Category: Plot

3 Ways to Handle Subplots

  By ,
Photo of confusing road signs

Photo by WonderWoman0731 used under CC license.

Erin asks: I was recently watching a movie (The Huntsman Winter’s War) with my sister. My sister and I didn’t enjoy it for multiple reasons. One of them was that fact that the whole plot is filled with side stories because one was not enough to make a full movie (though each story could have been much longer with more creativity). So basically, we were jumping from story to story. I started to wonder if I am doing that unintentionally. I have one main story, but I have different, smaller conflicts too to go along with it. Is this too much? How do you tell if you’re patching little stories together and don’t have one main focus? How do you ‘cure’ this?

—

I don’t feel wholly qualified to answer this, since I haven’t given the subject much thought until now, but the question intrigues me. I tend to love subplots, but I also recently watched a movie with a terrible subplot that totally bored me. My response any time this subplot reared its head was “Why are you showing me this?” It had zero bearing on the main story.

The truth is, any given story contains infinite other stories. Each secondary character is the hero of his own story, with its own secondary characters who each have their own stories and so on and so forth. We can’t tell them all. How do we decide which ones to tell?

Whichever stories serve the main plot.

The main plot, the one that follows your protagonist, is the one your readers are (hopefully) invested in. Any subplot that doesn’t directly impact the main plot by the end, doesn’t belong in the story. Subplots generally impact the main plot in one or all of these ways:

  • Helps the hero
  • Hinders the hero
  • Provides important information about the hero’s background or enemy

Structurally, there are a few different ways to use subplots.

Subplot Structure 1: Split and Converge

Lord of the Rings is a great example of subplot use, and one you’ve probably read or seen, so I can probably go into more detail without spoiling it for you.

The main plot is the mission to destroy the Ring. Nine characters undertake this mission at first, but are soon broken up, and then only Frodo and Sam are carrying the Ring. Why do we continue to follow Merry and Pippin, the three warriors, and Gandalf?

First, because we’ve come to care about them. Just as the members of the Fellowship have grown close to each other, we have grown close to them. Aragorn’s pledge not to abandon Merry and Pippin to death by Uruks despite their broken Fellowship is also Tolkein’s pledge not to abandon their stories. The Fellowship holds for the readers as well as the characters.

Secondly, their further travels teach us things about Middle Earth that are relevant to Frodo, Sam and the fate of the Ring. Frodo and Sam’s journey is relatively isolated—so much so that Frodo himself begins to forget what they are fighting for. It’s the rest of the broken Fellowship that reminds us of the good in the world (as we see the Ents, Rohan, and Gondor) and simultaneously shows us what peril that world is in (forests burning, armies of Orcs and Urukai’, a possessed king of Rohan, and an insane steward of Gondor).

In this way, the subplots actually make us more invested in the main plot. They give it scope and resonance. Here are kings and armies fighting and dying in the name of a trinket held by a couple of humble Halflings. If all we saw was the trinket and the Halflings, we wouldn’t care nearly as much.

Thirdly, they are still all invested in the main plot. What happens to the Ring affects them. In fact, all our original friends (and some we met along the way) end up at the Black Gate of Mordor at the end, to draw the orc armies away from Mount Doom, so Frodo and Sam can finally destroy the Ring. Directly affecting the main plot again. It all comes full circle.

Subplot Structure 2: Surprise Convergence

Both Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Sachar’s Holes break away from their main plot to tell us other stories; stories that don’t seem to have more than a tenuous connection with the main characters. Yet by the end, everything comes together; the side stories turn out to be the keys to the mysteries presented in the main story.

This subplot method is riskier, because your readers must have patience, and trust you to reveal the relevant connection in the end, but it can also make for a very satisfying “aha!” resolution. It’s especially useful if you need a lot of backstory to explain what’s going on—instead of telling all the backstory before getting to the main story, you tell both at the same time, jumping back and forth.

Subplot Structure 3: Themed Connection

The movie Love Actually is more like a collection of interwoven short stories. There is no main story, but it does have a theme (romance), and all the individual stories are variations on that theme (love lost, won, unrequited, etc.). The stories do sort of all come together in the end, but only incidentally (the characters all know each other and happen to be going to the same place), not in a plot-relevant way (the stories don’t really affect each other).

If the stories didn’t vary, or conversely if they varied too much and didn’t even share a theme, the movie wouldn’t work. As it is, the individual stories may be shallow (some more than others), but breadth, not depth, is the aim.

 

A fourth subplot structure may be the use of a single subplot as comedic relief. This only works if it brings something new to the story and genuinely lightens up something that’s pretty dark. The movie that annoyed me the other day was basically a rom com/dramedy, and they added a rom com subplot. The movie was already funny—it didn’t need comic relief, and it certainly didn’t need more shallow romance.

Anyway, I hope this helps. In case it doesn’t, here’s a ninja lamenting the many plotlines in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie:

 

 

9 Storytelling Blunders That Make You Look like an Amateur

  By , , , ,
image of Riker facepalming

Image from Dark Uncle

 

You may be a grammatical black belt, leaping big vocabulary words in a single bound. But take care: you could still be making elementary mistakes that’ll leave your readers cringing, eye-rolling, and yes, even face-palming.

Protect your writerly reputation! Check out these nine storytelling mistakes that make you look like a total n00b—and learn how to fix them like a pro.

 

1. The Perfect Hero: Best We’ve Ever Seen

The problem: Your character is the Best at Everything, constantly impresses the other characters, and frequently breaks rules yet never gets in real trouble. This character is so cliché she has a name: Mary Sue. She’s amusing for awhile, but only as a daydream. She soon makes you look shallow and self-indulgent.

The fix: Give her fears and weaknesses. Trip her up. Relate to your readers by appealing to their vulnerability. As the Pixar geniuses remind us, we admire characters more for trying than for succeeding.

 

2. The Weak Villain: Foiled Again!

The problem: This mistake often goes with the one above. Your brilliant hero thwarts the villain yet again! Perhaps even single-handedly! But if your villain is that weak, you’re not challenging your hero, which means you have no conflict and therefore no story. It’s boring.

The fix: Give your villain multiple advantages over your hero. A bigger army, bigger guns, more political influence. Your hero should suffer greater and greater losses as he clashes with the villain throughout the story, until he reaches his lowest point, and finds some tiny advantage that helps him defeat the villain—probably an advantage you introduced near the beginning.

 

3. Instant Romance: Just Add Danger!

The problem: Contrary to action movie tradition, “we got shot at together” is not a valid basis for True Love, especially when your characters have only known each other for weeks, days, or even hours. Those stories can be titillating, but not moving.

The fix: Give your characters actual personalities, and something within those personalities that suits them for each other. Watch the first twenty minutes of Pixar’s Up or Wall-E to see how it’s done. (Or here’s more help avoiding shallow romance.)

 

4. Exposition: If You’re Just Joining Us…

The problem: Flat-out explanations for past events instead of hinting at them. You often see these in the subsequent volumes of a series to recap events from previous books, but you’ll also see it in standalone books to reveal heroes’ personal histories, or even to remind the reader what’s happened so far. It’s awkward and often boring.

The fix: This is a classic example of when you should show, not tell. Don’t say it, convey it. Here’s how to get rid of background exposition.

 

5. Laundry List Descriptions: Check, Check, Check

The problem: Describing every character with the same handful of features. Hair color. Eye color. And every article of clothing. You’re trying to give the reader a complete picture, but by the third or fourth detail their eyes are glazing over.

The fix: Pick a few details that inspire your readers to fill in the rest. What would strike you when you first met the character? What would you remember about him later? A unique mustache? A discoloration of the skin? An elaborately pocketed cloak? Focus on these details and give minimalist descriptions for the rest.

 

6. Surprise! It Was All a Dream

The problem: You coax your readers through some tragic or thrilling scene and then jerk them at the end by revealing it was only a dream. Unless you’re writing the next Inception, do not do this. It’s a poor attempt at increasing tension, which ends up feeling more like a broken promise.

The fix: If you must include a dream sequence, make it obvious from the beginning of the scene that it is a dream. Preface it with “I had another dream last night,” or fill it with surreal, dream-like qualities.

 

7. The Idiot Class: They’re All Like That!

The problem: Portraying a people group, often a religious or political organization, as nincompoops. In amateur YA fiction it’s common for all the adults to be idiots, while the kids cleverly fool them at every turn. Unless you’re writing farce, this makes you look shallow and bigoted.

The fix: A few fools are fine, but if you want to be taken seriously, include people with depth on both sides of the conflict. Don’t make your hero—or his cause—infallible.

 

8. Mini Morals: Holier Than Thou

The problem: The hero sidesteps from the plot onto a soapbox for some religious, political or ethical cause. It only lasts for a few lines of dialogue, but it’s spammy, like when you’re talking to a friend about your favorite movie, and he segues into all the reasons you should join the Church of the Lonely Potato. It’s annoying even if you already belong to the Church of the Lonely Potato.

The fix: If you’re going to have a moral or message in your story, the entire story should work to tell that moral, and you shouldn’t flatly state it at the end like in a Saturday morning cartoon. Instead, demonstrate it through the events and consequences of the story.

 

9. Pop Culture References: As Troubling as Justin Bieber

The problem: Modern pop culture references date your work and break your readers’ suspension of disbelief. In five years, is your Gotye reference going to make you look cool or out of touch? And blatant Blazing Saddles references do not help immerse me in your medieval dragon world, Mr. Paolini!

The fix: If your world isn’t connected to our modern world, avoid references entirely. If you’re writing about the future, you have more leeway, but stick with icons that have proven staying power (Bieber will likely follow Aaron Carter into obscurity, but The Beatles are safe territory). Bonus tip: reference your own made-up icons that are popular in your futuristic world.

 

Are you guilty any of these mistakes? What other amateur writing blunders make you cringe when you read them?

 

—

riker facepalming

Whatever you do when writing your novel, don’t do these nine things.

How to Fix Your Sagging Plot

  By ,

Does your story sag in the middle? Do you feel like you’re plowing through boring scenes just to get to the cool ones? Is your protagonist wandering around aimlessly, looking for the climax?

It’s not enough to have all the major events written down in a neat little list – what you need is structure.

An important distinction

Structure is not formula:

  • Formula is like having the same floorplan over and over.
  • Structure is a floor, walls and roof: you can organize them into whatever floorplan you like – but you can’t build a house without them.

Structure is the ebb and flow of tension and discovery that keeps you readers moving through the story. Structure helps you:

  • Keep the pace up
  • Know what’s important and what isn’t
  • Understand when to start and end the story

The following is a time-honored plot structure endorsed by Syd Field and others.

Structure of a Plot

setup, problem, confrontation, setback/decision, resolution

Photo by total13

Setup

In Act I, or the beginning of your story, you introduce the hero. We learn what he cares about and decide if we like him. This part should be relatively short. Keep the backstory to a minimum: it’s only an introduction.

Examples:

  • Bilbo celebrates his eleventy-first birthday
  • Luke buys some used droids
  • Passepartout starts a new job under Fogg

Problem

Within the first or second chapters, introduce the problem. Syd Field calls this Plot Point 1, which hooks the action and spins it into the next act. James Scott Bell calls it the first “pillar” of your plot “bridge,” or the first Door of No Return. This usually happens in a single scene – maybe at the end of the same scene you used to introduce the character.

Examples:

  • Frodo learns an evil something is coming to the Shire in search of Bilbo’s old Ring.
  • Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed, and he’s got the droids their killers are looking for.
  • Passepartout’s new boss bets some friends he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. Starting tonight.

Confrontation

Now we’re in the middle, or Act II of your story. This is the biggest chunk of the book. Your hero will face a series of obstacles, each more difficult than the last. As he overcomes each obstacle, the plot thickens, the tension increases, and the stakes are raised. In other words, new developments reveal that the hero stands to lose (or gain) even more than he originally thought.

Your hero should be getting more and more desperate; the pace should get quicker and quicker.

Examples:

  • Frodo and his friends face wraiths, orcs, trolls, giant spiders, etc.
  • Luke saves a princess, escapes the Death Star, loses his mentor, etc.
  • Passepartout and co. fight through bad weather, savage attacks, etc.

Setback/Discovery

Plot Point 2, the second pillar of the bridge, or the second Door of No Return. This is the worst setback and/or the major discovery that signals the climax. Your hero is now either armed with new information that leads him to a final showdown with the villain, or has been brought to his lowest point – he is betrayed, or he’s been shot, or the girl he’s been trying to save all this time gets killed, etc. The villain believes he has won.

It’s at this point the hero must make a decision. The ultimate decision.

Examples:

  • Setback: an army of orcs between Frodo and MountDoom. They disguise themselves as orcs. Decision: Frodo decides whether to keep or destroy the Ring.
  • Setback: Luke, now a rookie rebel fighter, is the last armed fighter left against the giant space station. Decision: Whether to trust the computer or the Force.
  • Setback: After being detained, Fogg and co. believe the game is lost. Decision: Fogg decides to marry the girl he loves.

Resolution

The End, or Act III. The climax and conclusion are the results of his ultimate decision. Does he win or lose, learn a lesson, live to fight another day?

Examples:

  • We find out who survived, who married whom, and who leaves Middle Earth.
  • We find out if Luke succeeds or fails and what that means for the Rebel Alliance.
  • Passepartout sets out to find a priest to do the marrying, when he discovers they arrived in town a day early – and we find out if they make it in time.

So there you have it. Just follow the bridge to get safely across to happily ever after.

—

Your plot is useless without this

  By , ,
Image by Francisco Osorio

Image by Francisco Osorio

–

A hundred strangers cling to one another as their runaway train thunders toward a dead end.

Across town, the only woman you’ve ever loved is strapped to a time bomb.

Save her, keep your heart from breaking. But a thousand other hearts get broken instead.

“My husband!” a woman screams as she runs up beside you, clutching a small boy to her chest. “My husband is on that train!”

Save the train, do the right thing, the city will throw you a parade. But all you’ll see through the floats and confetti will be the grief-ridden faces of your true love’s family and the knowledge that you’ll never see her again.

You inhale the deep breath you’ll need for the flight across town.

You’re frozen in mid-takeoff. You can’t take your eyes off the boy in the woman’s arms. He’s the age you were when your father was killed. Young, but you can see in his face he knows what’s happening. Because you felt the same.

Oh, snap. You curse and hammer the keyboard. You threw the little boy in to milk the drama, not to change your hero’s mind—but now you see there’s no turning back. This is going to mean rewrites.

For all the dramatic events that happen around your hero, there are equally dramatic events happening inside him. Events that move him to action. If you don’t keep track of what’s going on inside his head, you won’t be able to predict how he’ll react to any given situation, and by the time you realize it, you might be in a terrible plot bind.

Keep that from happening by mapping your hero’s emotional journey along with the plot. Here are a few guidelines to help.

Outline your hero’s history.

Three forces influence your hero’s decisions: logic, emotions, and morals. What makes sense? What feels best? What’s right? How each of this forces affects him is first determined by his past. So start by outlining his history with questions like:

  • What’s the most traumatic thing he’s ever experienced?
  • What’s the safest he’s ever felt and why?
  • What’s the worst sin he’s ever committed?
  • Which two people have the biggest positive and negative influence on him?
  • What does he want most?
  • (Here’s more help getting to know him)

Use his history to determine how he will react to each major plot point.

The severity of each situation relative to his personal demons will determine his decision. And every decision he makes will affect future events, which, in turn, affect him right back. As the story progresses and the stakes are raised, his decision process will change. Emotional turmoil clouds his moral judgment. Righteous anger clouds his logical judgment. It’s a tumbling system of cause and effect, playing on your hero’s weaknesses and leading to the climax.

Equip him for the ultimate decision.

At the climax, your hero must make one final decision between right and wrong. The forces influencing him are now one big mess of everything that’s happened so far. Of longing and pain and fear.

Make sure that mess includes the motivation for him to make the decision he is supposed to make. If you want him save the people on the train, kill off his father; plant the boy. But if you want him save the girl, you’d better plant something early on that will undermine his empathy for the boy and push him in a different direction.

And if you want him to find a clever way to save everyone (like they do in all the movies), you’d better give him a memory that inspires the answer.

—

How to kill your hero

  By , ,

SPOILER ALERT: The following includes spoilers for City ofAngels(Sparks), Message in a Bottle (Sparks), A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), The Brothers Bloom (movie), and Stranger Than Fiction (movie).

—

I’ve blogged about sadism, I’ve blogged about happy vs. sad endings, but this recent InMon piece from LoveTheBadGuy made me want to hit on a more specific topic:

When—and how—to kill a main character. Because sometimes you have to.

But here’s the thing: if you find yourself choosing between preserving the integrity of the story, and pleasing your readers—you are doing something wrong. Readers (the only ones you care about, anyway) will only be pleased if you preserve the integrity of the story.

Or maybe you just want to avoid the clichéd happy ending. But if the ending is that predictable, the ending isn’t the problem; the rest of the book is. Killing the hero because letting him live is cliché is like painting your daughter’s nursery black because pink is cliché. It’s a stunt. Controversy for its own sake, instead of what’s good for the story.

What you’re really looking for is surprise—a twist the readers weren’t expecting. But ask yourself what kind of surprise you’re giving them—good or bad?

Nicholas Sparks’s Unfailing Examples:

  • An angel falls in love with a human, eventually decides to become human himself, so they are finally free to be together when suddenly she gets hit by a car.
  • A reporter finds a heartbreakingly romantic message in a bottle and goes on a search to find its writer, who turns out to be a rugged sailor in the throes of depression over the death of his wife. As he finally opens himself up to love again, he suddenly dies in a shipwreck.

We’re on the edge of our seats rooting for these people to get together, and then—whammo! Sorry, kids, here comes the rainy funeral scene!

Two Reasons This Sucks:

1. While many people like sad endings, nobody likes rude surprises.

2. It’s the same as the pot-bellied uncle who begs “gimme five,” and pulls his hand back at the instant you go to slap it. It’s not clever. It’s just mean.

The Surprise Death

If the death must be a surprise, then it must be meaningful, and the whole story should lead up to it.

When Sydney Carton dies in A Tale of Two Cities, we look back and see that his resemblance to Charles Darnay, his love for Darnay’s wife, and his regret that he has wasted his life, all lead him to give his life for Darnay, so Darnay and wife can live happily ever after.

The Brothers Bloom appears to be a charming heist movie—we aren’t expecting any good guys to die. Bloom, who has wanted out of the crime business for a long time, reluctantly follows his big brother, Stephen, into yet another con. Bloom doesn’t discover until the end that the con involved Stephen sacrificing himself to get Bloom out of the business for good—with a pretty girl, to boot.

“You don’t understand what my brother does. He writes his cons the way dead Russians write novels, with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and s****. And he wrote me as the vulnerable anti-hero. And that’s why you think you want to kiss me. It’s a con.”

 – Bloom in The Brothers Bloom

The Expected Death

“The woman I loved is…dead.”

–         Christian narrating the beginning of Moulin Rouge

Like all of Sparks’s books, Moulin Rouge tells the story of two unlikely lovers who overcome multiple obstacles to be together—until one of them up and dies at the end, for no apparent reason. The difference? Moulin Rouge warns us at the very beginning. Do I miss the thrill of not knowing? No, because instead of holding out for a last-minute victory and then being sorely disappointed, I’m free to enjoy the story for what it is—a beautiful tragedy.

The Surprise Survival!

Or you can turn it around and hint—even state outright—that you are going to kill your hero, and then up and save him. Happy surprise! But be careful; the same rule for the surprise death applies for the surprise survival: it must make sense. In Stranger Than Fiction, for instance, Eiffel saved Harold Crick with his wrist watch, which had itself been a character since the beginning.

 

Hilbert: Why did you change the book?
Eiffel: Lots of reasons. I realized I just couldn’t do it.

Hilbert: Because he’s real? 
Eiffel: Because it’s a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die. And then dies. But if a man does know he’s about to die and dies anyway. Dies- dies willingly, knowing that he could stop it, then- I mean, isn’t that the type of man who you want to keep alive? 

–         from the final scene of Stranger Than Fiction

—

Agree? Disagree? Tell me why in the comments!