Are questions about general plot solutions on-topic?

Question

I asked a question after I carefully evaluated what is considered on-topic (under "Generating plot ideas") and read the related linked question. After some debate in the comments and getting two good answers the question was put on hold as "off-topic". The specific reason provided was

"This question appears to be off-topic because asking what to write or asking for help rephrasing a sentence or passage are both off-topic here, as such questions are very unlikely to help anybody else."

I disagree with this. "help rephrasing a sentence or passage" is definitely not what I did, so I guess it has to be "what to write". Following the provided link I find it very hard to understand how that could be applied to my question, further explanation would be nice. It's not that I have no idea what to do at all (I explicitly wrote in the question "I could work some way out"), but that I simply "would prefer if there would be a reasonable scenario where this doesn't even happen." Note that I also have the "what happened before" and "what happened after" worked out already.

The message's phrase "such questions are very unlikely to help anybody else" also doesn't seem to be true. As I said, after reading this answer I tried to abstract the current situation to a degree just under simply asking "Something would likely happen in the story, how can I make it not happen?". I left out many many many details (e.g. that one of the heroes kinda causes both the Big Problem and the Entity, talk about responsibility) so this situation could become recognizable to other fiction writers and help them. Some points in the answers wouldn't even work in my current setting, but that is okay because I asked a general question. Surprisingly enough, after a night of sleep I realized that the level of abstraction in my question allows me alone to apply it to not one, not two, but three(!) different occasions in my stories, where each time the Entity and the Big Problem are different things. I think it would be sad if questions like that wouldn't be allowed on Writing.SE

Side note: The question is really no good fit for Worldbuilding.SE because it simply isn't about building a world, but just plot. I'm also on that site and one of my sandbox questions has been found off-topic for exactly that reason. Also see this meta discussion there. And I know there are simple forums where such questions could be discussed, but this is also the case for almost any question on the SE network. I just think that Writing.SE could profit from such kind of questions.

Question: Are such general questions about how to nudge the plot in the right direction on-topic?

Answer 1

As another answer says, the line isn't as clear as we might like it to be.

I think you've done a good job of asking a plotting-technique question as opposed to a plot question. Stories where heroes struggle while super-powered beings are available aren't new, and it's reasonable to think that others could provide experience-based advice. (One example: aside from "it would be a really short book", why in the world doesn't Harry Potter alert Dumbledore to problems that threaten Hogwarts and all wizards instead of trying to figure it out himself?)

That's what I think, and I know that it's a fuzzy line so I'm reluctant to use my binding moderator vote to reopen, at least right away. But I'd like to see community discussion with an eye toward making any needed improvements and reopening.

Edit: Upon reflection, and after rereading the question Mark linked in the comments, I have a suggestion. Your current question asks for plot elements, which is problematic, and people answered that so you can't change that question out from under them now. But maybe you can ask a new question that focuses on plotting techniques -- not "what should my characters do" but "how can I figure out what my characters should do". You could reuse a fair bit of the content from your existing question, I think. (And maybe we should rename the plot tag to "plotting" to avoid misleading people.)

That said, I personally think this is a plot category or archtype that can help other people, not "write my story for me". Others disagree.

Answer 2

General questions about plot are on-topic - but it's a big blurry region instead of a fine line

General questions should be allowed as these are relevant to other future readers that might be interested in a similar broad topic, just as this answer you linked says.

Specific questions about the plot of an individual author should not be allowed, as that won't be helpful to future readers.

The only problem is defining whether something falls on the "general" or the "specific" side, which many people would call a "fine line". While thinking about this topic I was reminded of a discussion about closing opinion-based questions on WorldBuilding, where I opted to call this not a fine line, but instead a big blurry region.

It's not easy to define "general" and "specific" in such a general case and with enough specifics to be applicable in every situation - it's simply a case-by-case decision that we as a community need to embrace. And the biggest problem is that everyone likely has a slightly different understanding of what "general" and "specific" mean. Therefore your line would be somewhere else than my line - which is why this is a region instead of a line. Furthermore there may be words, phrases or topics where someone is more inclined to "live and let live" and topics where someone might be harsher - which makes this region blurry.

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I initially voted to put your question on hold as "What to write?", but you linked to these discussions and I retracted my vote. Now that I've had some time to look through the posts, here is what I think about your specific situation.

Things that make me want to say this is "general":

• You tried to make your question as broad as possible by using generic terms such as "Entity" and "Big Problem"
• You tried to describe the past in only a couple of sentences with generic plot ideas - getting hints or gadgets and solving problems
• You tried to abstract what people or groups could likely do - the bullet points you listed

Things that make me want to say this is "specific":

• Your specific details: your Entity is an AI and your extinction event is a superior alien race
• Your specific problem: the first solution doesn't fit your style so it has to be something different
• Your bullet points: there is no problem in not doing anything and there is a problem in doing something - but if the AI did nothing the aliens would overrun the Earth (or whatever planet you are working on) and then the AI would be alone or would get destroyed next -> the details show me that your bullet points seem to be in disagreement and that I would have to focus on solving your problem

And a separate problem: the answers are both lists. But the goal you mentioned, which is also the goal of StackExchange in general, is to have one question with one objectively best answer that the community votes to the top. Now we have a couple lists with multiple answers. Which of them is the best? And how do we discourage people to start writing half a dozen answers each? List answers that seem to be valid make me question whether the question is valid.

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Considering the points above I think this question is - on my personal line... maybe with a small drift to "What to write?" because of the answers you already received.

I retracted my close vote, but I feel neither comfortable voting clearly to "Reopen" nor would I feel comfortable to vote to "Keep Closed" in its current state. I'll skip this one.

Answer 3

Why don't we just try something new?

This site is struggling with its beta status, unable to attract a significant number of new users. The issue has been discussed countless times on Meta, and there is a strong opinion that writers might be looking for solutions to problems that they aren't allowed to ask here.

So why aren't we courageous for once, instead of timid and afraid, and simply start an experiment. I suggest that we

try allowing plot-help questions for a limited time

for example for three months, or during NaNoWriMo (which would allow us time to plan and prepare for that), and after that period we evaluate how that experiment went and either keep allowing plot-help questions, if we agree that they brought valuable members and useful questions, or discontinue them, if these questions threw the site into chaos.