A subplot example

A few months ago, I posted about ways to test subplots to be sure they work in the overall context of the story. (That post is here if you want to refresh.) I thought we ought to try working an example of this process. We're going to use Downton Abbey for a couple of examples because, first, I've actually managed to watch it (a claim few shows can make this winter), and second, it is rife with subplots.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't watched Downtown Abbey, you should still be able to follow the analysis. I will include information about plot and characters in this post, but this means you might run into some spoilers. I don't usually include spoiler alerts with this kind of post because I think spoilers are native to this kind of analysis, but I know several people who haven't watched the entire second season yet, and I know they're trying to wear blinders. So there you go.

Quick DA Summary:
DA is the story of the people who live in an English country house during the early part of the 20th century. This group is headed by Robert Crawley, Earl Grantham, who has an American heiress for a wife, a delightfully sharp-tongued dowager mother, a trio of marriageable daughters, and no sons to inherit the estate. Season one, episode one begins with the heir presumptive (James Crawley) and his son (Patrick Crawley) going down with the Titanic. This creates an inheritance issue. The next male heir is a somewhat tiresome attorney from Manchester who has had little contact with his aristocratic third cousins. This inheritance issue, and the resulting attempts to assimilate the new heir into the family and home, form most of the conflict for the first season and a good bit of the conflict for the second season.

Season One Inheritance Issue:
The question of whether Manchester Matthew will inherit the earldom is entirely resolved by the end of season one. The family cannot break the entail so that a daughter will inherit the property, and the Countess's surprise pregnancy ends in an accidental miscarriage of her change-of-life baby. As I said, most of the first season conflict stems from this issue, but it is resolved by the end of the first season. The second season revolves mainly around the effects of World War I and the daughters' ongoing attempts to find husbands.

Season Two Subplot:
This brings us to one of the strangest subplots I've ever seen, and the analysis on this one is straightforward enough that we can use it as a simple example of subplot analysis. For the duration of the war, the big house is converted to a convalescent home for officers wounded at the front. Just past the midpoint of season two, a heavily scarred burn victim arrives on the scene. Our first introduction to this character comes when Lady Edith, the middle child in every sense of the term, catches him examining personal items in one of the family's remaining rooms.

This gruesome person claims to be Patrick Crawley, presumed dead in the first episode of season one. He claims he was rescued from the Titanic wreckage and taken to New York. He says he now speaks with a Canadian accent (though his accent is more rust belt than Canada, imo) because he had amnesia and forgot he was English and moved to Canada. He convinces Lady Edith that he is actually Patrick, and she spends a good twenty minutes or so trying to convince the rest of the family, too. However, after making inquiries, the Earl discovers that this man is a Canadian who knew the dead heir and probably gained numerous personal details about the family through the course of that friendship.So, the mystery is solved, the imposter slinks off, and Matthew's right of inheritance is no longer under threat.

The Subplot Test:
Okay, this brings us to the subplot test. The first test of a subplot is whether it has an impact on the development of the main plot. In this case, because Matthew's right to inherit was all buttoned up by the end of season one, this late-season-two subplot revisits that issue without changing the outcome. Matthew was the heir in the moments before the imposter's arrival, and he was still the heir after the imposter left. That did not change. So the subplot fails in that respect.

But that is only the first step of the analysis. It's not enough to examine the impact on the plot. We must also examine the impact on theme, character, and other story elements. In this case, there is a scene in which the family gathers in the parlor to discuss the problem. All of them except for Lady Edith are championing Matthew's right to inherit. This marks a distinct change from season one, when the inheritance issue was actually important to the plot and various family members disputed Matthew's rights. This isn't an anchor scene -- the scenes that mark the beginning and end of the subplot -- but it struck me as a potentially important scene. If the purpose of the imposter subplot was to show this change within the family dynamic, it succeeds because of this drawing room scene.

But the analysis doesn't end there. Now we have to go back to the main plot to see if this point is already being made there, and if not, can it be made in a more direct way there. And the thing is, this issue was also resolved in season one. By the end of season one, Matthew and all the other characters have accepted his role. His champions have won, and his detractors have not only surrendered, but changed to his side. Through the early/middle part of season two, every action shows Matthew as not only the heir, but a welcome and pivotal member of the household. So the subplot is unnecessary to demonstrate this change, which is already being accomplished through the main plot.

There is one other aspect we must consider. At this point in the main plot, Matthew has been injured and is in a wheelchair. His ability to father children is in doubt, and this throws the succession into doubt once again. The imposter arrives before Matthew recovers, and in the drawing room scene, Matthew says it might be better if the imposter inherits because at least he can have children. The question, then, is not whether Matthew should inherit, but who should inherit down the line. If Matthew is the heir and impotent, then the inheritance is cloudy. If the imposter is the heir, he could presumably father a line of children.

This is a somewhat shaky question, though, because the imposter is also severely injured and we don't know whether he can fish with that tackle. Even if the equipment works in the functional sense, there is still the possibility that he would be unable to have children. Or that he would have only daughters, which is what started this whole mess in the first place. So I never really bought the notion that the imposter could guarantee a line of sons to follow him -- maybe he would have sons, and maybe he wouldn't. This means that the story choice is not really Matthew + no children versus imposter + sons. It's more like Matthew + no children versus imposter + ordinary inheritance issues. Think how different it would seem if the imposter turned out to have a legitimate son already. Then this generation-skipping transfer issue is even more pronounced, but it would have failed in other respects.

In any case, it's quickly a non-issue because Matthew can walk again and, we assume, the third leg also works again. So the subplot is used (poorly) to raise the tension level in a season two issue (whether Matthew can have children) by re-raising issues that were resolved in season one (whether Matthew should inherit at all). I thought it was clumsy and unnecessary -- an unusual off-note from an otherwise excellent writer. The imposter could be somehow relevant to season three, but really, I don't care to see the imposter again. Do you?

Can you think of other ways the imposter subplot might have been made important to the story? How would you have revised this?

Theresa

Testing the Middle: Subplots

A few days ago, we talked about some simple tests for the end of a book to make sure it fits the story and reads smoothly. In response to that post, someone asked me to do a similar post on the middles of books.

Middles are hard! They're like Tolstoy's families -- good middles share similar characteristics, but every bad middle is bad in its own way. For this reason,  it's hard to say with any specificity how to fix a bad middle, because every bad middle is going to require a different kind of fix. That said, I can tell you some of the things I look at when I examine the rising action. First up, subplots.

Subplots create a lot of problems for a lot of books, and a junky subplot can confuse the reader and create a drag on the rising action as much as a junky main plot. We see a wide variety of subplot issues -- wandering action, irrelevant ideas, dull secondary conflicts, characters that are taking over when they shouldn't, conflicts that are overwhelming the main conflicts, and so on. When a book has subplots, there are a few things I do during the structural analysis to test the subplot.


First, I question whether the entire subplot is necessary. There's a great way to test the necessity of a subplot to the main plot. Look at the moment when the subplot is resolved. Does its resolution change the course of the main plot's action? If so, the subplot is necessary to the main plot. Next, we have to evaluate whether every scene in the subplot (not just that final scene) is necessary to reach the point where the main plot and subplot intersect. This isn't too difficult -- just take the subplot moment by moment and figure out which are absolutely necessary. There should be a pretty clean chain of causation in these subplot events. Anything not a part of that chain of causation can probably be cut.

Necessity isn't strictly, er, necessary. A subplot can serve functions other than pure plot functions. So if the subplot does not change the course of the main plot's action, I start looking for a non-plot purpose for the subplot. Perhaps the characters in the subplot are foils to the characters in the main plot. Perhaps there's thematic relevance. Perhaps the author is building a motif or a parallel scene to enhance the structure. There are legitimate reasons other than plot which would lead an author to write a subplot, and those reasons usually manifest in what I call echoes.

Echoes are little more than subplot aspects which resemble aspects of the main plot in some ways. Whether in foils, themes, motifs, parallels, or any other kind of non-plot element, relevant subplot echoes will relate in some way back to the main plot. That relationship will serve to underscore the element in the main plot -- that is, the subplot serves the main plot by making some aspect of the main plot feel more significant through repetition or reversal.

So first, I have to identify the ways in which these echoes exist on the page. And then I check whether those echoes are strong and meaningful enough to warrant the continued existence of the subplot. This requires a bit of subjective analysis, and it's not easy to say, "THIS is how you measure these kinds of echoes." All I can say is that, if it feels weak, it's weak. If it feels irrelevant, it's irrelevant. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be cut, but it will need to be fixed.

So, on to the fixing. In general, I find that the first and last scenes in a subplot are the ones that count. This isn't always true, of course, but it's true more often than not. So I start with those two scenes, and I look at what is being accomplished in those scenes. Do the scenes in their entirety echo the main plot? Or is it only certain aspects of the scenes which contain echoes? Because the first and last scenes of the subplot anchor the subplot to the main plot in a more direct way, those echoes should be strong and clear. Those echoes should dominate those scenes. If they don't, we have to find a way to make them so.

Once the anchor scenes are solid, I turn to the middle scenes in the subplot thread. It frequently happens that an author will build an entire scene in the middle of subplots to accomplish something very small. So I look at those scenes and try to isolate the important echo bits. Can any of those bits be moved into other scenes? If so, do it and cut the unimportant parts. In fact, that's pretty good advice for any kind of scene -- figure out what's important in the scene, and cut the rest. But it's even more vital to do this in subplots, which need greater justification to survive the editorial ax.

At this point, we should have two solid anchor scenes and some bits or even full scenes remaining. Now I look at this collection of pages and paragraphs, and I try to determine patterns. With good, well-developed echoes, they will probably reappear in various forms and at various times throughout the text, but they will tie into a single concept -- so, for example, if water is a motif, and it's being used to develop the idea that secrets cannot be contained, the text will show streams, bottles of water, rain, swimming pools, and similar water elements at various moments. Do those water elements appear when the secrets are relevant to the action? They should, if that's the purpose of the motif. So, if you have a subplot scene with characters drifting lazily downriver on inner tubes, but none of those characters are worried about keeping or revealing a secret, then the scene is only accomplishing half its job. Either supply the other half in revision, or cut the scene.

Sometimes it will happen that an echo will be a one-off. That is, the particular echo will appear one time only in the course of the entire novel. That makes it a likely candidate for cutting, but it can be spared if that single instance is important enough to change substantially the way a reader interprets a text. This is more likely to happen if the echo is symbolic -- think of Eve in the garden eating the apple of knowledge. She only ate one apple, and she only ate it once. So even though it doesn't recur in the way a motif would recur, it's important enough that the entire story of the garden of Eden would fall apart without it. (Yes, that's a main plot, not a subplot, but you get the idea.)

As I mentioned, it's very hard to diagnose subplot problems in the abstract, but this is more or less the method I use when analyzing subplots. It all boils down to relevance, and generally, the result of this process is a pile of scraps on the cutting room floor.

Theresa

Fixing the End Point

So, maybe this is one of those Pantser-versus-Plotter* dilemmas, but some of us were talking on twitter recently about how to wrestle a recalcitrant ending onto the page. There were two side-by-side discussions unfolding in my stream simultaneously. One involved an author who had written the ending but thought it was flat and maybe a little to overcrowded with extra plot threads. The other involved an author who had brainstormed a dozen climax scenes and hated them all. She had no idea how to end her book.

I know both of these writers pretty well. In fact, I've edited both of them, so I have a strong sense of how their work is put together. I could be wrong, but my sense is that one of them is very controlled about her plotting methods, and the other prefers a more "discovery draft" type approach. Either method is fine, of course. The process is never as important as the final product -- in fact, the process serves the final product.

In any case, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at some of the strategies we batted around. I think these are probably useful for either plotters or pantsers.The thing that struck me about this situation is that no matter the method you employ, you can still run into the same kinds of problems with the endings.

When I'm editing a book, the first thing I do is read it straight through to get a sense of the story elements. I might pause to mark up a few details or make some notes along the way, but my goal for this first reading is to grasp all the large-scale and mid-scale elements as quickly as possible. Almost the first thing I do after reading the last page is return to the first chapter. I read the opening and ending together like this so that I can be sure the ends match. Ordinarily, they do. If the book opens with a dead  body, it ends with the arrest of the murderer. If it opens with a man and a woman seeing each other as potential romantic partners, it ends with them committing to each other. These kinds of big story questions -- Who done it? Are you the one for me? -- provide the large-scale structure for most books.

It sometimes happens that they don't. It sometimes happens that the initial problem in the first chapter has no impact on the outcome of the book. If this is the case, I have to figure out why. Did the plot get off-track? Or did the author use a false opening of some kind to get the plot moving before the real conflict could be established? Which piece better matches the middle of the book, the beginning or the end? Asking questions like these can often help pinpoint structural plot issues and identify possible solutions.

After I do this particular analysis, I think about what actually happens in the end scenes (the crisis and denouement scenes). Which details were surprising and which were expected? Some mix of both is usually best. That is, we might not know who is the murderer until he's revealed (surprise), but we can be darn sure he'll be revealed (expected). We might know that the hero and heroine will end up together (expected), but we don't know how (surprise). In other words, the innovative ending innovates in particular ways, within the established parameters of the type of story and the plot as it unfolds up until the end.

Then I think about all the loose threads that need to be tied up. Can any of them be tied before the denouement? Or before the crisis? A lot of times, authors try to withhold all of the answers until the very end, but this can lead to a crammed-text feeling that might interfere with the reader's enjoyment of the ending. For example, if your historical romance has an external plot about pirates and an external subplot about spies, you might be tempted to finish those plot lines during the same scene in which the hero and heroine demonstrate their commitment to each other. This might work. Or it might be better to wrap up the externals first (subplot, then main external plot) and let the internals have their own moment on the page. How do you know which would work better? It really all comes down to impact on the reader. If the externals and internals each have a strong enough impact to stand alone, it might be better to separate them. Let the hero swash and buckle and perform heroic feats, and then, after they've returned to safety, let him declare his love for the heroine. Especially if that declaration is going to be a powerful moment.

A similar type of crammed ending appears in mystery plots when the heroic sleuth gathers all the suspects in one location and dazzles them all by analyzing the clues and revealing the murderer. Every suspect represents a type of subplot, you could argue, that is being resolved in a single scene. In this case, of course, you don't want to eliminate all of the red herrings before the final scene. You want to keep some suspense about the ultimate outcome. But a clever writer will still analyze each of those bits closely and think about which can be resolved in advance. Focusing on some of the lesser suspects between the midpoint and the climax can actually help keep tension high in the rising action, as long as each eliminated suspect leaves the reader in doubt of the outcome.

So, if the ending is crammed, I try to think of ways to reel it out so that smaller threads can be tied down earlier in a way that will help the rising action. But sometimes, a final scene will have the right combination of characters taking the right combination of actions, and it will still feel flat. In that case, my knee-jerk reaction is to change the setting.

Does this seem like an odd solution? Remember our formula for a scene. A scene is:

• Characters
• In meaningful motion
• Against a background

If you've got the right characters and the right actions, then this leaves the setting. In my opinion, this is the most overlooked aspect of fiction writing. It's not that we don't create good settings. We do. But then we use the same settings over and over again. Or we fail to incorporate setting details in ways that affect the characters and action. Or we always use the expected settings -- the bedroom for a sex scene, a coffee shop for a meeting between friends, and so on. Sometimes, if a scene feels flat, the best thing to do is change the setting and force a different backdrop into place. This almost always has an effect on the way the action unfolds and the way the scene reads. I mean, what happens if you take that sex scene out of the bedroom and place it on a balcony? Or under a moonlit waterfall? Or in the backseat of a car on the side of a busy highway? You instantly "see" a different scene, and it might be less flat.

(We brainstormed setting possibilities as an exercise for NaNo a couple of years ago. We also looked at some ways to use those setting lists to generate better scenes. Take a look at those posts for ideas about ways to leverage settings.)

So these are sort of the global things I examine in each book: matching the ends, testing the resolution of various threads, and setting. Specific books might also require other kinds of analysis, but these are the things I tend to do with each book.

Theresa

*In case you're not familiar with these terms,
Plotter = someone who plans the book in advance, often with scene charts, indexing systems, and other tools.
Pantser = someone who "discovers" the story by writing it, usually in several drafts, and usually generating many discarded scenes along the way.