Plot holes and where to find them

You might recall a few weeks ago I shared one of the opening scenes where we learn a little about the Crimson Lady’s history. But now, as we track the ship through generations, I had to flesh out what happened at the start of my story. And I had to make changes so that the events made sense. After all, if I’m sitting here saying to myself, “but that doesn’t make sense” or “what happened to the wife?” or “what’s the villain doing?’ then my readers will do the same. Those things are called in the trade plot holes. A bit like pot holes but bitumen doesn’t fix them.

It’s interesting how TV shows, being between thirty minutes to an hour long, can get away with stupid stuff much more easily than we writers. I watched an old episode of Father Brown the other night. (It’s a UK cosy mystery series where the cops are rubbish and the local Catholic priest saves the day.)

It was about a psychiatrist who was a disciple of Freud. He came to the village to write a book (or something). One of his patients is the local wealthy landowner, who is portrayed as hiding something with the help of his butler. He has an obnoxious son who fancies himself as a pianist. The son is strangled as he is playing the piano. The butler is blamed. Then a pretty journalist is also murdered as she plays the piano – the same piece of music. The butler couldn’t have done it since he was in jail.

Father Brown deduces that the psychiatrist has hypnotised the landowner and used posthypnotic suggestion to make him strangle the nearest person when a particular piece of music is played. He even tries to kill himself in the police cells when, at the psychiatrist’s suggestion as a therapy, that piece of music is played to him. Father Brown saves the landowner in the nick of time by getting the cops to turn off the music.

And I thought to myself, hang on. If all you have to do to stop the landowner murdering people is stop the music, why didn’t his compulsion go away when he started to strangle his son and the journalist? I expect they would have stopped playing with hands around their throat. (I think I would have) They’re serious plot holes if you ask me.

Posthypnotic murder has been used in fiction more than once. It seems the jury is out on whether or not it can be done. Certainly, if it can, it is rare.

Adam Eason in “Derren Brown, Hypnotic Coercion And The Evidence Base…” says “hypnosis does not render individuals out of control of themselves so as they can be told to partake in criminal acts and they are no more likely than non-hypnotised individuals to do any such things.”

But what the hey. It’s fiction, after all.

As you know, these blog posts are basically essays, commenting on life and things. But I’m an author. I write the sort of books I like to read. If you or somebody you know likes the kind of stories that take you away in a spaceship on adventures packed with action and where love finds a way, you might enjoy The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy. You can have it for free.