Don't Neglect Your Subplots (They Really Do Add Spice To Your Story)

Subplots are one of those things a lot of writers love to try their hands at, but not all writers are good at them. They're sort of like getting perfect icing on a cupcake; it's amazing when you get it just right, but if you mess it up then it's going to be really obvious.

Now, if you're going to include subplots in your story, I'd recommend keeping some of the following advice in mind... as well as avoiding some of the bigger mistakes that can ruin your special addition to the overarching plot!

Because it's very easy to scare your subplots, and they fall flatter than a soufflé when that happens.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

What Is A Subplot?

Subplots, or B Plots, are secondary storylines that are going on during the main story you're telling. For example, in Lord of The Rings, the main plot is Frodo's quest to take the ring to Mount Doom and destroy it. The major B plots are Aragorn's struggles to stop the rampaging armies of evil, and Mary and Pippin going off on their own, separate adventures. The reason these subplots work so well is that they all affect the main storyline in some way, they mirror the overall themes of the story, and they weave together neatly in the end.

Those are the things you want out of a subplot. It doesn't necessarily have to be a long-running, immersive thing that takes up a great deal of page space, but it needs to act as part of the ongoing narrative in some way, shape or form, and the subplot needs to be resolved the same way the main plot does (though not necessarily at the same time).

For folks who need another example of a subplot, one of my favorites that I've written is in my book Painted Cats. The main plot is that our Maine Coon bruiser Leo has been asked to find a missing cat named Mischief... but the subplot is that her kitten Trouble has sort of landed on Leo's doorstep. So while he is trying to find what happened to Mischief, Leo also has to help teach Trouble how to be a cat... particularly when it comes to fighting in New York back alleys. This subplot weaves back into the narrative when what Leo teaches Trouble helps him defend himself, and leads to a domino falling in the main plot. And, in the event I write more novels, this minor subplot is going to shape Trouble as a character, helping him grow into a protagonist in his own right, and possibly headlining his own series.

Seriously, grab a copy of this book if you haven't!

However, those are two examples of subplots that do work... what does it look like when a subplot doesn't work? Well, I'm glad you asked, because this reaches back to the early days of my career when I was editing for a small romance company. The company, author, and book shall not be named.

With that said, the main plot was that our protagonist was an Arabian noblewoman in a previous life, and her lover had been cursed into a piece of jewelry. A thousand years later the modern reincarnation of this woman finds the ring, and frees her lover from his metallic prison. The two of them must then confront the immortal sorcerer who laid this curse upon them in the first place, destroying him once and for all!

That's the A Plot of the book. The B Plot... well, it's about our protagonist's bestie.

So, from page 2 of this novel, we know that our protagonist's bestie is on the outs with her man. He seems to have cheated on her with a waitress, and now they're broken up. Her whole plot is trying to move on, and to find a new man. Her ex shows up 3 times throughout the book, and every time he does he is belligerent, unhelpful, and a general asshole all around. He never does anything to help out with the A Plot, nor does he do anything to contradict the view we've been given of him. There's never a scene where he shows up in his car to pick up the protagonist when she needed something, or an explanation that no, he didn't sleep with that waitress, but our protagonist's friend just won't believe him, and he's trying to prove that he didn't do anything wrong.

And at the end of the novel, said bestie and her ex are now together again... and this is supposed to be seen as a positive resolution even though he's still a massive dickhead who has been nothing but unkind to everyone around him, and did apparently cheat on his girlfriend who just took him back. No lesson was learned, no actual plot was affected, and it's a real sour note on what is an otherwise happy ending to the story.

The whole subplot was, in other words, pointless. The ex could have been removed from every scene he was in, and just never been mentioned, and nothing would have changed except the book became less unbearable to read. His ex taking him back means that she didn't learn anything, and neither of them grew or changed... and given the fact that said best friend just witnessed literal magic, a man reborn from over a thousand years ago after breaking an ancient curse, and the knowledge that our protagonist tried to find her lost love in every one of her dozens of lifetimes, the proper plot resolution should have been for the bestie to kick her ex to the curb, take back her power, and make it known that she won't accept anything less than this kind of love in her life.

And then maybe she meets a sweet, young EMT who comes to the scene of the sorcerer fight or something. The point is, though, that this is an example of a subplot that wasn't fun, wasn't a story in its own right, and added nothing to the book... which are precisely the sorts of subplots you need to trim off of your manuscript before you send it to your editors.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Asking For Support Is Not "Begging For Money"

There is, apparently, a lot of confusion among folks on the Internet about how artists get paid. For some reason a lot of people out there seem to believe that once a creator makes something that it is submitted to the council of Art Warlocks who vote on whether the creator of this work will be given the standard Rich and Famous contract, or if they are to be turned away and told to try again.

Unfortunately, that isn't how it works. So I wanted to take a moment to explain to folks out there how it is artists actually make their money, and how important our audience is in making sure we actually have the ability to pay our bills.

For folks who wondered, we can't do this without Viewers Like You.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Where Does The Money Come From?

Allow me to pull back the curtain, and show you how it is authors get paid.

So, if you write books then you have to first write the manuscript. You then have to get it published either by a traditional publisher, or through a self-publishing platform. Traditional publishers do layout, art, etc., and give you a royalty for every sale, while self-published authors have to do all of that stuff themselves, but they get to keep a bigger percentage of every sale.

And if you're writing blogs or articles (or making videos), then you tend to have an option for traffic-based payments, as well as crowdfunding. For the former, consider the article If 90,000 People Read This Article I Can Pay My Bills This Month. It points out that 90,000 reads is what an article on Vocal.media needs to acquire in order to yield about $540 in payout to the author. And if someone wanted to support this blog, then you could go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page in order to kick in a fee for every article I write in order to help me keep the train rolling.

It's all about numbers, baby.

However, the point of all of this is to say that authors do not get paid for making things... we get paid either by our audience buying things, or our audience giving us their time and attention on a platform which then gives us a fee for how much traffic we brought to their site. We could spend 20 hours a day putting words on the page, but if no one buys copies, or reads them on hosting platforms that actually pay the creator, then there's not going to be any money to be had.

This is why we ask our audience to support us. Because just like PBS says, "This program is made possible by viewers like you."

And there are a LOT of people our there who get vitriolically angry when you point this out to them.

We Literally Need Your Help To Do What We Do

I have lost count of the number of people who have left snide comments, telling me that if I need to "beg for money" then maybe I should give up and "get a real job" as they put it. However, the point that I feel needs to be driven home to so many people is that ALL creators are literally paid by the audience in one way, shape, form, or another. It doesn't matter if it's one of the biggest touring musicians in the mainstream, or somebody with a small YouTube audience talking about gardening. Whether it's you watching our videos so that we get a cut of the ad revenue from YouTube, you buying our merch so we get a piece of that sale, or you just directly handing us money as a tip for what we do, YOU are required for us to make money.

Period. End of story. And for folks who need the details spelled out, I made a video on it a while back.

Now, if you made it this far, I need you to read this next part very carefully.

You are not obligated to support artists whose work you don't like. Even if you do like a an artist, you aren't required to give them money. However, at the end of the day, you are what decides whether or not an artist gets paid. So if you want a particular creator to keep making things, it sort of behooves you to put in the effort to big up their signal, and make sure they're getting money in their hand one way or the other. Sort of like how if you want to see sequels to a movie, it's important for you to go see it in theaters, bring your friends, buy it when it's available to own, and so on, to send a message to the studio that there's an audience who wants more of this.

And it's something you need to work into your everyday. If you like a video, leave a comment of 7+ words, and give it an upvote. Get used to subscribing and following to people who you want to do well. Leave people tips, and buy some merch when you can. Being an active participant is worth so much to creators, and it is unfortunately so rare to find in an audience.

If you need a list, then just take the one at the end of this article, and apply it to all the creators our there that you want to see pay their bills, and keep making more art. Because it is a lot easier to keep doing this job if you have your utilities covered, and food in your cabinets. Just saying.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

As An Author, You Need To Learn To Double Dip Your Career

One of the questions authors always get (myself included) is where do we find the time to work on things? Not just the writing (though that's obviously part of it), but also the time to do the research we need for our projects, the time to market things, or the time for... well, anything else, really. How are our lives not just sleep and work, with minimal time given to sleep?

Well, first of all, they're not. Most of us just work all the time, every day, trying to keep our heads above water. However, one of the most important skills that I've found as an author is that I have to be able to double dip everything I do. Or, put another way, I need to make sure that whatever I do as an author has multiple applications to either justify my expenses in time, money, and energy, or to make sure that I'm getting double the results whenever possible.

If that sounds confusing, stick with me, I'll give you some examples.

It's simpler than it sounds, I promise!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Double Dipping Your Work (For Fun and Profit!)

Perhaps the clearest, recent example I have of what I'm talking about can be seen in some of my work writing tabletop RPG supplements. Now, for quite some time, I've been wanting to run a game of Hunter: The Vigil (a roleplaying game where players take on the roles of normal people hunting monsters in the dark shadows of the modern day), but I wanted to set it during Prohibition. Now, I knew relatively little about that particular era except what you see in movies. However, I wanted to run a game that felt authentic to the time period, rather than a parody of it, so I knew I was going to have to do a lot of reading and research.

But I couldn't justify just spending hours upon hours at my desk reading and learning history just for this thing I'm doing in my free time. I'm already spending 9-12 hours a day working on things, and I have no blocks of personal time or energy that I could dedicate to reading about organized crime in Chicago, and the social changes sweeping America in the 1920s. So if I was going to dedicate time to this, I needed to find some way to put this knowledge to use in a professional capacity in order to justify the energy I was going to expend.

As such I took the notes I'd made on the time period, and I wrote several unrelated RPG supplements meant to be used with the game Call of Cthulhu (a roleplaying game set in the Cthulhu mythos created by horror author H.P. Lovecraft). These include 100 Gangsters, Gun Molls, and Goons, as well as 100 Books To Find In The Miskatonic Library (That AREN'T In The Restricted Section) and 100 Whispers and Rumors To Hear Around Arkham. Not only that, but because these supplements have short vignettes in them of an ongoing investigation, I also made an audio drama or two to try to get readers hooked into what's going on.

This series appears on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, in case you want to check it out. If so, give us a like and a subscribe while you're there!

So, this is a series of double dips. First, I want to do something in my free time that would take a lot of research for me to do well. So I did that research but I found projects that I could then use that research on other than my own, private game. Not only that, but once those initial projects were done, I used them as a springboard to make an audio drama, which takes a lot less time and energy due to the fact that the "script" is already written, and I just have to read and record. This allows the videos to draw in people who enjoy audio dramas, both making money in ad revenue, but also funneling people to the supplements, which they might buy.

And at the end of the day I still have all this period research I've done for the game I want to run for my friends, and I still used that knowledge to make something to pay my bills.

Is this exhausting? It absolutely is. However, double dipping as an author is a habit that you need to build over time. Like exercising, or portion control. It's a way of looking at things, and finding those helpful little loopholes that make prices lower, or which justify time spent doing one thing instead of something else.

The system runs smoothly, once you understand how it works.

As another example, do I want people to buy copies of my private detective cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats? I absolutely do! However, I also leave Amazon affiliate links to those books when I mention them on my blog because that chance to earn some extra money (getting paid my royalties by my publisher, and my affiliate commission from Amazon for selling something through their platform) might be the difference between paying my bills, and needing to dip into savings when the end of the month comes. I love going to conventions, but if I just go as an attendee then I'm out time and money for the experience that goes into a black hole. If I volunteer for panels at the convention, or if I run my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic in the gaming room, then suddenly the gas mileage, food expenses, hotel bill, badge, and any other things I paid for are all tax deductible for me when it's time to settle up with the IRS. I may even get my badge for free, or extra swag from the convention, depending on the event in question.

Hell, even just going out to dinner with someone I'm trying to have on as a guest on my show, or who is working with me on a podcast, counts as a business expense. Which again means that Uncle Sam lets me count those costs against my earnings for the year.

Again, authors are working with paper-thin margins of error, and a lot of the time we cannot justify the expense of something in terms of time, energy, or money if we hold up that thing in a vacuum. So learn to double dip what you do, because it will make a lot of things you thought were impossible quite doable... or at least less painful in the long run.

Just remember to keep your receipts, and don't bite off more than you can chew.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Write Fiction, Not Exposition (Get To The Meat of The Story)

Have you ever been reading a book, and for some reason the author insists on giving you the recipe blog treatment? You know, you came here for a story about international intrigue and spies, but for some reason the author insists on going on about historical events from twenty years ago? Or when you wanted a blood-pumping high fantasy adventure, but you're five pages in and all you've gotten is a complicated history of the royal family which involves a lot of "begetting," but you have no idea who your protagonist is, and what they're actually trying to do?

This is something all of us fall prey to sometimes... but generally speaking, we should focus on writing fiction, not on filling our pages with endless exposition.

We don't need this much backstory... trust me.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

People Are Here For The Story

I've said this before in a variety of ways throughout this blog, but for those who've never heard this before, the story is what draws the audience. Your audience might enjoy your worldbuilding, or your evocative language, or the intricacies of the time period your story is set in... but first and foremost people are here for the characters, and the story. Most of us, on some level, know this.

But a lot of the time we get stuck trying to give context to the point that it eclipses everything else.

The tower was a marble-floored monstrosity. The marble had been shipped from Gandahar over 1,000 years ago, and it was the result of the Treaty of Ardun, signed by...

This is, in some ways, a result of our desire as creators to tell our readers the entire context for the thing we're creating. Because yes, there's the surface-level appearance of things, but there's almost always deeper context for our worlds, our characters, and the things our audience is seeing. But the question we always have to ask ourselves is, "Do the readers need this?" Because if they don't need it, then as much as it might hurt us to do, we shouldn't put it in the text. That space can be better utilized for something else.

However, there are going to be times where that exposition is necessary for the audience to understand the story. But there are a few, simple things you should keep in mind as a creator when it comes to including it.

- Save it for the quieter scenes between the harder, more emotional beats of the story.

- Work it into the flow of the fiction, instead of giving your audience a Shakesperian aside.

The first tip is specifically aimed at the urge we have to do a long-form lead-in for readers. We've all heard that we need to hook the reader as quickly as possible, and if someone feels like they're reading a history textbook, or the opening lines of a physics experiment, that isn't going to drag them into immersion. If anything, it's going to do the opposite. Focus on your fiction, your characters, and what they're actually doing, because you want your reader dragged along in their wake, curious to see more about who these people are, and the adventure they're going on. Exposition can wait until later.

Secondly, make sure that you chop up the exposition, and figure out ways to work it into the natural flow of the story. Whether it comes up in conversation between your hero and their guide who is trying to give them a tour of the city, or it's mentioned as part of a political declaration and ceremony, or it comes up when someone overhears a bit of gossip, it's typically better to work the information your audience needs into dialogue, or scene-setting description. Asides, on the whole, are a terrible idea (with the exception of comedy and parodies, because it's then drawing attention to this tendency that can slam on the brakes of reader interest).

Remember, people who are coming to your book haven't spent months to years living in this world, and they haven't fallen in love with it yet. This is your first impression, and you want your reader to be taken with it, and immediately agree to one of those dates that lasts practically until sunrise. Don't blow your shot by launching into the origin of the sandstone found in the ancient ruins of the lost tomb... focus on the fact there's an angry mummy rushing out of the darkness to tear apart the intruders who disturbed its slumber!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!