11/13/2022 0 Comments Whats a subplotYou can give the reader a rest even when you don't give the characters one. And you can provide periods of release by changing the pace of the writing. But you can also have moments of partial release within the main plot too. Subplots are a good way to do that because they can happen in parallel to the tension/release line of the main plot. You need smaller moments of tension and release throughout the work. Imagine an entire symphony with no separate sections and only a single crescendo to the very end. A novel-length work is generally too big to have only a single point of release within it at the end. It sounds like what you're really struggling with is tension and release. Would it feel like a character is flat or unclear? It's probably character development. Think of it like this: If this scene were removed, would it feel like something was left undone? If so, that's probably plot or subplot. It's just not what I would call subplot.Įven a small subplot about witnessing a 60s sit-in as they're eating a bacon sandwich in their local café can open a gateway of opportunities to show how your character (s) will react and their thought process at the time to humanise and flesh them out to your reader. If there is no narrative thrust, it's just exposition or character description in the form of action. It goes somewhere and has a resolution on its own. Seeing the character do stuff that is not directly in service of the plot does not necessarily make it subplot. But I disagree that the resulting subplots themselves are as important as the main plot. The act of planning your subplots is important as planning the main plot, yes. Writing and planning a clear subplot (or several) is just as important as planning the overall plot of your story, whether it's long, or short, or somewhere in between. Of course, I'm no established writer or master of crafts but sitting down today and asking myself these questions after avoiding my pitiful draft like the plague really helped to clear my mind & get back on the right path again. Now finally ask yourself, is there an underlying message that you want to get across? How can you accentuate that? If you want to write a story about modern-day sexism, why not send your character(s) to a club and describe the sexualisation of females, or the way that older men pounce of them when they wonder away from their friendship groups? In what way do you want to portray this? Where is it set, and why? Is it completely accurate to the times? What type of people are there? Is politics relevent to your character(s) and by how much? Even a small subplot about witnessing a 60s sit-in as they're eating a bacon sandwich in their local café can open a gateway of opportunities to show how your character (s) will react and their thought process at the time to humanise and flesh them out to your reader. Make up a scenario and ask yourself, is it relevant? Does it give another layer to the character? If not, how can we give it importance? Do tasks like shining their shoes or eating breakfast give the reader insight into their personality? How can we make it so? Sit down, think about your character(s) and ask yourself, what's something that would happen in their life when they're not running in a bee-line towards the end of the book? I have no doubt that for some it's easy to sit down, write, and be able to knock out a 50k draft on inspiration alone but, if you're like me, writing begins to get tedious after you've gotten to the 8k mark and realised that, really, it's nothing more than a beefed up outline of the character getting from point A to point Z with none of the letters in-between. The main 'happenings' of most books don't come until the end. Writing and planning a clear subplot (or several) is just as important as planning the overall plot of your story, whether it's long, or short, or somewhere in between.Īfter taking time away from writing to sit down and properly start reading, ie taking the time to focus on structure and layout of a variety of different books, I realised that I'd forgotten one of the core lessons that I'd learnt about writing the second my 5-year-old self sat down in school. After falling face-first into a rut these past weeks, I've emerged with something so simple and basic that I'm honestly hitting myself over the fact that it never came to me before.
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