The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Mechanics

  • What if My Life Is Somebody Else’s Subplot?

    Mickey Mouse and Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit
    If Bob Cratchit’s story is merely a subplot, why would two of the greatest actors of all time agree to play him?

    They say we’re all the lead characters in our own stories. But what about other people’s stories? I have this horrible feeling — now and then — that I’m not a main character at all. I’m just a minor character (comic relief, perhaps), and my life is a subplot in the story of someone I know.

    I bring this up because I want to point out how important subplots are. They shouldn’t be relegated to the role of “rounding out a character” or “adding some drama to a narrative.” The subplots — and the characters who make them — are heroes in their own stories.

    Think about Charles Dickens’ classic tale A Christmas Carol. The story is about the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly and cold character who must learn the true spirit of Christmas. But Dickens also weaves in a marvelous subplot about Scrooge’s employee, Bob Cratchit. The story of Bob and his poor family is every bit as important as Scrooge’s story. In fact, it’s so important to Scrooge that it becomes a part of his salvation. A Christmas Carol wouldn’t be the same without Bob and little Tiny Tim.

    For me, a good subplot is almost a strong narrative on its own. It must support the main plot, certainly. But a subplot must also be self-sustaining. Otherwise my characters come off feeling like cardboard.

    Years ago there was a very popular movie titled The Gods Must Be Crazy. The film follows three distinct stories that all seem unconnected except for their location in Africa. Eventually, the three stories dovetail in an unexpected way, bringing all the unrelated characters together for the conclusion.

    I like my stories to take this equitable approach to storytelling. I don’t think of my story in terms of plot and subplots. I think about what’s driving the character forward and what needs to happen next. I have never once thought that I needed to insert a minor character or subplot. When a character appears in my story, I consider it a major character until events prove otherwise.

    When I feel that something isn’t working in my stories, I often discover that it’s because I’ve written too much about a character or storyline. That’s okay, though. It’s a lot easier to cut an overabundance of a big story than try to pad a thin one.

    Each character and plot is important. Some may be de-emphasized, but none should exist only to serve another.

    Simply put, there are no subplots — only great stories waiting to be told.

  • Subplots: Sexy Enough to Deserve Your Time

    Here’s the thing about subplots. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you should treat them like your best friend’s hot sister. Nobody’s asking you to spend a lot of time getting to know her.  (But let’s be honest. Would they have to ask?) Just make sure the time you do invest is quality.  It’ll totally pay dividends in the end.

    Be good to your subplots. Show them you understand their complexities and you know their worth. Make them believe that their development is as important to you as the other plots that occupy the majority of your day. You wish that you had more time to devote, but it wasn’t meant to be.

    You and your subplots are star-crossed lovers. Victims of circumstance, meeting in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps in another life you’ll have more time for each other. Maybe the universe will do you a solid the next time around.

    But rather than bemoan what the fates have given you, it’s better to seize this moment, this day, no matter how brief. Cherish the time you have together and make it something special. If time is the enemy, then ally yourself with memory. Write a story worth remembering. One that outlives its own fleeting arc.

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  • Now Boarding: Subplots

    If a story is a train track, a subplot is the trestle. The main plot takes you where you need to go, from point A to point B and all destinations in between. But without the subplots, it would never make it over the valleys that inevitably manifest during a story arc.

    Some people define story as characters acting within a setting. I’ve never totally bought in to that, but I do believe that characters generate subplots. Whether you are a pantser or a plotter, your characters have histories and quirks that lead them in certain directions, giving birth to subplots.

    A good subplot tells us things about characters that we need to know in order to strengthen the main plot. It helps develop three dimensional characters, and encourages showing rather than telling.

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  • Diving into Subplots (Week Ending July 14)

    Last week the Cafe heated up (perhaps because it was so hot outside) with a debate about that old nemesis of writers everywhere: writer’s block. This week shouldn’t be as contentious, as we take the Cafe regulars into a discussion of basic writing mechanics to tackle subplots.

    We all know a good subplot to a story when we see one, but how do writers weave them in to begin with? How important are they? And what does it take to make them stand out?

    The writers here at the Cafe have put away their dueling pistols and sworn off their blood feuds long enough to discuss — in their own inimitable style — their thoughts on inserting a good sublot into a novel. We hope you enjoy the discussion, and pray it will not lead to more chaos.

    Until next time,

    The Cafe Management

  • What is your preferred point of view?

    I’ve always had a problem with separating my characters from myself when I’m writing fiction, and so more of my main characters have been female than male and the POV third-person limited. Makes the POV less connected to me that way.

    Nevertheless, I did experiment with writing one novel in first person from a male’s POV, and after some slips at the beginning, the novel took off on its own, and I finished it successfully.

    The latest trend is for YA authors to use present tense (a few even use second, at least in a few separated spots), but present tense just doesn’t fit my style.

  • Establishing Trust

    In technical writing, there is really only one useful point of view, that of Godlike Omniscience. The tech writer’s challenge is to present information that can be complicated, confusing, incomplete, and flat-out tedious to the reader in a way that supports decision making. Furthermore, the information has to be structured in a way that makes sense the first time it is read, but also allows the reader to go back and easily reference key points.

    You can’t achieve a level of trust with your reader unless you speak with a voice of authority. This is no time to play games for the sake of artistry. Simple, direct, I-know-what-I’m-talking-about language is what is needed.

  • “Two” be Avoided at All Costs

    I have a policy about finishing every (fiction) book I start to read. In my life, I can only come up with a couple of instances where I just couldn’t force myself to the end.

    Perhaps I should clarify, that policy only applies to books written in first and third person.

    If I’m reading something written in second person, it is because some sadistic professor thought it was a good idea.

    Unless it is a Pick-Your-Own-Path adventure story, I see no point in second person. Maybe that makes me a bad English major. Maybe it makes me a bad person. I don’t care. Second person aggravates me. (more…)

  • Come to Your Own Conclusions

    I don’t like being told how to feel, and I don’t want to tell a reader how to feel. When I’m reading a piece of fiction and I feel like the author was trying to force a specific feeling on me, I get mad. I generally stop reading. I realize this is somewhat immature, because aren’t most stories built with the idea that they’re going to make me feel something?

    When I write, I write in third person. First-person works best, I think, when the reader is meant to relate to the word through one character. I recently read The Hunger Games trilogy, which is in first person. As the readers, we’re obviously supposed to feel the world through Katniss’ experience of it — we’re supposed to relate to the cruelty and kindness of other characters as she feels those things. It’s not wrong. Obviously, it works pretty well for Collins.

    But in the same way that I don’t want to tell the reader how a character looks — because it rarely has any bearing on the story what a character looks like — I don’t want to tell a reader how to feel about any character or institution in the story. Where I find a character to be a flat villain, another reader might see that character as a tragedy. I don’t want to force the reader to feel the same way about a character that I do. Maybe it means I’m doing it wrong.

    For my writing, third person is the most effective way to share a story without getting too wrapped up in a single character’s thoughts and feelings.

    (And much like with Highlander II, I shove my fingers in my ears and refuse to acknowledge that second person exists. Absolutely refuse.)

  • The Author is Omniscient: An Argument for Honesty

    I have flirted with multiple points of view. I love the second person for its exotic directness; the first person for its appearance of unmediated access; the limited third person for its ability to draw the reader into the environment of another. But for fiction writing, I remain an advocate of the omniscient third person, the overreaching narrator who knows and interprets all.

    This point of view has experienced a decline in literary fiction (a statement I base purely on my own reading of 20th century literary fiction and not on any sort of statistical study). Some have deemed it arrogant or presumptuous for the authorial voice to assume possession of more than one body in a tale; the first person seems more honest, acknowledges more fully that but a single voice can come from a consciousness, that we cannot fully know the reality of another.  Margaret Atwood’s excellent first-person female narrators (in Bluebeard’s Egg, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin, among others) participate in memoir-style novels. I love these books, but they also expose the dangers of solipsism in first person novels.  After all, one of the great strengths of the novel as opposed to poetry or short stories or numerous other fictional forms is the opportunity offered for many voices to participate in telling the story.

    Additionally, I struggle to distinguish my voice from the narrator when I write in first person. It is too easy to let a tale slip into memoir or a Mary Sue scenario.  Third person omniscient forces me to balance the concerns of characters that I might not identify with as fully with those whom I do draw more directly from my own experience.

    But why third person omniscient as opposed to third person limited, which restricts focus to the viewpoint of a single character? Well, the author really does create the whole thing,and it seems to me more honest to acknowledge this fact and open up the narrative to the possibility of dramatic irony.  Again drawing on Tess of the d’Urbervilles (which in the course of participating in this blog has shown itself to be my favorite book of all time, a fact I did not know before I was a Confabulator), would the reader be nearly as devastated when she is suffering as a milkmaid in the northern country, away from her family, shunned by Angel, if we did not ALSO know that her love is suffering in Brazil and missing her something fierce? Without our omniscient narrator, we are limited to personal tragedy, closing off the possibilities of societal tragedy and shared suffering.

  • I only write in past tense, third person. That last statement is ironic, I know!

    Without a doubt my favorite point of view to write in is third person past tense. I especially like to write in the style where you can see inside one person’s thoughts, whoever the main character is. I know that’s not omniscient because omniscient is being able to see everyone’s thoughts. And I know it’s not limited because limited is where you can only see what people do, not what they think. So I’m not sure what this point of view is called, but it’s the only way I write.

    OK, I just went and looked up the wikipedia entry for Narrative Mode. It describes my standard point of view as being “Third person, subjective, limited.” Third person because my narrator never uses the words I or we. Subjective because one or more characters feelings and thoughts are described. Limited because the narrator cannot describe things unknown to the focal character. If someone has a different opinion on how the narrative mode of my writing should be classified, then I’m all ears.

    I have deliberately tried other points of view. For example, I wrote a pretty long piece of short fiction (around 10,000 words) in present tense. A lot of the feedback I got on that was that my readers thought it should be a screenplay. This feedback made me wonder how much point of view affects how the story is received by the reader. Maybe different types of stories would work better with different narrative modes. Maybe if one were writing a thriller, the present tense would help elicit the feeling that the events of the story are unfolding before the readers eyes.

    The idea that narrative mode affects how the story is received goes for point of view as well as tense. I did an experiment for a while where I only read memoirs. Reading that many memoirs in a row had a weird residual effect. Immediately after reading all those memoirs, I read a novel told in first person, Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. Even though the story is completely unbelievable, and the characters are outrageous, I had a difficult time remembering that it was was fiction. I don’t write in first person but I suspect that it may engender more empathy in the reader kind of like how my use of present tense made readers think they should be seeing events in movie form.

    Hmmm. It would be funny to write an entire story in the future tense. But would it really be taking place  in the future or would it sound like a bunch of prophecies from the present? What about languages that have other tenses and perspectives which English does not have? Anyone have any experience with that? Are there any points of view which are impossible to translate into English?

    So, anyway.  I just don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff. Maybe I should. I’ll set a challenge for myself to write a different flash fiction piece in each narrative mode anyone suggests to me. So comment away, here’s your chance to throw down the gauntlet!