Zandakar's sugar mamma, and also responsible for supplying Malchoir and the Imperium with fuel in light of recent events.

Malchoir doesn't know they work together, much less that they're dating. He has no reason to think they know each other, until...
The three of them, by divine coincidence, end up at the same funeral. Malchoir realizes by the end of it that Zandakar is The Bad Guy, and this pseudo-betrayal is 65% of why he goes off the rails by the end of the book. The other 35% is the fact that he's a grieving widower who never learned to process grief in a constructive manner, so he's lashing out.

I wrote that chapter and was so proud of it, but it occurred to me rather suddenly that if he's *that mad* at Zandakar, why isn't he even a little angry about Miranda, who is clearly good friends with him? Why isn't he filled with the same righteous fire at her, when she's clearly in on everything?

Answer: Jedi mind control, which Miranda was already shown to have several chapters later. It's both a total cop-out, and entirely in character for Miranda!


EDIT:: Having spent several minutes staring at that gif, I can only aspire to be so entirely unenthused by an award.

 

Meanwhile in Paris...

 

Back to topic: I had to change my detective from a nice female to a tough guy lately, because otherwise it made no sense that my MC didn't open up and tell her everything (the only explanation would have been that he was a total moron). This was the hour of birth of "Layton Clayton", by the way .

Spoiler

Who is now called Gabriel Wright.

 

I haven't really had to deal with plot holes. I'm a pantser, but I guess things usually work out. I have had an editor point out something missing from a piece. I put in what he thought was missing, but, honestly, I think it could have worked either way. I have a few things in my novel in progress that remain unresolved at this point, but I'm not really concerned. The story will be complete probably. I've never written anything where I think there are major gaps or anything that needs plugged up. I think that is because I'm focused on the story as a whole from the beginning. As I write it's about the next piece that fits the puzzle. I know everyone works differently, but I write in chronological order. That probably helps. I could see when people write all over the place how they could end up with missing pieces or plot holes, but it's just been never something I've had to worry about. But trust me. I have plenty of other things to worry about.

 

Guilty.

 

Solid advice, and LMAO at that picture. Apparently you weren't the only one whose mind went straight there at the title to this thread. Oops!

 

That's actually kind of what I meant by plot hole plugs. Like details that are unresolved that you know you have to fix/finish before the end of the story. This is kind of what I do, too!

 

Fair enough. I suppose "plug" was a poorly chosen term. It was actually super uplifting to hear you describe the process of filling in these details the way you did. As in my example with creating a whole character to "plug" a hole, I did actually go back through the story and work in some exposition and foreshadowing for her. I even altered the outcome of the book to accommodate for her and made sure to give her her own development and romance arcs. In the end, readers will never know she was a happy accident lol. I guess that more accurately fits the description of "building" the story than "plugging it".