How to avoid plot holes: six continuity errors to check

A plot hole is rarely a failure of imagination. It is a failure of bookkeeping. The story said one thing in chapter 4, it needs another in chapter 30, and nobody put the two side by side.

Bookkeeping can be checked. This post sorts continuity errors into six kinds, with a manual check for each, then shows which of those checks Plotra runs for you and which it can't. The examples come from Romeo and Juliet, since you already know the plot.

The six kinds of continuity error

A character knows something before learning it

The Nurse knows about the secret marriage. Lord Capulet does not. Write a scene where Capulet rages at Juliet about "that husband of yours" before anyone has told him, and the plot breaks: he would never have arranged the wedding to Paris.

It happens because you know everything, so every character feels as if they do too.

Check: for each secret, list who knows it and the scene where they find out. Then read every earlier scene told from that character's point of view and look for the secret leaking in.

Someone is in two places at once

Romeo is banished to Mantua. A scene that puts him under Juliet's window on the night she drinks the potion can't be true.

It happens when you move a scene, or draft two storylines separately and join them later.

Check: give every scene a date, a length and a place. Sort by date and read down the list once for each main character. A story timeline makes the overlaps visible.

The dead walk back in

Tybalt dies in the street. Two chapters later he is at the family table, because that dinner was written before the duel and moved after it.

Check: keep a list of deaths with the scene each one happens in. Search for the name in everything that follows.

A fact changes between books

In book one Juliet is not yet fourteen. Book two remembers her as sixteen that summer.

It happens because the fact lives only in a sentence, and you wrote the second sentence two years after the first.

Check: keep one page for each character and place with its fixed facts, the core of a story bible. When you change a fact on purpose, write down the old version and the reason.

A setup is never paid off

The Friar's first scene has him gathering herbs and musing that one plant can hold both poison and medicine. That is a setup, and the sleeping potion pays it off. Cut the potion in a rewrite and the herb speech becomes a promise nobody keeps.

Check: list every setup in two columns, where it is planted and where it pays off. An empty second cell is a scene to write or a line to cut. Check too that the payoff still comes after the setup.

A reveal the reader was already given

The audience watches Juliet drink the potion. Her waking in the tomb is suspense, not surprise. A version that staged "she was alive all along" as a twist would land flat, because the reader was there.

Check: for each reveal, write down the earliest place the reader could have learned it. If that is before the reveal scene, either remove the early mention or rewrite the scene as dread instead of surprise.

A worked example: who knows the death is faked

Here is the ledger for the play's biggest secret, "Juliet is asleep, not dead."

The Friar's letter exists to move Romeo from the last row to the first. Friar John, who carries it, is shut inside a house suspected of plague, and the letter never leaves Verona. Balthasar reaches Mantua first with what he saw. Romeo acts on the false version, and Juliet wakes too late.

Nothing here is a plot hole, because every character acts on exactly what they have been told. A gap in someone's knowledge is either your plot or your mistake, and you can only tell which when it is written down.

The special problem of a series

A standalone novel has two layers of knowledge: what is true, and what each character knows. A series adds a third: what the reader has been told as of each book.

Book three can't lean on a fact you only ever wrote in your notes, and it can't unveil something book one already gave away.

The manual method is a list per book of what that book reveals for the first time:

• Book 1: the two houses are at war. Romeo and Juliet marry in secret. The Friar and the Nurse know.
• Book 2: Tybalt kills Mercutio. Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished. The Friar has a potion.
• Not told yet: what the Friar's letter said.

Before you draft book three, read the lists for books one and two. Use them again for a recap or a blurb.

How Plotra tracks secrets and setups

In Plotra the ledger is the Secrets & setups view, opened from the ribbon (Secrets). It needs the Releases & reveals module, which a novel project starts with switched off: turn it on in the Modules tab of Project settings.

On the who knows what tab, fill in the line at the top with a secret (any note) and a character, then press Track. For each character you record:

• Learned in: the scene or chapter where they find out. "Knew all along" is the default.
• What they know: "The truth" or "A false version".
• Note: how they find out, or what they think instead.

Romeo's row would read: a false version, learned in the Mantua scene, "Balthasar saw the funeral."

The Knowledge layers tab handles the reader. A note or a single passage can be marked Truth or Belief, the false version people are led to believe. The tab sorts the project into True, but untold, Told to the audience and Believed. The middle column is the place to look before you stage a reveal.

The setups and payoffs tab is the two-column list. Each row has a kind, the note it is set up in, the note it pays off in, and a status: Open, Paid off or Dropped. An open setup shows how long it has waited, such as "open for 12 scenes".

What the continuity checks run, and what they can't see

The Continuity view needs the World bible module. It runs plain rules over the project. There is no AI in it, and the same project always gives the same answer. These are the rules that match the errors above:

Other rules cover a character who appears before birth, an age that doesn't match the timeline, a closed plot thread referenced again, and a story date that can't be read.

Be clear about what the checks read: scene and character properties, links, plot threads, your who-knows-what entries, your setups and canon status. A character counts as in a scene only when they are its POV or the scene links to them. Scenes without a story date are skipped by the date rules, and two scenes need a location each to count as two places.

The checks don't read your prose. If Tybalt is named in a scene with no link to his page, the rule can't see him. If Juliet's age changes inside a sentence, nothing flags it. And no rule looks for a reveal the reader already had: that one is still yours, with the Knowledge layers tab to help. A result that is intentional, such as a ghost, can be dismissed.

Retconning a note asks for a reason and saves the old text as a version.

Releases and the spoiler horizon

For the series problem, add a release for each book in the Release roadmap and set Ships to that book's folder. Everything inside is then revealed by that book. To hold back one passage on a page readers otherwise know, tag the block with ⌘⌥T for a later release, or Never.

Then choose a book under World as of. That is the spoiler horizon: the binder dims what readers don't know yet, the Codex, graph and timeline leave it out, and Knowledge layers shows Told by this point.

Two limits. The Continuity view always works on the whole project, whatever the horizon. And the horizon is a way of looking, not a lock: someone you share the project with can still read everything.

All of this is on the Free plan (pricing). The guide for novelists has the full setup.

What to do next

Pick the one secret your plot turns on. Write its ledger today: who knows the truth, who holds a false version, and the scene where each of them learns it. Then read the scenes before each of those moments and look for the leak. When that one is clean, date your scenes and start the list of setups.