Idiot plot

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In literary criticism, an idiot plot is a fictional storyline which is "kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot", and where the story would quickly end, or possibly not even happen, if this were not the case. It is a narrative in which the conflict derives from characters not recognizing, or not being told, key information that would resolve the conflict, often owing to plot contrivance. The only thing that prevents the conflict's resolution is the character's constant avoidance or obliviousness of it throughout the plot, even if it was already obvious to the reader (or viewer), so the characters are all "idiots" in that they are too obtuse to simply resolve the conflict immediately. Science fiction writer and critic Damon Knight, in his 1956 collection In Search of Wonder, says that the term may have originated with author James Blish. Knight went on to coin the term second-order idiot plot as a narrative "in which not merely the principals, but everybody in the whole society has to be a grade-A idiot, or the story couldn't happen". The term was later popularized by film critic (and longtime science fiction fan) Roger Ebert. Critic Roger Ebert wrote in 2005: "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." In his 1987 review of comedy The Secret of My Success, Ebert argues that most storylines about mistaken identity rely heavily on being an idiot plot. Writing in 2013, author David Brin explored one variation of the idiot plot.