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Why Your Subplot Might Be a Sideshow

Bysteve

Most subplots in first novels exist to fill pages.

The writer adds a love interest with a job problem, a best friend going through a breakup, a mystery at the office. Each gets a few scenes, then wraps up. Nothing technically wrong. But the book feels padded. The reader skims.

The subplot is answering a different question than the main plot.

A subplot earns its place when it asks the same core question — just from a different angle.

If your protagonist is learning to stop controlling everything and trust other people, your subplot should put another character through a version of that same test. Maybe she asks for help immediately and things go wrong. Maybe he refuses help even more stubbornly than the protagonist and pays a higher price. Either way, the subplot is doing something the main plot can’t do alone: showing the full range of possible answers to the story’s central question.

The strongest subplots are often inversions. Your protagonist fails a test your subplot character passes — or passes one your subplot character refuses. The contrast makes both journeys mean more.

Here’s the test: take your subplot and ask what question it’s answering. If it’s a different question than your main plot is asking, the subplot is a sideshow. Reframe it or cut it.

Both plots should be circling the same idea from different directions.

Open your draft and write one sentence naming the core thematic question your main plot is asking—not the external problem, but what the story is really about underneath it. Write the same sentence for your subplot. If they’re circling different questions, find one subplot scene and rewrite it so your subplot character faces a version of the same test your protagonist is facing—but fails it where she eventually succeeds, or passes it by a method she’ll have to refuse. The contrast is what makes both journeys mean more.

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This topic is covered in depth in our Novel Writing Workshop.