Subplots are your side character arcs
Subplots are incredibly important in longer works as they assist in pacing out the main plot, develop your characters, and give you opportunities to explore parts of your world you might not get to in the main plot.
So where do subplots come from? Often, they are the character arcs of your side characters (or connected to them). Today we're mostly focusing on side characters that are allies or close with the MC. Let’s talk about it.
1. Developing your side character
There’s as many ways to create characters as there are characters themselves, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll take you through my favourite way to do it.
You’re going to need: A goal, an objective, a disrupting characteristic, and a formative event.
Objective: The actionable (your character can work at it) objective they want. It is likely the same as your main character’s if they are allies, such as Sam also taking the ring to Mordor with Frodo, or Flynn also working towards taking Rapunzel to the lights.
The difference is in their…
Goal: To what end are they working towards this thing?
Flynn’s goal changes throughout Tangled, but his goal in the beginning is to get back his crown because he wants to “be something” more than he is (rich). Rapunzel wants her life to begin so she works towards seeing the lights, he wants the crown so he works towards getting her to the lights. Same objective, different goals.
Disrupting characteristic: What internal reason do they not already have what they want? While characters tend to face external antagonists that keep them from their goal, it’s their internal conflict that is the thing they work through to provide change by the end of the story.
Let’s go back to Flynn—his disrupting characteristic is that he believes he has to be rich to “be someone”, so he’s turned to a life of crime.
A disrupting characteristic can be either a personality trait (selfish, self-destructive, naïve, relentlessly optimistic) or a belief about the world (I need to be rich to be worthy, I need career success to make my parents proud) etc.
Lastly, the formative event: An event in your character’s past (usually childhood but depends on how old they are) that has inspired why they are they way they are. The beginnings of backstory.
2. Building an arc
From this character development, we can figure out what the arc is. Take your character’s disrupting characteristic—what do they need to internalize or figure out in order to get past it?
If your disrupting characteristic is, like Flynn’s, that he believes to be rich to be worthy, his arc is going to be discovering self worth separate from monetary gain—which we see throughout the story as he falls for Rapunzel, and caring for her becomes his new purpose.
Your character’s selfishness keeps them from forming the close connections they crave with others—so they need to be thrown into a situation in which caring for another person over themselves forces them to be unselfish.
That gives us an A to B.
3. Add conflict
To get from A to B, characters go through a whole lot of conflict. The conflict your side character will go through relates directly to their goal and objective—so the subplot is intertwined closely with the main plot while still exploring this side character’s internal change and journey. The conflicts they face on their own will likely be internal—typically side characters don’t have separate external antagonists from their main characters, but that’s not a hard and fast rule.
Speaking of, check out my posts on antagonists and conflicts here, here, and here.
The last thing I'll say is that subplots that don't necessarily revolve around the MC but are kind of their own journey until they come crashing together with each other (such as the two POV characters that only meet halfway through the book) should be created as their own MC--so essentially two plots.
Questions?
Hello all! As many of you know, I’m a part-time editor of non-fiction and writer of all things fiction, but I would love to get more experi
