#novel plotting

so, i am currently plotting a story and I was wondering what's everyone's most important part of writing a subplot romance arc?

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Not that many people will see this at all, but if someone does, I hope it helps you write the amazing story I know you can. 

I created an in-depth character sheet on google sheets that I’m also going to add more to; it already has conflict planning there, and I’m planning on adding “Outlining Your Plot” next. After that, there’ll be subplots, setting, and NanoWrimo Young Writer Program’s “Survival Tips” as reminders at the bottom. 

You can comment on the sheet and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Just make a copy and you can start filling as much out as you deem necessary. Plenty of what’s in there doesn’t apply to many novels, but it should be everything you need to know about your character. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nSFnAeiwKfHq_jqXBrSYklHqG56Mr17C/view?usp=sharing

Answer: Almost definitely.

A subplot can be anything. It’s a little story within the big story, and it can revolve around the main character or a side character. More often than not, there is a romance subplot woven into ANY non-romance genre work, for example. Today we’ll discuss how subplots can be used to enrich your Central Plot.

Here is McKee’s diagram for a standard 118 minute film, showing the inciting incidents and the end times of each act.

Note how the three subplots all have unique pacing. Also, notice how all subplots are begun in Act 1 of the Central Plot. Some of them have only one act (Subplot A), some have two (Subplot B), and some last the entire movie, with an inciting incident and closing that coincides with those of the Central Plot (Subplot C). Subplots A and B both climax and end during the potential mire of Central Plot’s Act 2, keeping pace up, while Subplot C is building and adding its own flavor to the ongoing Central Plot.

Subplots can be used to add to your story in the following four ways.

1. Adding Irony

“A subplot may be used to contradict the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and thus enrich the film with irony.”

(Controlling Idea is McKee’s term for the “theme” of the story. To learn more, see my post where I talk explain his method of determining your story’s controlling idea.)

“Suppose you were writing a happy-ending Love Story with the Controlling Idea ‘Love triumphs because the lovers sacrifice their needs for each other.’ You believe in your characters, their passion and self-sacrifice, yet you feel the story’s becoming too sweet, too pat. To balance the telling, you might then create a subplot of two other characters whose love ends tragically because they betray each other out of emotional greed. This down-ending subplot contradicts the up-ending Central Plot, making the film’s overall meaning more complex and ironic. ‘Love cuts two ways: we possess it when we give it freedom, but destroy it with possessiveness.’”

2. Reinforcing and Enriching the Controlling Idea

“Subplots may be used to resonate the Controlling Idea of the Central Plot and enrich the film with variations on a theme.

If a subplot expresses the same Controlling Idea as the main plot, but in a different, perhaps unusual way, it creates a variation that strengthens and reinforces the theme. All the many love stories in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, for example, end happily--but some sweetly, some farcically, some sublimely.

The principle of thematic contradiction and variation is the genesis of Multiplot films. A Multiplot has no Central Plot to structurally unify the telling. Instead, a number of plot lines either cross-cut or connect the same idea.”

3. Setting Up the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident

“A late-arriving Central Plot--ROCKY, CHINATOWN, CASABLANCA--leaves a story vacuum for the first thirty minutes that must be filled by subplots to engage the audience’s interest and acquaint it with the protagonist and his world in order to evoke a full reaction to its Inciting Incident. A setup subplot dramatizes the Central Plot’s exposition so that it’s absorbed in a fluid, indirect manner.”

4. Complicating the Central Plot

This is the most important usage of subplot: to create an additional source of antagonism. In the Crime genre, there is often a subplot of a love story that complicates the Central Plot. 

“The balance of emphasis between the Central Plot and subplot has to be carefully controlled, or the writer risks losing focus on the primary story. 

Additionally, if the protagonists of the Central Plot and subplot are not the same character, care must be taken not to draw too much empathy to the subplot’s protagonist. 

To de-emphasize a subplot, some of its elements--Inciting Incident, act climaxes, Crisis, Climax, or Resolution--may be kept offscreen.

If, on the other hand, as you develop your screen play, your subplot seems to demand greater focus and empathy, then reconsider the overall design and turn your subplot into the Central Plot.”

How to Tell if a Subplot Is Unnecessary

Say that you have a work with a subplot in it, but you’re not sure whether it actually adds something to the story, or whether it’s just something that you liked and wanted to throw into the mix.

Really look at that subplot and ask yourself whether it does any of the above four things. If it doesn’t do any of them and is merely something running alongside the Central Plot, it will split the story down the middle and destroy its effect. 

“The audience understands the principle of aesthetic unity. It knows that every story element is there because of the relationship it strikes to every other element. This relationship, structural or thematic, holds the work together. If the audience can’t find it, it’ll disengage from the story and consciously try to force a unity. When this fails, it sits in confusion.”

So let’s say that you examined that subplot and you realized that it didn’t fulfill any of the above four purposes. But you still love it, and you want to keep it in there. To you, McKee has this advice:

“Faced with irreconcilable choices, such as pace versus empathy, the wise writer redesigns the story to preserve what’s vital. You’re free to break or bend convention, but for one reason only: to put something more important in its place.”

You observe the way a story is organized and how it achieves its flow

You become familiar with tropes and archetypes

Story structure becomes an easy to recall memory, and every novel you’ve ever read becomes a reference book

You develop how you write stylistically, the things you hate and the things you try to emulate

I’ve seen a few posts floating around about how different people keep track of their characters and timelines in their planning, so I figured I’d add to the pile.

I find that the best way to keep track of my timeline is using a Gantt chart! I use the website TeamGantt. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just found they’re the best site to use, and I shall tell you why.

This is kind of a long post, with photos because I’m super extra. I put a below the cut thing so I don’t clog everyone’s dash up with this. 

so I’ve seen various people wonder how to plot novels, so I decided to share my method. As usual, the steps without the attached descriptions and examples will be posted at the bottom for people who want to copy-paste

this method works for a single storyline/single POV. if there are two storylines or povs, you may have to alter some of the steps near the end of this process to fit your needs.

Spoiler warning: I use examples from both the Hunger Games and The Martian

1. Have an idea. 

This can range from a general vibe, or something more concrete, such as plot points. The easy thing about this step is it doesn’t really need to be super specific, just a general idea of the direction you want to go.

2. Start writing down the things you know.

Start creating a list/brainstorm of all the ideas you have at this point. For me, this is usually an assortment of dialogue clips, worldbuilding, character vibes, plot points, things like that. You will likely find that you have a lot stronger grasp on some of these things, and a lot weaker grasp on others. This is perfectly okay. (for example, when I did this for my current WIP, I knew a lot more than I expected about the worldbuilding, but the characters didn’t have as much detail to them. The more time you spend brainstorming here, the easier it will be moving forward. To make it easier, I usually catagorize this stuff into the catagories of: plot, characters, worldbuilding, other.

3. Identify your main character.

You may already have a character in mind, but you will want to identify who that person is, and in a very basic sense of what they’re like. At this point in the process, it doesn’t really matter if they’re not fully developed/one or two dementional. You just need to know who is leading your story

4. Create a scaffolding outline.

NOTE: this will likely not be the same outline you end up with, but having a basic idea is going to be helpful when you start worldbuilding. 

You should have a sentence/bullet point for each plot point, but not much more than that. Remember - this is going to be more of scaffolding than your final outline, and it’s more to give you a sense of where the story might be headed. If it helps you to think about the story in terms of acts, each of the three acts has two of the plotpoints listed below; one near the beginning of the act, and the other at the very end. Below, the -- indecates the seperation between each act.

The catagories you should fill out are:

Enciting incedent: this is the thing that first rocks your character’s world.

No return: your protagonist makes a decision (or has a decision forced upon them) that they cannot return from - no matter if they succeed or fail, they will not be able to go back to the same life they had. 

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Midpoint: (this actually comes half way through the second act, rather than being positioned near the beginning) This is a turning point, and something that will test your characters. This will be one of the most intense points in your book to your character, other than the climax and breaking point. 

examples:

in The Martian, the airlock broke, and all the food was frozen. Unless this problem is solved, starvation is imminant.

in The Hunger Games, Katniss has to choose between dropping the Trackerjacker nest on her enemies, or not to.

Breaking point: something really bad happens, and this is your character’s lowest point in the book.

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Climax: This is where your protagonist finally confronts the antagonist. 

Resolution: This is the aftermath of the climax, and the determiner if your book has a happy ending or a sad one. 

5. Worldbuilding: Brainstorming

Now that you have a scaffolding outline, think about what places might need to exist in your world. Does your Inciting incident plotpoint involve your protagonist finding a dragon in the forest? If that’s the case, you need to have a forest. Dragons are probably rare if this is the first time your protagonist has found one. Maybe they’re unheard of. Think about the implications of each of your plotpoints and add them to your brainstorming list that you started in step 2. The more you do here, the easier the next step will be. 

6. Worldbuilding: Figuring stuff out.

This is the harder of the two worldbuilding steps. Figure out things such as climate, weather, animal/plant life, commerce, social norms, magic system, whether or not there’s a religeous system, etc. I strongly recommend this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja3IgxY7dbU - Worldbuilding Basics) by Jenna Moreci. What I did was take notes about all of the questions she posed, and then copy-pasted it onto a google doc and filled it in from there. Rather than answer questions in order, it’s far easier to answer with what you know first, because that will influence your other answers. As you answer more and more things, other answers will get easier - you’ll be filling in gaps, rather than creating things out of nowhere.

This is also a great time to make world or town maps. Two resources that worked really well for me on this front (for fantasy) are: this tutorial (for making worldmaps), and this tutorial (for town maps)

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character development, skeleton outline, create a story, organize your cards, fill in holes, more details (optional) all under the break