100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 2)

44) Using Subplots

Since the last section was about plot structure, I thought I'd go into a bit more detail when it comes to Story. Specifically, but taking a look at subplots. 

To recap: Story is the entire content of your manuscript, which includes the main plot, subplots, etc. 

The question that inspired me to write this section went something like this: How many subplots can I write? 

My answer might seem a bit confusing, but I'm hoping that the rest of this section will help to explain. Bear with me. 

The correct number of subplots is enough. Enough subplots to produce a well-rounded story, but not so many that they take focus away from the main plot. 

So how does this work? 

The way I see it, a subplot can do three things. 

1) It adds depth to the plot. 

The plot is the story's backbone. It consists of the intro, inciting incident, goal, conflict, stakes, choice, climax, and end. 

I'll go a bit into the intro later, but for now, let's focus on the others. 

Sometimes, the plot alone isn't enough to carry the entire story. By this, I mean that the plot wouldn't make sense, or wouldn't be strong enough, if something else in the story occurring outside of the main plot didn't enable something necessary to make everything work. 

For example, let's say we have a story about a cop who has to find a girl who was kidnapped by a serial killer. 

The bare-bones main plot will be: 

Intro: The cop arrives at work. 

Inciting Incident: The kidnapping case is given to him. 

Goal: To find the girl. 

Conflict: It's difficult to find her. The serial killer is smart. 

Stakes: If the cop doesn't find the girl, she'll die. 

Choice: This one can be a bit tricky, but let's say it's "find the girl or give up and hope they find the body".

Climax: The cop figures out where the girl is and squares off with the serial killer. 

End: The girl is saved and goes home. 

Pretty run-of the mill, no? The problem with this plot is that if you're just going to write out these plot points with nothing else around it, the reader just won't care. Even if you have every one of these points down, the plot won't have tension. Why? Because it's impersonal. You won't be able to make the reader care about the outcome. And if the reader doesn't care, tension doesn't exist. 

But changing the main plot will change the story from one about a cop racing to save a girl to something else entirely. Which we don't want to do. We're determined to write a story about a cop racing to save a girl. So what to do? 

I'd say there are two options. One of which I'll go into in the next section. But for now, let's just focus on the plot. 

Let's say we need to change the plot without changing the plot at all. We create an illusion of a "fuller" plot using subplots. 

We'll be adding subplots that add to the main plot so that the story as a whole is strengthened. The first thing I'd do is to add a sub-plot to make things personal to the main character. Where the serial killer has already killed someone that the cop was trying to save.