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lauraanne_gilman*sigh* I just hit a whopper of a SftSoP in the line edit. One of the major characters knows something -- something that's very important to the storyline. His job requires him to share his fact. He doesn't.
Okay, there are ways of handling that. He's not sure it's a valid fact (distrusts the source). He is obsessed with a theory that this evidence contradicts. He is trying to keep it from being known, in order to set a trap. Any of those would work -- but the author doesn't do any of those things. Instead, we simply see him thinking 'fact A doesn't fit with the theory.' The opportunity to establish character motivation and plot complexity bypassed, and instead we have a weakness in the book.
*peels post-it off pad, tags it onto page in question, moves on*
Okay, there are ways of handling that. He's not sure it's a valid fact (distrusts the source). He is obsessed with a theory that this evidence contradicts. He is trying to keep it from being known, in order to set a trap. Any of those would work -- but the author doesn't do any of those things. Instead, we simply see him thinking 'fact A doesn't fit with the theory.' The opportunity to establish character motivation and plot complexity bypassed, and instead we have a weakness in the book.
*peels post-it off pad, tags it onto page in question, moves on*
