Thinking tool: Refuse the idiot plot

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Adam Jones

Per Wikipedia, an idiot plot:

It is a narrative in which the conflict derives from characters not recognizing, or not being told, key information that would resolve the conflict, often owing to plot contrivance.

The only thing that prevents the conflict's resolution is the character's constant avoidance or obliviousness of it throughout the plot, even if it was already obvious to the reader (or viewer), so the characters are all "idiots" in that they are too obtuse to simply resolve the conflict immediately.

An example at work: many people realise a project has a fatal problem, but ignore it for months until the whole project is scrapped. (I have not been on such a project, but I interviewed a person who said they were leading a team of 10 in this position. I wanted to shake them and tell them to speak up!)

But you're not an idiot in a film! (maybe)

You can just say the obvious thing out loud, like:

Just to check we're all on the same page, my understanding is <understanding>

I have never seen this go poorly,1 and it quite often makes the situation significantly better.

This is part of my thinking tools series. Also consider:

  • Do the obvious things: this is the interpersonal special case
  • Be a new homunculus: often you can get stuck in this situation because you didn't speak up previously. But you don't have obligations to your previous self!

Footnotes

  1. There are probably some situations where it could be negative. These are so rare and extreme that I've personally never seen one.

    Overall people err far too much towards avoiding saying the obvious thing, so you'll be safe to do this more often.

    But I guess asking "he was mauled half to death by a bear and then died a painful slow death right?" to a grieving widow at a funeral might be bad... ↩