It is a sign of bad writing to have many scenes that are disconnected with the main plot?
So my novel look like this (I took this diagram idea from this site, but I'm not sure exactly from whom):
The beginning and end focuses on the mystery that the heroine is trying to solve (main plot). The middle focuses on her relationship with the other characters.
So I ended up with many random scenes that are disconnected with the main plot (they are indirectly related to it, though). Basically, the main plot is acting as a metaphor for what's happening to her and the people around her.
I presented the opening of the novel in this question (in case you want to know)
Is this a sign of bad writing? Are there many books with this type of plot structure? (By bad writing, I mean giving the reader a feeling of discontinuity and dullness).
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Along with nodding vigorously at everything Neil said...
You can have discontinuity in the beginning, but at some point it has to be apparent to the reader how these threads are connected.
In GRRMartin's Song of Ice and Fire series, the main action takes place on the continent of Westeros. Dany Targaryen is the exiled daughter of a previous king of Westeros, and all her story takes place far to the south. But a few characters cross back and forth, and Dany's entire purpose is to come back to Westeros to reclaim the throne. So the main plotline may or may not interact with Dany's so far, but the reader knows that at some point they will.
If Plotline A is an echo of or metaphor for Plotline B, I would say that by the time we're a third of the way in, the reader should be getting some clear hint that they are connected.
There may be an audience for "impenetrable characters doing things for opaque intents," but I really prefer to be able to figure out what the hell is going on and why. Mystery is great as long as the mystery is both solvable and revealed.
One example is the movie Murder by Death. It's a parody of great detective characters, and [SPOILER] if you've never seen it:
in the end scene, the antagonist complains about books in which the murderer was only caught because the detective knew something the audience didn't, and there was no way for the reader to figure it out because the writer deliberately withheld detail.
Don't do that.
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Is this a sign of bad writing?
No.
You don't even have to have a 'main' plot.
See these plot summaries of Pulp Fiction for a good example - different viewers have different ideas as to which is the most important plot line.
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A rambling narrative can be executed very badly or very well. Maybe it's tool to give color and depth to a world, but it can simply be a sign of an unfocused book. In all cases, what's important is how the reader will react, and that can be tough to estimate. It matters not a bit if you've planned the book out well if the reader believes you've given them the equivalent of notes tossed into a paper bag: They'll close the book and move along.
Do your troublesome plot threads give the reader critical data, or details that will add to the world of the novel? If so, then these scenes are needed. (You've already established that this is the case.) Next, you'll need to make sure the reader has faith in your storytelling. Will the reader find these scenes interesting enough to continue through pages that are apparently unrelated to the story? Unrelated detail can also become interesting unrelated detail when it's tantalizing. But presenting a reader with interesting baubles repeatedly will get them used to shiny things, and again they might give up on the story.
Discontinuity, to me, means a feeling of things not adding up. And dull-as-dishwater characters will turn readers off. But readers have a memory, and they're quite capable of feeling many things at the same time. Before they get to this point, do readers also sympathize with the characters and the situations? Do they find a character lacking in interest, or do they want them to grow and improve as people?
Getting readers to care about your world will see them through the desert of dullness, but it'll be easier to propel them across the dunes if these "desolate" scenes are shorter and interspersed with more accessible material. Unless you have a very good reason to have all the difficult scenes as a unified central section of the book, consider resequencing these scenes. Perhaps some scenes containing critical color can be removed, any information from them that the reader needs embedded in earlier or later scenes. The rest of the middle-section scenes could be preserved and interspersed with action.
For an example of this done well, any of the Bas-Lag books by China Mieville will do, but Perdido Street Station is a particularly good example of the impenetrable character, performing actions whose intent and meaning are utterly opaque.
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