How to Avoid a Swiss Cheese Plot 

Fact check yourself

We’ve all heard the phrase “fact check” a lot recently, but in this case, you want to fact check yourself. Even when you think you remember how long the drive between Boston and New York is or the dates for World War I, double check. It is so, so easy to misremember details like that. You don’t want to create your own plot holes by not double checking your facts, particularly if your story hinges on those facts.

Consistency, consistency, and continuity

It’s surprisingly easy to forget if a minor character has blond hair or brown hair. But readers will notice if in chapter one it’s blond and in chapter eight it’s brown. They will also notice if you happen to mention in chapter three that the town is seven miles away, but then in chapter eleven, it only takes an hour to walk those seven miles. The solution to this Swiss cheese problem? A style guide.

Your readers will also notice if your characters are drinking coffee in the morning, but then, they’re suddenly eating dinner together. Continuity, like consistency, is easy to lose track of. The answer to this problem? Also a style guide.

In your style guide, you want to make note of all those pesky details that are easy to forget (e.g., character details like physical description, relationship to other characters, personality type; place names and details and distance/direction from other places in the story; timeline details like on which day and at what time does each scene start and end; spelling of words/phrases or any terminology that is unique to your story). Here’s our basic Style Guide Template to give you a place to start. Keeping track of these details on a style guide makes it easy to refer to rather than having to dig back through your story or just not remembering at all.

Depending on the complexity of your story, you may need something more comprehensive like a “story bible” or “story encyclopedia.” If you’re writing an epic fantasy novel (or series), you’re going to need a comprehensive way to store all of those details, something like Plottr.

If you have a story bible, but also have a style guide, your editor will love you.

Confirm that your logic is sound

The plot of a book is about cause and effect. One character starts yelling; another character yells back. It starts raining; the character runs into a nearby store. Review the decisions that your characters make and the events that happen to them or around them. In the world that your story is set in, will your readers find what’s happening and the actions that follow believable? Do your characters stay consisent in their actions and reactions? Not to say they can’t change and grow, but that tends to be a gradual process, not an abrupt about-face.

One approach to this is to ask why. Why did the character start yelling? Why did the other character yell back rather than walk away?  When it started raining, why did the character pick the door on the left to the bookstore and not the door on the right to the clothing store?

Is the “why” reasonable or is it happening for convenience’s sake because you need it to for the plot? The consequences of actions should be logical.

Have others read it

One of the easiest ways to find plot holes is to have someone else read your story. Holes seemingly pop up out of nowhere when a writing group, beta reader, or friend reads your story. No matter how objective we try to be or how long we put the story away before re-reading it, we can’t see all of the holes in our own story. The story will always be bigger in our own minds than it is on paper.

Sometimes, there’s a quick fix to some common plot holes:

• If an event pops up out of nowhere—add in forshadowing leading up to the event.
• If an object appears out of the blue—add it in earlier.
• If a character’s motivations are unclear—add some backstory.

Of course, some plot holes are more complicated. (If you work with us, we’ll not only point out plot holes, we’ll help you fill them!)

I love this quote by author E.A. Bucchianeri, “If typos are God’s way of keeping a writer humble, plot holes certainly keeps one on their knees.”

If you’re thinking ahead to the editing process, check out our free sample edit or our foundational edit.