Avoiding Plot Holes by Seeding Doubt
Having an “expert” character conveniently fuck up right when the plot needs it to happen, when they otherwise would never, always loudly looks like the hand of the author sabotaging things. Which is exactly what’s happening.
However, if you set up that scene in a way where that fuckup is possible and warranted, you can turn “this is so contrived” to “omg I knew that was going to happen”.
Firstly, if we’re dealing with humans, humans are not machines. Variability in skill even at the expert level happens. Go watch the Olympics or any professional sporting event and people have terrible days all the time.
In fiction, a conveniently terrible day because that’s just how this works doesn’t fly. Diablos ex machinas tend to go over easier than deus ex machinas, but a character failing at a critical challenge in the narrative for no reason screws with a lot of the tension and expectations. “For no reason” takes no effort by the author to set up and pay off, and it reads as cheap.
I am a novice archer. I write expert archers. I do not write supernaturally accurate archers. From the very beginning of my story, my expert, with four centuries of experience, isn’t nailing perfect kill shots with every hit. A) he doesn’t need to and B) leaving his enemy to die slowly and painfully is a low he will absolutely stoop to if he thinks it’s warranted.
He’s as good as he has to be and if he gets the job done, he doesn’t care if it’s a little messy. Him being messy and overconfident is what gets him in the end, too. If he’s trying, he’ll do better, but most of the time “eh, I got close enough, they’ll die eventually” is his mindset.
“Expert” in fiction being “this is a character who will reliably pass the challenges set up for them by the narrative”.
So if you have an “expert,” allowing them to get a little bit lazy and overconfident, or simply not think of themselves as needing to be perfect in a given situation, you allow yourself a lot of wiggle room for them to majorly fuck up.
Doesn’t work very well if I throw my archer into an archery tournament, but I haven’t done that, and I’ll get to that later.
Using the archery example once again: Archery is finnicky and precision is key. So if you’ve got your archer, or any marksman, in a windy environment, they have to work that much harder to factor in the wind when setting up their shot.
If it’s rainy, or the sun’s in their face, or it’s dark, or it’s loud and they can’t focus, these things aren’t exact data points the audience is going to do the math on. Or, if they and their enemy are moving, which, in combat, is highly likely.
Maybe your character didn’t get enough sleep, or they’re stressed about this moment, they’re cracking under the pressure, they’re doubting themselves, the enemy got into their head, or they’re distracted worrying about something else. Or they got drunk the night before, they ate too much or too little. They’re sick, their hands are sweaty, they’ve got a sinus headache. They’ve got cramps, or hot flashes, or earlier they pulled a muscle and it still tweaks.
These are all, once again, introducing doubt into the narrative so that, when they fuck up as the plot demands, the audience should consider “well they weren’t at their best, I believe it”.
The sloppy way to do this is to go, in the moment:
“But because it was windy, X missed his shot”.
Is this the first time the reader is learning that it’s windy? Pretty convenient to introduce it right as it becomes important.
Rather, establish your variable beforehand in a disconnected moment. Try to ground it to a different element, otherwise it might look like it’s being mentioned for no other reason than “this is important”. Or, if it’s environmental, bury it with the other sensory descriptors.
When establishing the scene and setting, casually mention how the wind is interacting with the characters—making their hair a mess, throwing pollen everywhere, making skirts billow, etc.
Have another character complain about this variable bothering them
Have the character instantly regret the decision they made the night before for unrelated reasons. Like, if they got drunk, now they’ve still got a headache.
Depends on the story and the audience, of course, but I personally think having the narrator explicitly call out the variable fuckery going on reads a bit hammy. I like letting the audience figure out what went wrong with the clues I give.
If the scene demands, I'll also let my characters get annoyed and upset about their shots going wrong and blaming the environment. So long as it's not "hand of the author here to tell you what went wrong" you've got options.
I wouldn’t pull this trick too many times, otherwise your “expert” ends up consistently not an expert and then their sudden success looks suspect and contrived.
If you are writing some sort of tournament where this character is deliberately setting themselves up for success and is considering all these variables… a great example I like is Todoroki vs Bakugo in My Hero Academia season 2.
Dude is an uncertain mess throughout the rest of his tournament once his “fuck you dad I’m gonna win by half-assing it” suddenly isn’t enough to beat Midoriya. He’s forced to face some Tragic Backstory and it throws him off his game—establishes doubt.
He has a string of successes once he starts taking baby steps with the other half of his powers, and in the finale, he’s up against someone where he really does have to give it his all if he wants to win. His brute force powers are up against someone who has honed his very specific and powerful abilities for a decade.
The final fight stops being a matter of power metrics and who would win if they both were competing at their best with all the tricks in their playbook available, which is what most of the tournament had been up to this point.
Basically—it stops being a numbers game, and starts being an emotional one. If you have a character you need to fail at something, but who wouldn’t otherwise, consider shifting the battle from external to internal, so the task failure is just the catalyst for the real meat of the story: what this loss means to this person in the long run.
**Side note there are of course a ton of anime tournament fights probably better than this one, Rock Lee’s whole arc against Gaara is one of them, I just don’t remember it well enough to comment on it.
Not every reader is going to be savvy enough to go “well that’s going to be important later”. Use betas and editors to help gauge how vague or obvious your foreshadowing is.
But even if you have readers sussing out your foreshadowing: Part of the fun is figuring out how the journey will end, even if we know when and where. Otherwise tragedies and prequels wouldn’t be made.
The dramatic irony of knowing variable fuckery is at play when the character is unaware can be so fun as the audience. Horror films are kind of built on it.
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