I heard the crime novelist Ian Rankin being interviewed on Radio 4 the other day and he said he quite often started writing with at least 5 different sub plots and absolutely no idea how they would connect. He keeps on writing until they all organically weave together and complete the book. My creative side thinks wow, let's get started but my practical side ( which is very small)says, blimey this could be a nightmare. I'd be interested to know if anyone else works this way, sort of free falling I guess. Are five sub plots too many? What do you guys think?

Julie,

Like anything connected to writing, there aren't any hard and fast rules. But if you think that any reader likes to be suprised, enchanted, thrilled, etc, by a book, I believe the trick in writing is to find ways to do the same to oneself. As an example, I was struggling with a novel some years ago - it was going okay, but lacked a certain spark. In frustration I decided to splice into it a completely different novel I'd started, and make the two link up. This made me up my creativity and thought processes. It worked - my publisher liked it, and it was picked up by a major children's paperback publisher because the editor happened to read it (having liked the title) and it made her laugh out loud on her train home.

Free falling while wondering if your parachute was packed properly. You won’t know until you pull the ripcord.
I don’t think I’m brave enough to start with five sub plots but I like the idea. I sometimes compare my own writing to stepping onto the Cresta run for the first time. I can’t stop, can’t slow down. Don’t know where all the twists and turns are or if I’ll come a cropper before I get to the end.

One of my New Year resolutions (that I never make because I never keep them) was to try and do more plotting. Maybe I’ll try this instead… but not five!

Dee.

I really like that idea. As Dee might be able to confirm, I like to confuse the reader at the beginning and I love have as many storylines going as possible. On both of the novels I have written so far I wrote the main plot and then weaved others in as I started to write it. Then on revisions sewed it all in.

Makes me want to read Rankin though

I'll have to try this interweaving sub plots, it sounds quite a challenge. The way I've worked with my stories is being grateful for the germ of a plot that slowly develops into something that will hopefully grip me enough to write it in a way that someone would be equally gripped when reading it.

With the novel that I've completed recently and in the process of submitting, I was very pleasantly surprised at how the story just fell into place. It just wrote itself and the twists, turns and sub plots seemed to manifest themselves without me even working towards them. I know for sure that my first novel didn't work that way, so perhaps it was a fluke? I'm having a harder time now with the new novel I'm working on, so I think I'll attempt this multiple sub plotting and see if it helps the creative process any.

That's a very uplifting tale Terry. I have combined chunks of writing with other pieces and sometimes it's worked but not always. I'm glad it worked out so well for you.

Did anyone see Love Actually? In film terms Richard Curtis seemed to do the same thing only working backwards. He took the event - the nativity play and created 8 or 9 subplots which all linked up more or less with the airport at the beginning and the end to tie up loose ends. And made it look so simple in the process!

I think one of the problems with weaving sub plots like this would be keeping the timeline right. I have enough trouble with that already. Does anyone have a foolproof method to keep track of it?

Dee.

Not sure if foolproof, but I use the calander in Microsoft Output and put in there the storyline and follow the dates so I know what happened where. Harder if you writing over a few hours, but still can be done

Keeping track of sub plots

I use a timeline file I set up in Word, rather than use Outlook. I stick things like the phase of the Moon, sunrise/set times, weather etc. Then when any of the characters do anything significant, I stick it in. It's not completely foolproof as I have to remember to update it, but I can't imagine writing anything without it.

Cas

But do you put the sub-plots into your synopsis or does that just make for a rambling load of old nonsense? And if you do, does each sub-plot have it's own section or do you go back and forth from main plot to sub plot in the order in which it's written?
Sue

I use a separate Word file to record the timeline of the novel, normally a table with each row representing a convenient slice of time: a day, a half-day, maybe an hour if the action is that intense. I also add a chapter column in, so that I can see how each chapter matches the passage of time.

Then I split the table into further columns and use one column for each main thread (?sub plot)through the story. This sometimes gets tight on a page in its normal upright layout, so I sometimes swap to 'landscape' format.

By doing this you should be able to scan across the page and see what's happening at any point with any of your sub-plots.

There's probably software around that will help you do this, but I find that the 'table' approach works for me.

John (unpublished ... but forever hopeful)

Could the weaving be done at a late stage, even after the main plot has been completed? I think not, as the patchwork might easily show. It is a coincidence you mentioned Love Actually, Elspeth - I won two tickets to it, today! I like the timeline methods you have mentioned, that is a great help.