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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47656
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47656
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

How did Jack Sparrow escape that island he got stranded on? "Sea turtles". He escaped _somehow_, and he isn't going to tell us how. In fact, not telling us adds to his mystique. And he knows it, which is why he isn't telling us.

Of course, there's an issue of POV here. Jack Sparrow isn't the POV character, so he can keep secrets. A POV character doesn't have that luxury.

If it's a question of pacing, you can do the skip, and then the character would recount later how he did it. But ultimately, I would say, you can't have your POV character perform a seemingly impossible act, and get away without explaining how. It will look like a plot hole.

And indeed, the higher the stakes and the more impossible the feat is, the larger and more visible the plot hole. If it's something minor, it doesn't really matter how it was achieved. If it has significance, I don't think you can magic the problem away.

That said, telling us "how" doesn't have to be in detail. For example, in your first scene, if we know (or learn later) that Charlie is a hacker, that's enough of an explanation regarding how he did it - we can believe he had the professional knowledge to perform the feat, so how exactly he performed it becomes unimportant. We can believe that for him the feat is not impossible, that's all we need.

Original score: 28