Subplots

Forgive me if today's entry is a little shorter than usual. I've been battling a bug for the past few days and breathing has been a labored chore. Consequently, sleep has been an elusive thing, so my mind is a little... unbalanced at the moment, shall we say?

But onto today's topic. Since I'm doing a lot of rewrites and connecting old material to new material, the subject of subplots has been in my mind. A lot of the new material include plot elements that aren't part of the main, overarching plot, but are still important and help define Jonathan and his comrades as people. So, I've been kinda invested in making sure that these subplots work out and flow with the overall story.

Obviously, I can't go into great detail about these subplots, but I can talk a little about how I treat them. When I'm plotting out my stories, I like to get the main plot laid out first. No real details, just who the protagonist is, what they're doing, who the antagonist, what they're doing, and where it goes. Then I start slotting in the subplots and that's where things get fun.

I'll admit, I'm not big on romantic subplots, as most of the time I feel like they're unnatural and force characters together just because they've spent a few moments together. For this reason, most of my subplots focus on evolving the characters and building relationships. I like to show through these subplots that Reagan and Giz have known one another for a while and are comfortable lobbing casual insults. They're great opportunities to give ancillary their own little arcs that add depth to the greater plot in general.

Unfortunately, they're also my greatest bane as I, ladies and gentlemen, am an over-writer. I can't stop writing. So all these lovely little subplots that I've crafted to help enrich the world that Jonathan is working in, they all have to be sorted through (which is what I'm currently doing) so I can decide which ones live on and which ones burn in the fires of ultimate deletion.

I guess what I'm saying is, they're important, but I tend to go overboard. And that's okay. I just have to go at my editing with an ax rather than a scalpel.

DFTBA