How many worldbuilding plotholes can be covered by an unreliable narrator?

[AnyaKimlin]

I deliberately use first person narrators or close third with my fantasy stories.

It doesn't allow for plot holes but it does mean the world only has to be explained at their level of understanding.The reader doesn't need to know anymore than the narrator does. For example although I have an idea what my fairy realm looks like none of my narrators in that story have been there. They rely on what they are told by others who have been. We don't always need to know why something is in the world.

 

[Bramandin]

I deliberately use first person narrators or close third with my fantasy stories.

It doesn't allow for plot holes but it does mean the world only has to be explained at their level of understanding.The reader doesn't need to know anymore than the narrator does. For example although I have an idea what my fairy realm looks like none of my narrators in that story have been there. They rely on what they are told by others who have been. We don't always need to know why something is in the world.

Would it come across as a plot-hole if one character has an understanding of magic with the rule that people can't be brought back from the dead, but then someone does come back from the dead?

Granted when I asked the question, it was more about not knowing details and wanting to just chalk it up to not bothering with villain motivations.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Would it come across as a plot-hole if one character has an understanding of magic with the rule that people can't be brought back from the dead, but then someone does come back from the dead?

Granted when I asked the question, it was more about not knowing details and wanting to just chalk it up to not bothering with villain motivations.

Would the character/narrator know that? There's a big difference between an unreliable narrator and deliberately lying/deceiving to the reader. If the character has the knowledge, has opportunity to share it and doesn't then it's lying. You then have to decide is there a reason the narrator is lying to the reader.

 

[Bramandin]

Would the character/narrator know that? There's a big difference between an unreliable narrator and deliberately lying/deceiving to the reader. If the character has the knowledge, has opportunity to share it and doesn't then it's lying. You then have to decide is there a reason the narrator is lying to the reader.

Yeah, I don't think it's lying if the character themselves was lied to. A lot of people still believe that lemmings run off of cliffs and perpetuate the myth. I have no idea why that one director started it in the first place.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Would it come across as a plot-hole if one character has an understanding of magic with the rule that people can't be brought back from the dead, but then someone does come back from the dead?

The answer depends upon the context of the story. For me, a plot hole is when something new is introduced or something is changed only for the purpose of continuing the plot. If a necessary character is killed and then brought back to life when there had been no previous indication that resurrection was possible would be a plot hole. Having a character say "I didn't know that could be done," would be a poor attempt at covering the plot hole.

If, however, the scenario is the discovery of something that will be used later in the plot, the reveal may be acceptable. For example, if the character travels to the isle of black magic and observes people being raised from the dead, that knowledge is merely setting up future events. This would not be a plot hole.

I think it comes down to whether the situation is using something unforeseen to resolve a plotting difficulty or whether it is the set up to a future plot line.

 

[Bramandin]

The answer depends upon the context of the story. For me, a plot hole is when something new is introduced or something is changed only for the purpose of continuing the plot. If a necessary character is killed and then brought back to life when there had been no previous indication that resurrection was possible would be a plot hole. Having a character say "I didn't know that could be done," would be a poor attempt at covering the plot hole.

If, however, the scenario is the discovery of something that will be used later in the plot, the reveal may be acceptable. For example, if the character travels to the isle of black magic and observes people being raised from the dead, that knowledge is merely setting up future events. This would not be a plot hole.

I think it comes down to whether the situation is using something unforeseen to resolve a plotting difficulty or whether it is the set up to a future plot line.

I don't think I had the idea for then scene I'm about to describe when I first asked this question, I think it was more about worldbuilding holes and I might have been wrong to call them plotholes. Pretty much I think I was fussed about mentioning details without giving context because the MC either doesn't know, was lied to, or it's not plot-relevant to explain a detail's context. I got into a conversation with some weavers about how many weavers it would take to keep a village clothed and the answer was somewhere between half of the village having to be involved in production and maybe I could fudge it because of the post-apocalyptic setting. (I just solved a problem. While I didn't want MC's shop to have a domestic Hattersley loom, that doesn't mean that the shop across town doesn't.)

The scene I'm thinking of has MC and his friends going into a cave that collapses and one of them dies from his injuries, but his brother is a powerful sorcerer that rolls back the local time so that the cave never collapsed, pretty much the only person capable of doing that. I'm not even sure yet if I'm going to have the information of no resurrection magic before that happens, or if the discussion after that will say that resurrection is likely-impossible and even what happened is only because he's a rare sorcerer that don't work on the same rules. The elf might mention that he has a brother, but I want it to be a surprise that he's human and a sorcerer.

The elf actually dying instead of just being fatally injured isn't strictly necessary, but it seems silly to have a sorcerer near-kill himself with a flashy display of magic without the clear stake that his brother's life depended on it. It feels weak to say "you would have run out of air" or "the tunnel would have collapsed if they tried digging you out instead of me using magic." And then at some point asking "why have this in the story at all" turns into "why write the story at all."