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"I don't. And I'll tell you why." She took a cigarette out of her purse, lighted it. After taking a drag she waved it. "Nobody wants to start over. Those who say they do are liars or delusional, but mostly liars. People just want to pick up where they left off, wherever things went wrong, and start off in a new direction without any of the baggage. Those who manage it are the lucky ones because somehow they're able to shrug off all those pesky weights like guilt and consequences."
She took another drag, giving Tory a contemplative stare. "You don't look that lucky to me."
Yet another node of conjunction occurs when Tory's father, the physical abuser whose memory cripples Tory in the present, returns to Progress and becomes the prime suspect in the murder of Hope—and in the later murders linked to it.
These storyline-crossing characters give Roberts a way to weave together Tory's plot layers. Some might find these connections forced. I say they are effective, giving Carolina Moon a rich connectedness that makes the novel feel complex and engrossing. Roberts's legions of fans obviously agree.
Count the nodes of conjunction that weave together the layers in your novel. How many are there? Why not search for more? That is what the exercise in chapter fourteen is there to help you do. A tightly woven novel is one that your readers will be able to wrap around themselves luxuriously as they curl up in their favorite chairs with a cup of tea. (They are trying to relax, but you are keeping them tense on every page, right?)
_____________EXERCISE
Weaving Plot Layers Together
Step 1: On a single sheet of paper, make three columns. In the first column list your novel's major and secondary characters. In the middle column, list the principle narrative lines: main problem, extra plot layers, subplots, minor narrative threads, questions to be answered in the course of the story, etc. In the right-hand column, list the novel's principle places; i.e., major settings.
Step 2: With circles and lines, connect a character, a narrative line, and a place. Keep drawing lines and circles at random, making connections. See what develops. When a random connection suddenly makes sense, make notes.
Follow-up work: Add to your novel at least six of the nodes of conjunction that you came up with.
Conclusion: Three hundred pages into a manuscript, your story can feel out of control. The elements can swim together in a sea of confusion. This panic is normal. Your novel will come out okay. Trust the process. If you have set a strong central problem, added layers, and found ways to weave them together, then the whole will come together in the end.
Weaving a Story 105
Subplots
Plot layers are the several narrative lines experienced by a novel's protagonist; subplots are the narrative lines experienced by other characters. What constitutes a narrative line? Problems that require more than one step to resolve; in other words, that grow more complicated.
Now that we've got our terms straight, what is the best way to go: layers or subplots? Today, the term subplot has an almost old-fashioned ring. It makes us think of sprawling sagas of the type written by Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. Subplots are found throughout twentieth-century literature, of course, and in contemporary novels, too.
Yet what is striking about recent fiction is its intimacy. Authorial and objective third-person points of view have been almost entirely replaced by first-person, and close or intimate third-person points of view. The rich woven texture of breakout-scale novels comes more often from the tight weaving of plot layers than from the broad canvas sprawl of subplots.
But that is not to say that subplots have no place in breakout novels. Far from it. Examples of extensive use of subplots abound on the best-seller lists. Many of the novels discussed in this workbook employ subplots as well as plot layers.
Even Dickensian sprawl can be found. Michel Faber's Victorian morality tale The Crimson Petal and the White was, in fact, compared by reviewers to Dickens, and it is true that Faber's narrative voice is intrusive and authorial in the manner of nineteenth-century novelists. He frequently addresses his readers directly, as we see in this early passage in which Faber takes pity on the reader following a long section detailing the introspection of the novel's main character:
So there you have it: the thoughts (somewhat pruned of repetition) of William Rackham as he sits on his bench in St. James Park. If you are bored beyond endurance, I can offer only my promise that there will be fucking in the very near future, not to mention madness, abduction, and violent death.
Well okay, then! Faber goes on to spin out a number of subplots. Rackham is under pressure as his annual stipend is slowly reduced in order to coerce him into assuming directorship of his family's business bottling perfumes and toiletries. Longing for artistic expression but burdened with an invalid wife and child, he seeks release with prostitutes, advised by his jolly friends Bodley and Ashwell and their bible, a slim guidebook called More Sprees in London. It is this somewhat inaccurate booklet that brings Rackham to Sugar, a high-priced prostitute of unusual beauty, attentiveness, education, and sexual versatility. Sugar is all that he desires. She is even writing a novel; one, we discover, that is mostly about the mutilation of men.
Sugar herself carries a substantial amount of the story. When first we meet her, she is employed by the sour madam Mrs. Castaway, who may or may not be Sugar's mother. Either because he is rich and easy or because she is won by his genuine affection for her, Sugar agrees to become Rackham's exclusive mistress. She moves into a house that he provides for her.
Meanwhile, Rackham's brother, Henry, a minister, haltingly pursues a charitable widow, Mrs. Emmeline Fox, who runs a Rescue Society for prostitutes. (You can see already that Faber will weave his many subplots together.) Henry's courtship inches forward until consummation, after which, unfortunately, he perishes in a fire in his paper-cluttered cottage.
At the Rackham home, Rackham's bedridden wife, Agnes, preoccupies their dwindling household staff with her hypochondria. She fears she is going mad (and in fact is). She longs for relief and begs Mrs. Fox to direct her to the "convent" where she may find "eternal life." She buries her diaries in the backyard.
Unable to stand being apart from Sugar, Rackham (at Sugar's suggestion) hires her as a nanny to his bed-wetting daughter, Sophie. Sugar enters the Rackham household, but as soon as she does Rackham begins to grow distant. It slowly emerges that Sugar appeals to him as a prostitute, not as a companion. Sugar, in contrast, is drawn to the stability of domestic life. She befriends Sophie with kindness and cures her of her bed-wetting. She digs up Agnes's diaries and reads them, gaining understanding of Agnes's pain.
The climactic events of all these subplots take 200 pages or so to play out. What a saga! Faber's novel in its U.S. hardcover edition clocks in at 834 pages. It's a novel to wander in, and one feels sorry when it is over.
And yet to achieve the tapestry effect of multiple subplots, it is by no means necessary to write at such length. Cecily von Ziegesar's zingy young adult novel Gossip Girl, discussed in earlier chapters of this workbook, has just as many subplots but delivers them in a breezy 199 pages. How does she do it?
Gossip Girl first introduces New York private school girl Blair Waldorf, a too-rich, too-busy, and under-supervised seventeen-year-old who wants to lose her virginity with her boyfriend, Nate Archibald. Her various setbacks away from that goal form the principle plotline in the novel.
The main obstacle to Blair's ambition is her former friend, the stunningly gorgeous but troubled Serena van der Woodsen. Serena's return to New York, her abandonment by her former friends, her failure to fire Nate out of his
ambivalence, her discovery of avant-garde art (a blurred picture of her eye— or maybe her belly button or possibly a more intimate body part—appears in ads all over the city), and her discovery of filmmaking and a more interesting boy than Nate, occupies a significant portion of the remaining novel.
But there are other subplots, too. Serena's love interest, Dan Humphrey, finds Serena, loses her
, and finds her again. Student filmmaker Vanessa Abrams has a crush on Dan, but finds a more interesting possibility in a Brooklyn bartender. Dan's little sister, Jenny, worships Serena, volunteers to work on a film Serena never even scripts, and, to be near Serena, she even crashes a charity fundraiser called "Kiss on the Lips" that raises money for Central Park falcons. (Why do falcons need money, you ask? No one really knows.) Meanwhile, preppy lecher Chuck Bass hits on every girl in sight, including Serena, and winds up with Jenny, whom he molests in a ladies' room stall at the "Kiss on the Lips" party.
All of these doings are tightly woven together. What accounts for the 600-page length difference between The Crimson Petal and the White and Gossip Girl? Style. Faber's ambling narration minutely details every scene. Von Ziegesar's writing provides as much character detail, but speeds through the action with frenetic music-video pacing. The racy world of privileged Manhattan private school girls feels no less vast than Faber's tapestry of Victorian sexual politics, though, thanks to von Ziegesar's liberal use of subplots.
Are there subplots that can be developed in your novel? Some writers are afraid to add subplots, for fear their story will run away with them. That fear is unfounded. Subplots may make a novel sprawl, but if carefully woven together with the main layers (see the Follow-up Work in the following exercise), the novel not only will hang together, but will have the rich tapestry feeling of real life.
____________ _ EXERCISE
Adding Subplots
Step 1: Who are your novel's most important secondary characters? Write down the names of one, two, or three.
Step 2: What is the main problem, conflict, or goal faced by each of these characters? Write those down.
Step 3: For each, what are three main steps leading to the solution to that problem, the resolution of that conflict, or the attainment of that goal? Another way to ask that is, what are three actions, events, or developments—with respect to these secondary characters—that you could not possibly leave out? Write those down.
Step 4: Outline each secondary character's story. While your protagonist is at work on the main problem, what is each character doing to solve his own problem? Make notes, starting now.
Follow-up work: Weave your plot layers together with your subplots using the method in the Building Plot exercise found in chapter sixteen. Add the nodes of conjunction that you discover to your novel.
Conclusion: Can subplots and secondary characters steal the show? Of course. If they steal it effectively enough, it is even possible that you have the wrong protagonist. But that would be unusual. Most subplots are underdeveloped or nonexistent. This exercise can help give subplots a vital pulse.
Turning Points
A turning point in a story is point at which things change. It could be the arrival of new information, a shift in the course of events, a reversal, a twist (such as revealing a character's second role), a challenge, or a disaster.
Cooking up turning points is easy enough: All stories have them. Making them as dramatic as possible is a bit more difficult. Heightening takes work. But it is work that pays off in a more active, exciting, and involving novel.
Sometimes a turning point simply involves letting go of an old way of looking at things. An example of this can be found in Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls, which was discussed in an earlier chapter. Protagonist Addie Peabody is hung up on her daughter, Chloe, who died ten years earlier. Addie refuses to acknowledge that Chloe is gone. She cooks meals for Chloe that never get eaten and keeps Chloe's room preserved exactly as it was when she died. Addie has not even changed Chloe's bedsheets.
One day, Addie stings her new lover, Jack St. Bride, by telling him that he will never mean more to her than Chloe. Later, Addie awakens in Chloe's room feeling remorse:
- Frustrated, she threw back the covers of the bed and began to pace through the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she automatically touched the small picture of Chloe that hung there, the same way she did every time she came up and down, as if it were a mezuzah. And that was the moment she realized she'd lied.
Jack might never mean more to her than Chloe. But God, he meant just as much. . . .
"I love him," she murmured out loud, the words bright as a handful of new coins. "I love him. I love him." . . .
In Chloe's room, she stripped the bed. She carried the linens downstairs in a bundle, remembering what it had been like to hold her newborn just like this in her arms and walk her through her colic at night. She threw the sheets and pillowcases into the washing machine, added soap, and turned the dial.
The fresh scent of Tide rose from the bowl of the machine. "Goodbye," Addie whispered.
In this passage, Picoult heightens Addie's inner change with an outer action: Laundering (after ten years!) the sheets that her dead daughter slept on the last night of her life. One might not think of the scent of laundry detergent as a symbol, but Picoult makes it a powerful indicator of change. Really, it is herself that Addie is washing clean.
Recall my earlier examination of Barbara Freethy's romantic novel Summer Secrets. Freethy's plot has plenty of turning points, thanks to the (count 'em) three stories of three sisters that she spins out. The oldest sister is bookstore owner Kate McKenna. Kate keeps a tight lid on her feelings, and on her two sisters, because of the horrible secret that they share. An additional difficulty is their alcoholic, restless father, Duncan, who, after a triumphant but tragically marred round-the-world sailboat race eight years earlier, promised Kate that he would never race again. As the novel opens, Duncan breaks that promise and signs on as skipper for an upcoming ocean race. Kate is livid.
Kate's temper uncharacteristically breaks, and the man who happens to catch the heat is a reporter, Tyler Jamison, who is investigating the famous sailing McKenna sisters and their father. Note how Freethy heightens this minor turning point of Kate's with careless words that create a major outburst:
[Tyler says:] "Not so fast. Tell me what's wrong."
"I've had it," she replied. "I've had it with lies. I've had it with people making promises that they have no intention of keeping. They just say the words they think you want to hear, then they do whatever they want. And no one changes. People say they'll change, but they don't. No matter how hard you try, what you say, you can't make them do what they don't want to do. I give up. I quit. I'm throwing in the towel, putting up the white flag. I just wish I had a handkerchief or something. But you don't have one, because you're not a gentleman, and men don't carry handkerchiefs anymore, and it's all such a mess!"
Phew! We get the point. Freethy heightens with more than forceful prose. She also effectively uses settings to make tense moments more dramatic. During the fateful race eight years earlier, Kate's fiancee, Jeremy, was lost at sea one night in a storm. She has never gotten over her loss. Passion rises between Kate and Tyler, but it cannot get very far until her feelings for Jeremy get out in the open, which early on Kate is not ready to do, as we discover:
"Are you still in love with Jeremy?"
Her mouth went dry. When had this suddenly become so personal? "My feelings are my own, and they will stay that way. Now I'm going home and you're going somewhere else."
Now, let me ask you: Where would you set this exchange? In Kate's living room? In Tyler's rental car? Freethy sets it in the cemetery where Jeremy is buried, which Kate goes to visit and where Tyler tracks her down. The answer to his question—"Are you still in love with Jeremy?"—seems pretty obvious from this, but that is the point. Kate refuses to answer, but anyone, including Tyler, can readily see the truth.
Major life turning points involve accepting loss, such as the end of a relationship or the end of a life. Earlier I discussed Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, in which fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is abducted, raped, and murdered. From heaven, she narrates the stories of those left behind, some of which, of course, involve coming to grips with the permanence of her death. The first is Susie's father, whose grief hits as he examines the ships-in-bottles that Susie help
ed him to make:
I watched him as he lined up the ships in bottles on his desk, bringing them over from the shelves where they usually sat. He used an old shirt of my mother's that had been ripped into rags and began dusting the shelves. Under his desk there were empty bottles—rows and rows of them we had collected for our future ship building. In the closet were more ships—the ships he had built with his own father, ships he had built alone, and then those we had made together. Some were perfect, but their sails browned; some had sagged or toppled over after the years. Then there was the one that had burst into flames the week before my death.
He smashed that one first.
My heart seized up. I turned and saw all the others, all the years they marked and the hands that had held them. His dead father's, his dead child's. I watched him as he smashed the rest. He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death, and afterward he stood in the guest room/den surrounded by green glass. The bottles, all of them, lay broken on the floor, the sails and boat bodies among them. He stood in the wreckage.
Notice how Sebold uses these fragile objects as the expression of the father's unbearable rage. Sebold also uses an object, a photograph of Susie, as the focal point in showing the grief of the classmate who loved Susie, an Indian boy named Ray Singh, the only boy who she ever kissed. Ray does not attend her memorial service, but rather grieves alone:
Ray Singh stayed away. He said goodbye to me in his own way: by looking at a picture—my studio portrait—that I had given him that fall.
He looked into the eyes of that photograph and saw right through them to the backdrop of marbleized suede every kid had to sit in front of under a hot light. What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone. He knew that no one ever really looked the way they did in photos. He knew he didn't look as wild or as frightened as he did in his own. He came to realize something as he stared at my photo—that it was not me. I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now with Ruth, I was in the quiet time he spent alone between studying. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow, to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either. I watched him as he placed the photograph in one of the giant volumes of Indian poetry in which he and his mother had pressed dozens of fragile flowers that were slowly turning to dust.