I was thoroughly enjoying my latest Kindle read when something started nagging at the back of my mind. In a scene set in 1888, London is described as smelling of diesel. Now, as any fule kno, diesel wouldn’t be invented for another four years. Forget the whole dystopian time-travelling premise of the plot – that’s what’s now bugging me, and I consider myself in the company of an unreliable narrator.
An ex-cop acquaintance gave up on one crime novel when a constable saluted and acknowledged the wrong rank of officer as “Ma’am”, and I bailed when a plot point hinged on the authorship of popular folk ballad “Baker Street” as being by ‘Geoff’ Rafferty.
Has anything tipped you over the edge and caused you to abandon ship in the world of popular fiction?
How big does a plot hole have to be in order to mar your enjoyment of a book?
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Maybe London smelled like diesel in 1888 for reasons other than the presence of diesel itself. Ever think of that, huh wise guy? Huh? Huh?
I’d give it ten minutes if I were you. Bit of a diesel spillage, if you know what I mean…
I read a detective novel a while back where the murder weapon was described throughout as a piece of “unplanned” timber.
Ohhhhh I do like that.
Dialogue was a bit wooden too?
Splinter alert!
Mrs G was feeling naughty (by naughty I mean silly) once and thought it would be amusing to read 50 Shades Of Grey to me. I settled down to listen to the erotic stylings of EL James performed by my wife. Whatsername described taking the lift up to see Mr Pervy pants. The sentence was “The lift went up at terminal velocity.”
TERMINAL VELOCITY IS DOWNWARDS! IT’S A LAW OF PHYSICS! TERMINAL VELOCITY IS WHEN SPEED OVERCOMES RESISTANCE! IT ONLY HAPPENS DOWNWARDS!
Honestly, that was a cock shriveler and no mistake…
I’ve got the audiobook of that read by Jethro.
For giving you the momentary joy of thinking that that existed, you’re welcome.
I dare say it was lust reversing the laws of physics. If you or I were going up many floors in hot pursuit of a shag it would take aeons probably.
If the story is rattling along at sufficient pace and I’ve become sufficiently interested in the characters, I would probably be prepared to overlook some anachronistic diesel or some planned timber. But if I was starting to have cold feet anyway, something like this could be the final straw.
A while back my son wanted me to read the second book in the Eragon series (Tolkien lite about a boy and his dragon and very thick). We managed about 60 pages beforeI threw in the towel. Long-winded, turgid, plagiaristic: plot holes were the least of its problems.
No no no no no.
Cannot deal with anything like that.
Even the most minor offence can ruin the entire book for me.
The error lodges in the back of my mind and pops back up every two or three pages until I’m driven quite mad by it.
One of the plot lines in London Fields by Martin Amis involves an educated character not knowing that the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb was called Enola Gay.
Couldn’t buy it.
Just art imitating life, if you’ve read previous threads here about gaping maws in otherwise educated people’s knowledge.
Ben Affleck on the commentary of Armageddon:
“I asked [Michael Bay], ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to train astronauts to drill than to teach drillers how to be astronauts?’ To which he replied, ‘Shut the fuck up, Ben’.”
It’s a brilliant commentary track and sparkling work throughout from Affleck, for which I’ll forgive him practically anything (up to and including Batman v Superman)
Anyone remember the old Stan Lee comics where every month (or was it week?) there was a column where readers wrote in and said “How did he get from New York to Washington in five minutes?” or “In Series 23 episode 43 it was stated Spiderman’s mother was a teacher so how come in Series 48 episode 12 she’s a nun?”
The replies from Stan & The Gang were often the best bit of the comic ie if the plot and characters are zipping you along then diesel not being invented yet means absolutely nowt. If the story is a stinker then wrongly-dated diesel can be the deal-breaker
I remember once someone writing in to ask why Bruce Banner’s trousers didn’t rip like the rest of his clothes when he transformed into the Hulk. The reply talked about something like leg muscles not expanding at same rate as arm and chest muscles, and may have not been entirely scientifically accurate.
Stan Lee’s replies (and Bullpen Bulletins) were a vital (and overlooked) part of building up rapport with the readers. Apparently, in one of them he apologised to the readers becuase he wasn’t sure if the story in that issue made complete sense (it didn’t). You didn’t get that with DC.
Ha, yes, they still do it now. They used to give out a ‘noprize’ if readers spotted plotholes, but these days in order to get a noprize you have to point out the plot hole and then explain why it isn’t really a plothole at all.
Slightly off topic…call me an old whatever……what really does me in is when someone in real-life or indeed on TV states something as a fact when it is patently incorrect…….in particular when it relates to music….as I said may be my age.
Last year was having a quiet drink with my son and his mates(About music of course) when this idiot joins conversation and tells us he saw Led Zeppelin in the Point in Dublin – never happened – fake news. They played 2 gigs in Ireland, one in Belfast and at the National Boxing stadium in Dublin in, if memory serve,s 1970.
Now Plant & Page did play the Point.
Fake news…..Grinds my gears.
Really annoys me on podcasts when somebody who should know better e.g. David Hepworth says things like “Good Vibrations was recorded for Pet Sounds”. I am a bit anal I guess
Are we talking about actual plot holes, or small technical details that don’t actually impact the plot?
We appear to be talking about both.
For me a minor mistake or a huge plot discrepancy means not a lot if the story itself is actually any good.
If it’s not any good then it irritates the hell out of me
I don’t care that much about the plot, and if the book is otherwise good I can even enjoy feeling a bit smug when spotting something illogical or plain wrong. But if a book is badly written, I can’t read on.
Repetition of a particular word in several sentences close to each other is annoying, and awful clichés that weren’t good the first time they were used (I once threw a book across the room when its author actually described someone as having “skin like a peach”…and no, it wasn’t a romance novel), and dull use of language in general.
I’ll happily read a big brick of a book where nothing happens if it’s by a really good writer, the kind that you feel a need to read aloud, just so you can taste those wonderful sentences in your mouth!
Gravity. The whole fucking movie.
But at the end – and yes, I know, I’ve said this before – you would think NASA at some stage in their training would have said: Kids. This is what Grissom did with Liberty Bell 7. DON’T DO IT.
But noooo.
(I watched this movie with someone who worked for NASA. She was not impressed)
Yes, you would think in a movie with that title they would give just a little thought to the laws pertaining to it. George Clooney “clinging on” for fear of being cast adrift, out in space, made me boot the screen in, figuratlively speaking. I was quite enjoying the film up to that point.
Physics holes werent enough to stop me enjoying Gravity, and there were several, but I rather liked the fact that Space is silent and bleeding dangerous. Enough to stop me worryng about orbits, relative speed, inapproriate use of propellents, self fitting space suits etc. In fact come to,think about it i may have to watch it again just to check how Sandra Bullock got out of that spacesuit in my underwear. Just in the interests of scientific research you understand.
Sandra Bullock was wearing your underwear ? Now that’s implausible.
I believe Grissom went to his death maintaining Liberty 7 was not his fault.
Great name for a spacecraft isnt it?
A hospital stay with lack of choice in reading matter led me to an unplanned foray into Gerald Seymour’s “The Unknown Soldier”. It’s a terrorism thriller, but it’s entire plot hinges on the moment when the female anti-terrorism agent has a chance to shoot the terrorist leader, but then looks deeply into his eyes… and decides they clearly have a connection, so she must let him live to see if she can convince him of the folly of his anti-Western ways… so basically, “love at first sight”.
I did finish the book, but hated every page thereafter, and it never redeemed itself…
The Quran, the Tanakh, the Bible.
Rubbish, the lot of them.
The fillums were no better.
I know that pointing out plot holes in a Dan Brown book is shooting fish in a barrel, but my favourite one is from Inferno (I think). Langdon has it pointed out to him that chalked symbols have been cropping up over his campus. He says that has noticed them, but passed them off as students mucking about.
That’s Robert Langdon. The symbologist Robert Langdon. The Robert Langdon who drives plots by interpreting the hidden patterns in signs, and explains how simple they are when you know the code with a patroninsing chuckle. Mysterious symbols crop up all over the place where he works, and he ignores his life long fascination with symbols and codes, let alone personal experience of how knowing how to read them can save the world, and just shrugs? Dan Brown, you’re really testing my credulity now.
Those Harry Potter books were just one implausible thing after another. Totally ruined them for me.