This morning my wife and I woke up at 6AM, ate a hearty breakfast, and then took our four dogs on a three mile hike along Blue Lakes in Breckenridge, Colorado. Three miles isn’t a particularly long hike, until you add in the vertical climb (around 1500 feet), the dangerous terrain – slippery scree fields, narrow single track through alpine scrub, and boggy marshland near the headwaters – and the altitude of more than 11,000 feet. Combine all those factors, and three miles feels more like six. Or nine.
It’s one of my favorite hikes though, for all of those reasons. It’s challenging. It varies greatly from one stretch to another. It’s beautiful. And it’s not particularly well known, which means we usually have the entire trail to ourselves.
What does this have to do with this week’s topic: subplots? Nothing, yet. The hike I described is much like a good story: it varies, it has high points and low points, it has a great climax, it feels rewarding after you’re finished. And, like most of my manuscripts, it manages to do all these things in relatively short distance!