Characters aren't telling each other important things

roxics

roxics

Veteran
I see this all the time (especially on TV), a character doesn't communicate to another character what they saw/heard/did and a bunch of ensuing drama results. For starters it just doesn't seem realistic to me. If something major happens, people in a dire situation in real life are probably going to say something to each other. It also just seems like lazy writing to me. A cheap way to make drama happen or maybe get yourself out of a corner you painted yourself in as a writer. But it's possible I'm missing something and it's a tactic used on purpose just to piss off people like me.

What are your thoughts on this?
 
I think it would be fun to go through examples.

As for why it happens, I think it's just another species of plot hole. And why are plot holes so common --- providing endless material for the Youtube channel How It Should Have Ended? Because in their natural habitat, people do everything they can to avoid drama. But movies are drama. So it's hard to drum up drama and at the same time have people act naturally.
 
I don't know if this relates at all to what you're talking about or not, but I'll share it anyway.

I was watching a friend shoot some scenes from his horror movie -- kids being chased through the woods by a bloodthirsty creature. You know the drill.

At one point they run into a clearing and see some 20 feet in front of them an ATV sitting like it was driven up to a tree and stopped. The girl waits at the edge of the clearing, while the guy runs up to the ATV to see if he can start it. When he gets to the ATV, he sees it's chained to the tree -- useless to them. This was not visible to them from where they stood at the edge of the clearing -- and where the girl still stands.

The guy goes back to the girl and says "We have to keep moving!", and they run off into the woods again.

They did one take like this, and I pulled my friend aside and said, "Why didn't they take the ATV?" He replied, "It's chained to the tree." I said, "Yes....but the GIRL doesn't know that. So wouldn't she want to know WHY they weren't taking the ATV???" He pondered that for a moment, then added dialogue to have her ask why and the guy respond "It's chained to the tree!"

Sometimes I guess it's hard to understand the reality your characters are in. Even when you're right there shooting it.
 
Actually, our conversation on the point was a bit longer than that. He said, "We're going to get a shot of the bumper and the chain wrapped around the tree." To which I replied, "I know, so the AUDIENCE will know it's chained to the tree, but the GIRL still won't know. She won't see what the audience sees."
 
Back when Siskel and Ebert were the shiznit of the film reviewing crowd, they had a bit about "idiot plots", which went something like this - "for this film to go on, everyone has to act like a total idiot". Naturally, they despised it.

I found the "idiot plots" to be quite common on TV sitcoms and dramas but, even a movie like "Godfather" is filled with those moments.
 
Off the top of my head I can't think of any examples but I've been seeing it a lot in TV shows. A character discovers something when they go off on their own and when they meet up with the rest of the group they don't say anything about what they saw. Or a character has a dream and then they see that dream begin to take place in reality but again say nothing to anyone else about their dream or never with any detail.
 
From Wikipedia ... Idiot Plots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot


This is good ...

Reviewing Prime in 2005 critic Roger Ebert said "I can forgive and even embrace an Idiot Plot in its proper place (consider Astaire and Rogers in Top Hat). But when the characters have depth and their decisions have consequences, I grow restless when their misunderstandings could be ended by words that the screenplay refuses to allow them to utter.


I wonder if Editing has some guilt as well. A small percentage, though.
 
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This from TV Tropes ...


According to many anthropologists, one of the turning points in human development was a growing ability to communicate. In fiction, one of the turning points in dramatic development is the inability to communicate.
 
so really what we need for all this drama to be natural/realistic/believable is a scene at the start where all the relevant characters get hit in the head by a flying wrench.
 
This is hilarious. Thank you, Alex Whitmore, for the citations in Wikipedia and TV Tropes. I guess even if it isn't a solved problem, it is a famous one.
 
Out of shared curiosity, go to the Wikipedia episode listing from your (most/least) favorite show and see how many plot lines sound a bit bizarre. Ignoring those series that lived off oddities - "Lost", "Seinfeld", "X-Files", "Night Court", etc. - many story lines are entirely made up of a contrived series of events. The "idiot plot" is then presented to find some sort of a twist on a worn out idea.

Then again, when Dennis Rinsler (mostly known for being a co-showrunner on the "Full House") was giving his presentation at that sitcom seminar I attended way back when, he said that any semi-original idea is a G-d send. The dialog and jokes can be written fairly easily when you know your program's characters, but coming up with that unexpected twist on something that has been done a thousand times is very, very hard.
 
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