I go on about plot and worldbuilding a lot, because those are my strengths. Both are similar in that they’re largely exercises in logic— taking a premise, either in the environment or the story itself, and just following the consequences to an inevitable conclusion. I tend to deal with most writing issues, from characterization to theme, the same way, taking some first principles and building, methodically and logically out from there. It shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but that isn’t the only way to do that. In fact, because logic is a rather distant and high level way to engage the reader, it does have at least one particularly obvious flaw, in that it is easy to write something that doesn’t engage the reader on an emotional level.
But, there’s a flip side to that flaw. If you engage the reader on some level other than logic, you can leapfrog gaps in plot or worldbuilding or character. This was brought home to me during the last Hamsters’ workshop where we did two very different stories that illustrated the need to be able to sidestep the whole left-brain logic thing because the story is about something else. The first story was a more traditional sfnal piece in terms of structure, but it relied on a central conceit that was improbable to say the least. The second was a exercise in surrealism. Both stories would have died if an attempt was made to impose logical worldbuilding on the setting.
So how do you deal with that?
You hand wave. You write something so engaging on a visceral emotional or aesthetic level that the reader either doesn’t notice the logical gaps, or more likely, doesn’t care. You make the other parts of the story too shiny to ignore. You can do this with lyric prose (Catherynne Valente) or with humor (Terry Prachett) or with horror (Steven King) or with surreal imagery (David Lynch) or with prolonged action or explosive set-pieces (Me).
Yes, left-brain writer as I am, I hand-wave over plot holes all the time. I do it consciously, and I’ve done it ever since my first book. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself, “how did the rats find out about that hotel?” Since the revelation came in the middle of the climatic action sequence, I bet the question never occurred to you. And by the time Nohar found Angel hanging in the shower, the question didn’t matter any more. Oh, and don’t bother asking me, I don’t know either.
