3/4/2023 0 Comments Subplot in a story![]() ![]() To Ellie’s surprise, Great Aunt Edwina is delighted. Everything is going well until they turn a corner and come face to face with Great Aunt Edwina, who has gone out for a walk (strands A and B collide and join together). This means Ellie can’t spend any time at the stables.Īfter a frustrating time with her great aunt, Ellie manages to escape for a while to take Shadow for his first drive (back to strand A). Great Aunt Edwina has invited herself to stay at the palace and Ellie’s parents give her the task of entertaining the grumpy old lady. Then, just as everything seems to be going well, the plot twists with the introduction of strand B. She decides that she could drive him instead of riding him so secretly starts training him to pull a carriage. Ellie has outgrown her Shetland pony, Shadow, and is horrified when the King declares he must be sold because he has no work to do. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for pony-mad children.) The problems caused by grumpy Great Aunt Edwina coming to stay at the palace. Ellie trying to stop her first pony being sold.ī. For example, the strands in Princess Ellie’s Secret are:Ī. Usually one is about the ponies and the other is about the royal world, and I always aim to end both strands in the final chapter. My Pony-Mad Princess books are around 7,000 words long and usually have two strands. (In writing jargon, they have a basic linear plot.) However, longer novels are more interesting if they have more than one strand and the longer the book, the more strands you can include. Short stories and children’s picture books work well with just a single storyline. (Incidentally, the better your book is plotted, the harder it is for analysts to tease apart the various strands of the story.) How many strands does a book need? All you need to know is that the strand is there so you can use it to the best possible effect. It won’t make any difference to your writing either way so you can leave that question for people who try to analyze your book after it’s finished. One big advantage in thinking about story strands rather than subplots is that you don’t have to worry whether a strand is big enough to count as a subplot in its own right or is really part of the main story. Others will be resolved during the progress of the story, but this needs to be done with care or, going back to our hair analogy, you’ll end up with an untidy plait with lots of straggly bits sticking out the sides. The story strands work together to carry the reader toward the end of the book and some, but not necessarily all, will be resolved at or around the same time as the resolution of the main storyline. Although you have the main storyline running through the whole novel, other story strands will be more important at various stages of the book, and some of the twists and turns in the plot come when you move from one strand to another or when two strands collide. If you’ve ever plaited hair, you’ll know that different strands become the top one as you work, and writing an interwoven plot is just like that. ![]() Other story strands (or subplots) intertwine with the main one, building it up from a single strand into a fascinating, deeply textured plot that will hold your readers’ interest. The main storyline is your central strand carrying the reader forward toward the final conclusion of the book. I prefer to think of story strands rather than subplots as that better explains how they work. When the authors realize there’s not enough going on, they stick in a completely irrelevant subplot, about a lost cat or a child’s birthday, that gets in the way of the main story and slows the action. Sometimes I find subplots exactly like that in novels I read-usually the ones that aren’t very good. It also gives the impression that they are something separate from the main plot-a second story running under the first one and completely disconnected from it. Unfortunately, the name “subplots” wrongly suggests they are somehow inferior or substandard. Subplots help pace your story and keep the tension rising. Today’s guest post is excerpted from Plots and Plottingby UK author Diana Kimpton. ![]() Photo credit: Theen … on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-SA
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