Tangents and Subplots: When Do They Work?

Shopping cart in the woods with text: Is This Scene Out of Place?

My Elements of a Scene Checklist helps us identify whether a scene is truly necessary and contributing to our story by making sure it fulfills a story purpose. The same judgment criteria can apply to subplots as well. Let’s take a look at how can we make sure our tangents and subplots are adding to the story and not acting as a distraction.

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Plotting Tip: One Simple Step to Ensure Our Story Works

Ladder up to a question mark with text: One Step to Check Our Plot

Either plot events affect the character and the story, or they don’t. If we understand the difference, we can learn what to look out for and know how to fix any problems.

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Actions and Reactions: The End-All-Be-All of Storytelling

Rippled panel with text: Building a Story One Action & Reaction at a Time

A story’s narrative is made up of a chain of actions (motivation/cause) and reactions (response/effect). The cause-and-effect chain, whether at the scale of story acts or sentences, creates our narrative drive: Is the story leading somewhere?

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Does Every Scene Need a Goal?

I love when I make my readers think. Even better is when they turn around and make me think even deeper about an issue. *smile* Yesterday, K.J. Pugh blogged about my last post (where I talked about cliffhangers and hooks) and brought up the issue of sequels I briefly mentioned. No, […]

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