Needs a better title: Bugger The Plot

However, this trope is not focusing on anything that "results" in Padding and Filler. We're not highlighting the instances where a work's creator stops in the middle of his creative-thinking process to figure out ways to expand a work's length by throwing in stuff that detracts from the main plot with the potential result being Padding or Filler or something else; the trope is focusing on the actual detraction from the main plot, which, in this case, is usually only amounting to Padding and Filler.

Subplots are also not "detours" from the main plot, but rather smaller occurrences that generally help to establish and set up occurrences that happen later in the main plot. A work shifting focus to a subplot is not the same as "ignoring the main plot," not by a long shot. And when subplots are truly completely unrelated to a main plot, that would still only amount to being Padding because of its sheer lack of purpose.

edited 27th May '11 9:12:04 AM by SeanMurrayI

Is that what you are trying to get at, detouring the plot pointlessly? Rewrite it so you can tell that. I couldn't, by reading what is there now.

I'm going to re-write it again since there still seems to be an awful lot of confusion about what this trope is about. To clarify again.

• Important thing that should not be ignored

• Important thing ignored in favour of less important thing

• Return to focus on more important thing, usually just in time

For example, in the anime Soul Eater, Death the Kid stops in the middle of a massive long chase that has the fate of the world at stake and is massively important - in order to have a prolonged conversation that was still important, but could easily have waited. Then they start the chase again. It wasn't filler or padding, but it still shouldn't have resulted in them stopping.

edited 27th May '11 9:36:30 AM by Hadashi

So ... detouring the plot.

Well, yeah, pretty much. But where the detour goes is not the important part, the important part is the detour itself where a character ignores an important plot point in favour of something else.

This may result in another trope, but it doesn't start with those tropes. Things like Filler and Padding tend to be something that happens along the way, this trope relates to either a derailment of the main plot or a diversion from it. The characters may or may not get back to the main plot or that plot point later.

edited 27th May '11 11:00:23 AM by Hadashi

I'm a little puzzled by the "less important" distinction in that second bullet. "Less important" would still imply that something carries importance, and I'm not necessarily sure if making a segway to something of "less importance" makes for a "detour" or "diversion" if it carries importance; it certainly wouldn't make for a pointless detour, like Fast Eddie calls it.

Say, similar to your example, you have a character who has caught up to the Big Bad and can just as well go and confront him... but the character first stops to talk with one of his companions to try to clear up some differences and tension between them that developed earlier in the story, set things aside, and inspire his companion to help him fight the Big Bad together because the character cannot confront the Big Bad on his own. That, I would think, would be strong enough to be called a crucial plot point and not necessarily a detour or a diversion from the main story.

What Fast Eddie is picturing, I think, is when the conversation that the character stops to have would need to be completely unimportant to the story, not simply "less important."

edited 27th May '11 11:13:11 AM by SeanMurrayI

I don't think importance is a factor. The trope is the detour itself, not any of the detour's qualities.

edited 27th May '11 11:14:32 AM by FastEddie

And now you're better at explaining the trope than me. Sorry there. I was focusing on other things.

So the point is, the protagonist or any main character purposely does a detour from the most relevant path, resulting in Filler and all that jazz.

I'll see if there is anything that needs to be cleaned on the page.

edited 27th May '11 11:23:03 AM by chihuahua0

Exactly Eddie

^^^ That's fine, but I'm just not entirely clear on what exactly a "detour" is really supposed to be defined as in these particular instances.

I would assume it must refer to some kind of "prevention of characters taking a direct course of action", similar to the definition of the actual word "detour", but that doesn't appear to be what we're talking about here. Delaying the plot or character's goal in the vein of "go to where Big Bad is, stop for conversation with close companion, confront Big Bad personally" would not really be the same as making a "detour" around it, I don't think.

edited 27th May '11 11:36:39 AM by SeanMurrayI

Ok. Imagine you are driving. The destination is your Big Bad who has your serial-abductee girlfriend hovering over a pool of acid.

Instead of driving straight to the abandoned factory as fast as you bloody-well can....you turn off down a more scenic route, or stop at the services. You may be in a massive hurry but, for some reason, despite wanting to save her, you stop off somewhere for some reason, or go a longer way.

Does that make sense?

That's not what a detour is. For your example to involve a real detour, something must actually be preventing me from taking the direct route and forcing me to go a longer, possibly more round-about way. For me to simply choose to take the longer way would not be a detour but, rather, myself making a conscious decision on my own part to delay my own progress for apparently no rational reason.

edited 27th May '11 11:47:17 AM by SeanMurrayI

If a door is locked the plot takes a detour so they can venture into a cave get the key / Sword of Plot Advancement and open the door would be a detour.

That might be a separate trope but its still too damn close to Filler to be a trope by itself IMO. (If there are important plot related events that happen along the way it might be a different story.)

edited 27th May '11 11:50:35 AM by Raso

^^ That is exactly what a detour is.

A detour is "A roundabout way or course, especially a road used temporarily instead of a main route. 2. A deviation from a direct course of action." It does not have to be forced.

If I'm going to the grocery store, and the direct route is down Smith Street to First Avenue to Melrose Place, but for some reason (construction; a bad accident at the corner of Smith and First; I want to stop at the bank first and it's on Third Street; whatever; it doesn't matter why) this time I go down Smith Street to Third avenue, then to Boardwalk, then back to First Avenue and on to Melrose Place, I've taken a detour.

edited 27th May '11 11:55:28 AM by Madrugada

That's what logical people do in real-life, Sean, we aren't talking about that too much.

I've updated the article again, have another read through.

edited 27th May '11 11:55:52 AM by Hadashi

^^ But you just proved exactly my point. It's the road construction or car accident prevents you from taking your normal, straight-forward route. You didn't simply choose to go a different way. You were forced to because of the road block.

^ It doesn't matter "what logical people do." You are not describing what a detour is properly. Call it Delay The Plot, since that's more in line with what you just suggested. Your use of the word "detour" does not match with what Maddie, Raso, or I have said a detour is.

edited 27th May '11 12:02:42 PM by SeanMurrayI

You don't have to be forced to. You could take a detour just because you feel like it. Or, in Plot Detour, because the author does.

edited 27th May '11 11:57:39 AM by Hadashi

I tweaked it a bit.

Ok, it isn't nesesserally about a plot complication though, rather it is any objective.

It would much help your case with examples.

Well, this is the most direct one. It's in Plot Detour under New Media.

http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/2010/06/delay-ending.html

edited 27th May '11 12:38:49 PM by Hadashi

But that's not a detour; the character isn't taking a roundabout, longer way to his goal, he's putting off his ultimate goal to do something else entirely, hence why that article is titled "Delay The Ending."

Intentional Stalling =/= Taking a Detour.

edited 27th May '11 12:50:03 PM by SeanMurrayI

Yeah that doesn't sound quite like a detour... its Padding.

^ Now, I'm willing to call that "Delay The Ending" article a basis for a form of Padding that's so distinct and so egregious that it can possibly be deemed a subtrope.

Just... call it what it is though. "Detour" and "delay" are not synonyms or interchangeable terms.

edited 27th May '11 1:02:21 PM by SeanMurrayI

Full Stop On The Plot? The Plot Continues After My Smoke Break?