Plot Holes

I was watching Bounty with some friends who had not yet seen it and made a few discovers that were confirmed by some of their comments afterward. As a writer and filmmaker I always develop a very detailed back story for each character to give them depth. Now I have learned more about how to incorporate those back stories into the script having gone through the process a number of times since my first Screenplay, Bounty.

The big learn that I realized was even though you may have a detailed back story to give reasons as to why characters do certain things the audience does not know those back stories and it thus creates a plot hole in your script. We may know exactly why someone acts a certain way, why a character is allowed to stay alive, etc. but the audience will often times walk away asking, "why not just shoot the guy and be done with it." As writers we need to let the audience know why a character does things they way they do them. The challenge is to not make the reveal blatant exposition.