What's it called when a plot isn't ever made explicit?

[New_To_Comics]

I'm not sure how to describe it, but my current idea involves a few plots. There's the A-plot and the B-plot, which involves a road trip and a secondary mystery. And that's where the question comes it. I don't want to cram in the exact how why what and when. My idea is, I know who stole the thing, and who could've stolen the thing, and who did steal it, and why. And of course parts of that are gonna come up naturally, I guess, as they're traveling to find the thief (they discover something else instead). But most of it...well, maybe the closest thing is "Emergent narrative" where the hypothetical reader gets the pieces to puzzle it together, but that doesn't sound right bc that's entirely non-lineair and that's impossible for comics, AFAIK

[moontokkym]

I mean... Slice of life is known to be plot-lite, and the road trip part could definitely fit under that label by the sounds of it. Depending on the tone I've seen stuff like this called "cosy" as well, "slow burn" might also fit technically and isn't restricted to one genre (if both romances and Dracula can be slow burns, that's a pretty wide scope).

I've seen what you're describing more in games, like Stray (the cat game, not the other one), Outer Wilds and the like, maybe look into how they're described to see if something fits what you're looking for?

[jwabeasley]

that's entirely non-lineair and that's impossible for comics

You can do non-linear in comics! Without going outside established conventions, you could do different panel frame colors or gutters for different perspectives or times. You can also show different actions at the same time by splitting the page down the middle, to draw some sort of connection between two events.

[New_To_Comics]

That's absolutely brilliant, I genuinely didn't know that! (I should probably read more comics that do something like my idea, only I don't know of any). And thar would also work for my idea?

[New_To_Comics]

I'll look into those games you mentioned!!

[Kelheor]

There's literally no problem with non-linear in comics. I make a 6 panel slice of life which kinda reminds of what you described, sometimes it gets a few heavy plot episodes creating a small arc, some of them are also flashbacks, you can check it here as example, episodes 54-60 are main plot heavy, while those before just have some hints.

Some readers do say they need the main plot idea (not the slice of life) to be more "in the face", but they will just need to make their peace with a the fact they will not get more than a few episodes of it