Main/Exponential Plot Delay/Alternate/Sandbox



A serial work that takes as much time getting to the three-quarter mark of plot progress as it did getting to the half-way mark. And then as much time again on the next eighth. And so on.

If such a work goes on long enough — and as long as this trope is in effect, the work is not going to reach the end naturally — then the plot will eventually freeze over. You'll know from watching the early installments that the story is supposed to be arc-driven, and the Reset Button is never used at any time; but the Myth Arc and A-Story will eventually be moving forward so slowly that new viewers will assume that Status Quo Is God.

This is a possible means to the end of keeping the overarching plot alive- a need that can arise because there are some subplots that need to be resolved, or even due to something as banal as Executive Meddling. After all, the overarching plot provides the core tension sustaining the work- if it is taken away, any attempt to keep telling the story anyway will trigger Ending Fatigue.

There are several ways to make this work. First and foremost are sub-plots (and possibly sub-sub-plots, and sub-sub-sub-plots...). The advantage of using these is twofold: they take the weight off the main plot and they provide an opportunity for storytelling in their own right. This method does have its pitfalls, however; too many threads with too little resolution equal a Kudzu Plot, and if there is too much turnover between threads the narration may end up falling victim to Four Lines, All Waiting.

Another way to keep the A-story stable is the repeated discovery of The Man Behind the Man, often coupled with the Sorting Algorithm of Evil- just as The Hero triumphs over a foe, he repeatedly finds out about an even worse foe out to get him. If all else fails, the writers can resort to Filler.

A typical work utilizing Exponential Plot Delay will start with an Intro Dump- Roughly half of what you'll ever need to know about the work will be introduced up front. Things will move at a comfortable rate for the next ten to fifteen installments, in which you'll meet the supporting cast and learn some of the nuances of the world the story is set in. At that point, plot development will slow dramatically. Maybe there's an attractive tangent that will turn out to be a Plot Tumor; maybe the first truly major villain has finally appeared. Maybe the writers got distracted by something shiny. The introduction of anything relevant to the show's original premise will eventually cease entirely, eventually leading to a state of Pseudo-Status Quo Is God where the forces of good and evil will be locked in a sporadic but unending battle. Story Arcs will rise and fall but beyond this point, no progress toward any goals that were set in the start of the series will be made.

Eventually, either the series ends or we reach the heat death of the universe. The former case is more likely; Real Life Writes the Plot, and it's common for Long Runners to get Cut Short due to financial problems or Author Existence Failure. Hopefully, the resulting Cosmic Deadline will compel the writers to take the A-plot properly out of the freezer, lightly microwave it with some lead-up and give it a satisfactory resolution. Another way to go about it is to produce a separate short work to Wrap It Up.

Compare and contrast Cosmic Deadline.


 * Inuyasha Episode 1: Kagome travels back in time. Episode 3: Kagome and Inuyasha start searching for shards of the Shikon jewel. Episode 24: All of the major protagonists have been introduced, except Koga. Episode 36: Koga. Episodes 96 - 101: Individual filler episodes. 102 - 122: Fighting. Episode 167: The show Overtook the Manga so they just don't make any more episodes. ...until the manga finished, anyway.
 * Ranma ½ is similar, but this arguably works in its favor, as it can focus on being an episodic comedy series without worrying about maintaining any sort of continuity or major plot arc.
 * Yu Yu Hakusho
 * Final Fantasy XII The first quarter of the game has you breaking into a palace, escaping, getting arrested, meeting the guy who killed your brother, escaping from there, your girlfriend getting kidnapped, you go to rescue her, get arrested again, and escape again. The second quarter has you going on a longish fetch quest, then one of your party members betrays you and dies. The third and most of the fourth quarter has you trek halfacross the world to find out how to use the shiny paperweight you fetched, then treking across the other half of the world to find out how to destroy it, then trekking across the entire map to destroy the rest, then trekking back across the map to find out how to make more. It's only in the second-last dungeon that the plot finds itself again and the plot threads that have been left hanging for half the game are resolved.
 * The Wheel of Time: To the point that you can go for an entire book without seeing one of the three male leads. Oddly, also a possible inversion, as the pace has apparently picked up since the existence failure of the original author.
 * The Anime/Pokemon anime follows the above formula almost exactly. Originally it was working up to a conclusion, then it got a popularity explosion and the execs wouldn't let it finish.
 * This seems to be where Safehold is headed as of the fourth book. Characters are added faster than they're killed off, and with all the checking in on minor figures like Gorjah, hundreds of pages can pass before the big players like Nahrman so much as make an appearance. And of course, since many of those big players are spying on everyone else, they spend a lot of pages discussing new developments before they actually decide to take action on any given situation.
 * Kamen Rider Agito follows this trope exactly, right down to the four criteria. The first one-third to half is pretty interesting, and then the Arc Fatigue kicks in and things go unresolved for a long while, after which they're tied up in a hurry in the finale. Unfortunately, this happens to be a Signature Style of the main writer, Toshiki Inoue. A similar condition returns in Kamen Rider 555, also by Inoue, only with less favorable results.
 * Some of the quest series in Runescape. The main examples are Elves, Menaphos and Morytania quest series. They started at rather fast pace when they were released, but each installment will either grant less progress than the previous installment of the quest series or suffers from Schedule Slip. Later though a few of the quest series have still been wrapped up.
 * In Pirates of Dark Water, the crew got their hands on the first two of the thirteen Treasures of Rule in the five episode mini-series, five more in the next eight episodes (the first season), before taking the entirety of the second season to get their hands on one more. Then came cancellation with only eight of the thirteen found, and enough filler episodes that could have been used instead to finish the story.