Logic and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

 Has logic died? Or do today’s authors think that logic doesn’t apply to fiction?

I’m asking a serious question here because I’ve come across a couple of Facebook stories that defy logic, making the story unbelievable.

Story number one is about a grandmother who works to alienate her grandson from his mother. Now I must point out that the story makes it clear that this is his bio mom, but the grandmother repeatedly tells the boy that his mother isn’t blood.

Yet nowhere in the story did either of the grandson’s parents point out the flaw in this statement, and most glaringly, the thirteen-year-old grandson never figured it out. That part of biology I knew full well long before I entered junior high health science class in 7^th grade! At thirteen, the kid should be in 8^th grade. Or do they not teach that part of biology anymore?

The grandmother’s insistence that her daughter-in-law isn’t a blood relative of her grandson is ludicrous, and the fact that no one points out the flaw in her logic is illogical.

But that isn’t the dumbest logic mistake I’ve come across in these stories.

This second one is even worse if you can believe it.

In it, a newborn died while still in the hospital, and it took the hospital staff five years to discover that it wasn’t a genetic issue that killed him, but rather poison. I mean, there was a cover-up, but during the trail while figuring out how the murderer got to the child, they found a pharmacy tech at the hospital whose access code was used.

During the cross-examination of said tech, he admitted to letting his then-girlfriend use his ID badge and access, but also admitted to telling said girlfriend where sodium chloride (the poison) was stored in the hospital pharmacy.

Now, let’s discuss this. First, why would his girlfriend need his ID badge and access code to the pharmacy to visit the maternity ward at any time of the day? And why the heck would she need to know where to find and have access to a deadly poison to visit her sister-in-law and newborn nephew in the maternity ward?

And why didn’t the blanketty-blank stupid tech mention any of this when her nephew was dead by morning?

Yes, there was an effort to suppress and hide the true nature of his death by the in-laws, but there is no mention of having bribed the tech, let alone why the tech never figured out that she was up to no good before his scheming girlfriend actually entered the hospital.

I’m not going to point out that said newborn nephew was the first grandchild, but five years later, when it all came out finally, said girlfriend was married to someone else and had school-aged offspring, as in more than one. That timeline information never made sense to me, but oh well, it doesn’t change that any intelligent person (and one assumes that a pharmacy tech is intelligent) would have stopped and questioned, “Hey, hold on a minute. Why would you need access to a pharmacy to visit a maternity ward? And why the heck would you need the exact location of a poison to visit a newborn infant?”

Most importantly, an intelligent person should have reconsidered giving her his ID and access codes and should possibly have reported this to the police. And he most certainly should have reported this to the authorities when the nephew didn’t survive until morning!

And the author is stupid to think that an intelligent person wouldn’t at least think, “Hey, wait, this is messed up.”

Because I’m telling you this is messed up!

In the first story, it would make more sense if the child were considerably younger than thirteen for him not to understand biology enough to figure out that his grandmother is an idiot, but his parents didn’t even correct that lie when they learned it! That’s plain messed up.

For the second story, I can honestly say that I don’t write mysteries, but only because I’m too much of a pantser to manage the intrigue of a mystery properly. That isn’t to say that I don’t know mysteries because I do. Two of my favorite authors are Dick Francis and his son Felix. I read mysteries all the time.

Maybe the problem is that the new generation of authors doesn’t think that any of their readers will notice the flaw.

Newsflash, I wasn’t the only reader to notice that flaw in the first story.

On the second story, I wasn’t able to get back to the comment section after I came upon that momentous flaw with pharmacy tech.

So, again, is logic dead? Or do authors today not know how to fix plot holes?

Happy writing, everyone.