5 WORST Plot Devices in Storytelling (Writing Advice)

get ready because today I'm hateful and I'm going to be talking about five specific plot devices that I cannot stand by the way my name is Brandon McNulty I'm the author of bad parts also the author of Entry wounds and welcomed my writing channel one of my subscribers requested a video on plot devices specifically ones that waste the audience's time or take away from a story so I thought we'd talk about that today I'm going to list out five specific plot devices that I just can't stand I'm gonna explain what they are why I have a problem with them I'm going to give you an example of each now just so we're all on the same page what a plot device is it's a moment or event that moves the story in a New Direction it can be big or small it can happen at pretty much any point in the story but what it does it impacts your character and causes them to move in a different direction and there are plenty of different things that can serve as a plot device for instance a medical diagnosis could work as one if you have a character who finds out that they're terminally ill and they only have seven days to live that would be a plot device it would force them to move in a different direction another example would be if one character asks out another on a date Boy Meets Girl boy asks out girl then the girl says yes we'll go on a date and then things shift we have to worry about what's going to happen with that date next there are tons of possibilities here and there are a lot of good ones but there are also a lot of cheap and lazy ones and that's what brings us to today's video now the first plot device that I hate is the convenient misunderstanding this is when a character misinterprets something and that misinterpretation causes them to go against their will It's usually the result of bad timing you'll have a character who overhears part of a conversation and that part convinces them that something is very wrong when actually it isn't if they had heard the entire conversation they would know that there's nothing wrong at all this plot device often creates a lot of artificial conflict that oftentimes adds filler to the story an example of this comes from the movie Shrek if you remember toward the end of the story there's that scene where Shrek is about to tell Fiona that he has feelings for her and he goes to the cabin he's about to knock on the door and right before he does he overhears Fiona having a conversation with donkey and Fiona is conflicted about the fact that she's part ogre and she starts thinking out loud she starts saying things like who could ever love someone so ugly things like that and Shrek happens to hear this part of the conversation and he thinks that it's directed at him and this conveniently time misunderstanding causes Shrek to become upset he storms off then there's this artificial conflict between the two characters they end up splitting up they go their separate ways until Shrek realizes that the whole thing was a mistake and then he has to crash the wedding at the end second plot device that I hate is amnesia now let me be clear here I don't mind Amnesia if it's something a character is dealing with at the beginning of a story stuff like in the born Identity or Silent Hill 2 where you have a character who's trying to remember who he is or remember what he did that stuff is great but the problem comes when Amnesia is used as a cheap plot point in the middle of a story and it's used in order to keep a character from achieving a goal or from passing along a key piece of information that's when I hate Amnesia when it's there to waste the audience's time an example of this comes from the TV series 24. and I'm a huge fan of 24. I love this show to death but in the first season there's this horrendous Amnesia subplot involving the character of Terry Bauer who is the wife of the main character Jack Bauer and what happens to Terry she Witnesses this car exploding and she thinks that her daughter is in the car and because she believes that her daughter is dead she all of a sudden is struck with this incredible case of Amnesia where she just forgets everything she forgets who she is where she was what she was doing who she was running away from all these things are just out the window and it ends up being this situation for several episodes where Terry just wanders around trying to remember who she is trying to remember what she was supposed to do and it all gets cured magically when she escapes another dangerous situation later on she gets all her Memories Back and it just ends up feeling like a complete and total waste of time third plot device that I hate is deus ex machina and what this is It's when characters are in a dangerous situation it looks like they're gonna die it looks like things are really dire and then the writer hands them a get out of jail free card the writer solves whatever problem the characters have by giving those characters some kind of special Escape Route or some kind of special ability that they never used before and then all of a sudden they overcome their problems and everything is right again and the issue here is that the characters don't solve the problem themselves they don't use their minds or whatever resources are available to face the problem instead they just get bailed out by the writer and there are tons of examples out there for instance at the end of Jurassic Park when you have the T-Rex saving the heroes from the Raptors or at the end of Indiana Jones when you have the Lost Ark destroying the Nazis or in the Last Jedi when Leia just magically gains the ability to fly and the problem here isn't that she has a special ability it's the fact that we've never seen it before there was no real setup to it it just comes out of nowhere fourth plot device that I hate is when someone instantly trusts a suspicious character I'm sure you've seen this before oftentimes a protagonist will encounter someone who is meant to be an important character and in order to speed things along there's this instant trust between them even when that new character is Shady or strange and the problem I have with this is that it just rushes a relationship it rushes human interactions for the sake of just moving the story along at a fast pace and an example of this comes from the movie Enchanted and this is a pretty unique story it's about an animated princess named Giselle who gets transported into the real world and she ends up in New York City in this Fish Out of Water scenario and she stays completely in character as this fairy tale princess while she's asking everyone where her kingdom is where her castle is and so on she runs around like a lunatic until the hero of the story and his six-year-old daughter find her and then they decide to help Giselle which is totally fine that makes sense and you would think they would probably just drop her off at a police station or a hospital or a homeless shelter but no here's what happens the hero decides to take Giselle back to his apartment where his six-year-old daughter lives and this is just way too trusting you just met this woman who speaks and acts like no other human being on Earth and you're going to let her stay under the same roof as your six-year-old daughter no that's ridiculous this is a case of the writers forcing the characters together and the thing is you could still have this story work if you dropped Giselle off at a shelter somewhere and maybe you have a situation where the hero gives her his business card and then the next day maybe she tracks him down and you build the story from there and the fifth plot device that I hate is the death trap I'm sure you've seen this one before it happens whenever the villain captures the hero and instead of just killing the hero which is what the villain wants instead of just killing the hero the villain decides to place the hero in a room or some kind of contraption or whatever it is and create this ridiculous or careless scenario where the hero can escape and then the hero lucks out and finds an Escape Route or someone rescues the Hero whatever it is and as for examples you'll see this plot device a lot in action movies and spy Thrillers James Bond especially I think the most notorious examples come from James Bond movies when bond gets captured and then the villain steps out of the room while he's captured and then James Bond finds a solution or James Bond Bluffs the villain in order to get out of the death trap or whatever it is but these death traps appear in a lot of different movies and every time I see them I can't help but think less of the villain for hesitating to kill the hero so I hope this helps question of the day what lazy plot devices do you hate the most let us know in the comments section below thank you guys for watching if you want to support the Channel please pick up a copy of either one of my books and be sure to leave reviews on Amazon bad parts is great if you like small town horror it's about people trading away their sick and injured body parts in order to get healthy again and then entry wounds is great if like Thrillers and it's about a guy who picks up a Haunted Gun and he cannot put it down until he kills six people with it also be sure to check out my other videos like share and subscribe and as always remember to keep on writing

Channel: Writer Brandon McNulty

Views: 214,026

Keywords: Writing, Writing advice, Writing Tips, Fiction, Creative Writing, How to write a book, How to write a novel, novel, book, plot device, plot, plot point, plot devices, jurassic park, deus ex machina, deathtrap, enchanted, james bond, bond villain, indiana jones, the last ledi, star wars, leia flying, leia flying through space, 24, teri bauer amnesia, amnesia, shrek, plot devices in film, macguffin, plot convenience, taken, cliche, cliches, tropes, worst, worst plot devices, movie, movies, help

Id: QsqRQufpDGI

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023