Spent 4 hours trying to fix a plot hole that didn't exist

I was writing a mystery story last night and got stuck on this one timeline issue. I kept thinking a character couldn't have been in two places at once. After 4 hours of rewriting scenes and checking maps, I realized I had misread my own notes. Turns out the dates were a month apart the whole time. Has anyone else burned a whole evening chasing a problem that wasn't even there?

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin_flores1mo ago

Gotta push back on this one. Those 4 hours weren't wasted at all. You caught a potential issue and dug into it until you proved it was fine. Way better than skipping it and having a reader tear apart your story later because you missed something real. Plot holes are like termites man, you gotta check every board even if most of them are clean.

shah.olivia1mo ago

Does one reader really notice that kind of stuff though?