Hatrack River Writers Workshop: I love it when neat solutions to plot holes present themselves!

This is topic I love it when neat solutions to plot holes present themselves! in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by B. Elison Bradley (Member # 8907) on :

Okay so in the story I'm writing there's this girl antagonist who is able to go one on one against each of the main characters each positing their own skill/martial arts/weapon specialty et cetera and win.

But later on in the story when they're forced to work together against a common goal her competency suddenly takes a huge drop, where before she was stealthy, careful, graceful and skilled she now I wanted her to take on a very gungho charge in first leeroy jenkins style of fighting while she IS still skilled enough to sorta pull it off and hold her own they're would be to the perspective of other characters and the reader a significant drop in badassary, she no longer seems as challenging as she was before.

I was wondering for a bit how to rectify these two things other then her mental instability but it occured to me! The entirety of the whole "she kicks everyone's ass over and over" bit took place during a closed time loop where only she was aware!

The solution naturally presents itself, she's invulnerable when facing them because she, through trial and error built up the skill and knowledge of THEIR abilities to near omniscience but OUTSIDE of that in new and unexpected situations she would obviously nolonger seemed anywhere near as skilled!

It's awesome when solutions just pop naturally out of the text.

Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :

Not to be a killjoy but invincible characters can work for me only in movies and I'm talking about the bad movies.

Posted by axeminister (Member # 8991) on :

I agree with the original post. I can't think of an example right now, but I've had times of no solution, only to find the solution was there all along. Makes me feel like there might be something to this writing thing.

Oh, and using Leeroy Jenkins as an adjective is awesome.

Axe

Posted by B. Elison Bradley (Member # 8907) on :

"Invincible" I'm not saying is physically invulnerable, I'm just saying that to certain characters (the ones trapped in the time loop with no recollection) she seems to know everything they can or will do only able to hurt her through luck.

She gets hurt but only because later on shes facing events and opponants she's never faced before and her own natural abilities while good aren't perfect and is why she'll appear to have had some form of bad ass decay when in reality its because she was cheating before and isn't now.

If I play a game of chess with you and lose, but then I go back in time and try again and this time KNOWING what move you do change my move accordingly, and keep doing so and so on and so forth until I have memorized perfectly every move or counter move you are capable of doing.

And then played you again one final time to YOUR perspective I would seem like some kind of omniscient prodigy able to think 10 moves ahead even though I actually DONT have that skill and is only because of time travel trickery and trial and error I could do so.

'Invincible/invulnerable' is just an exaggeration not an accurate description.