The Subplot: What to do when it is only loosely tied to the main plot?
The Background: I'm writing a novel that is set in the working quarters of a cruise ship. It's named after the "stage identitiy" of the main characters. (Let's call her Nancy.) All the subplots I have developed so far nicely hinge on Nancy. However, one of my secondary characters (Tim) turned out to have an excellent story to tell that is predestined to be a subplot in the Nancy-novel. Tim's story is neatly tied to another character. Unfortuanetly, this character is not Nancy, and no: It cannot, ever, be Nancy. Nancy is a concerned witness of Tim's story. That is all.
The Problem: I'm determined to tell Tim's story, since it is important to me and an integral part of life at sea. However, I'm afraid it will feel out of place in a novel called and centered around Nancy.
The Question(s):
- What is your experience with subplots? When do they become too complex or emotionally engaging to act as valid subplots? Have you ever picked a subplot from it's original story and wrote an independent novel around it?
- How can I engage the reader emotionally with a strong subplot without drawing his main sympathies the protagonist?
- Lastly: Since life at sea is communal, I considered using multiple points of view to capture the "village feeling" prevailing in ship communities. I feel that I have enough interesting secondary characters to pull this of. Yet, the novel should remain centered on Nancy. How do I weigh my narrators to make sure that Nancy is the single main character?*
*Yes, I concidered renaming the novel. However, Nancy is the core of the story and I feel the name is well justified.
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1 answer
The various parts of a novel may be tied together in different ways. They may be connected by the threads of plot. But equally they may be thematically related to each other, or provide thematic counterpoint to each other.
The wholeness and integrity of a novel depends on the wholeness and integrity of its effect of the reader. If the subplots intersect thematically it does not seem necessary that they should intersect at the level of incident or character. But they must intersect somehow, or they will seem out of place.
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