How to improve your story with subplots

Subplots are like stories within stories. Like that moment when you’re driving and someone cuts you off. Well, sometimes. We’ve all hit that moment when we realize our story might be moving slowly. We have the plot prepared, the storyline laid out, and we’re just walking through the woods or heading to our goal. The journey seems boring! The plot doesn’t involve much happening besides a few attacks along the way. What do we do?

Subplots aren’t a bandage. They’re a cure

Subplots not only spice up your story, but they add depth to it as well. You add in a subplot or three or four, and your story will be filled with tension and wonder and excitement. Hopefully, they’ll also serve as foils for your character(s) in a way that prepares them for their goal, too.

Don’t let yourself feel comforted by saying your story was interesting up to a point, so your readers will keep reading—especially if you’re writing in a fast-paced genre. Take advantage of subplots, and don’t be afraid when the inspiration hits you and it throws your story off track. Instead, make it work if you can.

Reasons to add a subplot

Here is a short list of reasons you would consider a subplot. You might have thought of a few already:

• reveal information that you can’t give the reader without dumping it without reason
• advance your story in a more satisfying way
• plot twists that increase tension
• introduce a problem/conflict that the character needs to address internally or externally
• speed up your story or slow things down to address specific issues/characters
• solve a problem
• introduce a theme
• you have multiple characters whose goals aren’t related at first (or ever)
• redirection
• support before reaching the main goal
• support so characters can and want to reach their goal

What is a “bad” subplot

First, we’re not talking about throwing a rock at your character’s head and calling it a plot twist. If there isn’t a reason for the subplot, meaning if the book could end the same without it, there’s a good chance you need to change it.

Subplots have two main goals

You want your subplot to keep your story engaging. That’s the first thing. The second thing is equally, if not more, important: your subplot should provide information or aid the main plot. Even if your subplot simply emphasizes a part of your character that’s essential to understand, your subplot must fulfill something that adds to the story.

Whether it’s something as simple as a character or something as complex as a theme, a subplot must work with the plot. Not that it can’t introduce a conflict that risks redirecting your character, but it shouldn’t be irrelevant to the plot as a whole.

If your heroes find a lost girl and return her home before continuing their journey, it will be a pointless subplot if it did nothing to, for, or against the characters. If they didn’t learn anything or gain/lose anything that makes their journey doable, why did you add it?

If readers have to part from their main road to take a detour, they don’t want to end up in the same spot when they come back around.

Subplots are not just new issues

Someone dying isn’t a subplot—not unless it opens up a previously hidden internal conflict that has to be fleshed out. A subplot is its own story, but it’s part of a bigger story. While you can make your story more engaging by introducing small problems like attacks, stolen necessities, getting lost, etc., that’s not exactly a subplot. So, that’s not what we’re talking about.

Think of it like this: You’re walking through life, perhaps with the goal of being a published author. Your subplot is not reading this article. It might be starting a new short story, though, if you learn things about the art along the way that help you finish the book you have been working on all along. It might be writer’s block and the journey you have to take to overcome it so you can keep writing. It may even be an offer for publication before your book is finished, which sends you down a tunnel until you realize the publisher in question was a vanity publisher and only wants your money. Subplots change the circumstances in a way that can affect the story by changing the goal, keeping someone from reaching a goal, or warping your character’s thoughts in a way that no longer makes them worthy.

Where to add a subplot

Many writers come up with subplots as they’re writing. Some begin a story with a subplot.

If you’ve ever written out the duller part of your journey (whether physical or internal), you might have had a moment when you thought about something that could happen. A what-if moment. Maybe it interrupts the journey or sets everything off again. Maybe, it has to happen before the main plot can make sense or be relevant.

Did you ignore that burst of inspiration because you thought it messed up your plot? Well, bring it back to the surface. Let’s talk about it.

Add it when nothing else is going on

When I was writing my suspense novel, for example, my main character ended up in the woods heading toward the mountains. She wanted to find someone who, unknown to her, wasn’t actually there. That traveling, aside from being hungry and reading journal entries, could have been dull.

I fixed that with a subplot. Actually, I fixed it with a couple. The MC was searching for her lost son but found where his kidnapper was staying, which allowed her to address internal issues she didn’t know she had. It also allowed her to find exactly where her son might be, which otherwise couldn’t have happened. The character also found a little girl whose trust she had to earn before she learned how she got out there. While looking for help, she also found the little girl’s father and another clue about the journal she was reading.

Subplots can put your progress on hold (like finding the girl), but it can also help you advance the plot (like finding the hideout). You can add a subplot anywhere, but adding one will allow your readers to engage while the main plot becomes more tense, and the urgency closes in.

When your character is ready for some growth

If your subplot will bring out something within your MC, introduce this before the result becomes too relevant. If your subplot is meant to show a more compassionate side of your character that readers don’t see, for example, you don’t want to introduce a moment in which your character’s compassion doesn’t make sense.

That would be like Lieutenant Dan (in Forrest Gump) working with Gump on the shrimp boat immediately after hating him for having lost his legs. He blamed Gump because Dan should have died, but it wasn’t until Gump continued to show love and kindness toward Dan that Dan started to appreciate Gump in his life, and later they worked together when something Dan didn’t think could happen actually did—Gump got a shrimp boat.

When you need to flesh something out

If your intention is to let a reader understand a more complex idea—or perhaps even allow the reader to grasp the world they’re in—a subplot will allow them to do so. If your characters are going to war, it won’t always be appropriate for your characters to take a break and enjoy the world they’re in because they’re going to war the next day. Make sure it makes sense not only to introduce one but when you should.

In fantasy, this is especially important. Fantasy is usually fast-paced, so it’s difficult to find time for the reader to learn the new languages or understand what they’re seeing. Whether a subplot forces them to slow down or denies them the ability to advance at all, you can use it to flesh out the world you’ve created. Just don’t go overboard. It might be an interesting world, but staying its technicalities too long will still bore your reader.

When it’s time to answer a question

Your subplot can seal plot holes or uncover answers to things your reader should know, but that the main plot prevents them from knowing. You can use them as tools not only to flesh out previously unknown elements but to give your character(s) direction that will solidify what they need to do, how they’ll do it, or where to go.

When the main plot is relevant

This might mean you need the element of urgency to mean something, so the subplot holds your characters back. It might mean that the main plot is relevant but that your character(s) need a push to decide that they do, without doubt, what this thing that you set before them. Your subplot may be the element in your story that not only makes the main plot more relevant but also makes it essential to your character as it was to your reader.

Subplots should work alongside the main plot

If I told you where this would start, it would be the beginning of a book. Subplots don’t always have to be new stories introduced, nor do they have to be relevant when you first introduce them. Sometimes, especially in multiple-perspective books, a subplot is part of the main plot in a way that it’s parallel to it. It works at the same pace until the two intersect, if they intersect at all.

This doesn’t necessarily end until the plot ends. Some subplots are moments while others occur throughout the story. Love interests and conflicts are a good example. The book may not be about love, but that love interest might be a foil for your characters. They may help your character get where they need to go, learn what they must, or find something they can’t find on their own. And fall in or out of love in the process.

Subplots don’t have to be resolved quickly

Your subplot can make a story interesting just by existing. Introducing a new problem also introduces excitement that your readers will appreciate when the story ends.

Sometimes, your subplot will start somewhere then linger while your characters continue on the main plot’s path. Perhaps a character might be the father of his ex’s child, and while they wait on DNA results, he’s resolving the issue of being engaged, his wedding being in a couple of weeks. This subplot opens its own series of issues, including telling his fiancee and them both deciding what they want to do regarding their future.

Subplots can become essential to your story’s progress, and they can make your story so much more significant in your reader’s eyes than it would have been without one. Use subplots to advance your story, to increase engagement, and to develop everything within it. Give it life. Use simple problems and complex issues to make your story real. No one lives a life with one problem at a time.

Neither will your characters.

Story with Subplots