The discussions of LOTR, Harry Potter, and Hunger Games often have mentions of plot holes and for some people the holes appear to ruin the enjoyment of the stories. Is there any major work of fiction that doesn’t have plot holes?
My feeling is that no work can stand up to complete scrutiny. A lot of so-called plot holes are arguments that characters have no rational reason for acting a certain way, like this one questioning the motivation of the Dursleys. But this assumes that everyone reactions rationally every time.
For example, when Scorsese was on Charlie Rose recently talking about Wolf of Wall Street they showed a clip and then afterward he mentioned that the editing of the scene for timing was so important that lost of the cuts didn’t match. He was aware of it, but he thought it was a better movie with proper timing and unmatched cuts vs. matched cuts and worse timing.
You’ll see that kind of thing mentioned in plot holes (much the way nongrammatical issues often fill lists of most common grammatical errors) or do you mean more technically defined plot holes only.
I think works of speculative fiction are more likely to have plot holes, no matter how careful the writers are. It can be difficult enough to plot a regular story, but when you have to start factoring in the rules of whatever new technologies or magical abilities that are also in play, even cautious writers can find themselves overlooking something important. Otherwise I don’t think most major works of ordinary or realistic fiction have any plot holes at all. Why would they? For instance, what would constitute a plot hole or lapse in story logic in works like The Sun Also Rises?
I’m ignoring simplistic stories because they aren’t complex enough to hardly have a plot, let alone plot holes, which is what I meant by saying “major works”. I don’t know if the example of “Breaking Bad” was a joke or not, but don’t the FBI agents do stupid stuff all the time, like meet a known killer without any backup?
These aren’t plot holes, they’re continuity errors. It doesn’t sound like what the OP is talking about unless they affect the story in some way- which doesn’t sound like the case here.
The issue is that real life has plot holes.
If WWII never happened and someone wrote a series of books about it people would laugh there asses off over them.
[ul]
[li]Nearly successfully exterminate an entire group of people? - Cartoon like evil, nobody actually does that![/li][li]Invade Russia in the fucking WINTER with an unequipped army when you’re actually winning the war in Europe? - No commander is that stupid![/li][li]Japanese attacking American soil? - you’re shitting me, right?[/li][li]Atomic bombs? Please! This isn’t Flash Gordon :rolleyes:[/li][/ul]
Some authors are clever enough to stick enough secrets in their writing that they at least convince every reader that there are no plot holes - just things the reader wasn’t clever enough to figure out. Gene Wolfe, for example, is great at this, and has written quite a few major works of fiction (Book of the New Sun, Free Live Free, Latro in the Mist, & several more). I suspect Patrick Rothfuss is up to something similar based on this Patrick Rothfuss Reread | Series | Tor.com.
I agree with you. I’m surprised so many people seem to think they have an example. Maybe a particularly fastidious and lucky writer could pull it off, but there’s very little reward for doing so, especially since there will always be people who think there are plotholes in it.
All a plot hole is, ultimately, is for something to happen that doesn’t quite make sense to the reader without them needing to make up an explanation. The lack of explanation in the text is the “hole.”
For example, someone in this thread said that a character acting stupid isn’t a hole, but it sure can be, if the character is not established as someone who would act that stupid. The idea that the character was being stupid is an explanation you added to the work.