Make excuses for your plot holes


You may be wondering, dear reader, how Hwinhaw the Donkey King managed to be waiting for me in the temple when I got there, having last been seen with three broken legs in the City of the Sands. The truth is, I do not know. Perhaps this is one of the many mysteries of the hidden gem which the Grey Ladies talked of. The hidden gem itself – lost for thousands of years – somehow appeared in my saddlebag when I faced the trial of waters, as you will remember. This is another great mystery which perhaps it is best not to enquire into.
As my faithful servant Flimpton said when we arrived home (I do not remember how he escaped the pit of knives, but he did): some things are beyond our knowledge, Mr Pinkling, and will forever be so. For my part, I merely congratulated him on having somehow regained the power of speech since last I saw him and then sloped off to bed for a well-deserved sleep. Suffice it to say, my bed had returned entirely to its normal form and the troubled dreams which had started this whole sorry affair did not recur, the power of prophecy having left me as inexplicably as it had arrived.

10 comments:

  1. When I first read the title, I thought it said "pot" holes. And it all made perfect sense.

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  2. Hey, it worked for Douglas Adams.

    And the Pope.

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  3. He didn't get out of the cockadoodie car!

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  4. I can't help but read between the lines and conclude that this is one of those tales where the "hero" is actually an incompetent fool and the sidekick (Flimpton) does all the work without his master knowing it.

    Dumb explanations of plot twists can be even worse than the "who knows" type demonstrated here.

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  5. But J.K. Rowling did this throughout the Harry Potter series, and she made a fortune...

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  6. I don't know whether this counts, but in Room With A View E.M. Forster goes on about how he can't explain Rev Beebe's actions near the end.

    (Some people say that Beebe is in love with George Emerson)

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  7. Technically, Douglas Adams started by introducing a plothole-justifying device, then went on to use it. Liberally.

    The device, of course, being the Universe. He was a tricky one, that Adams.

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