MORE: SECONDARY CHARACTERS

Excerpts from Creating Characters Kids Will Love
(Writer’s Digest Books) by Elaine Marie Alphin

Preceding the exercises below, Alphin shows how a best friend can listen to the hero, challenge, or criticize the hero more freely than other characters can, or betray the hero. The two may not start out as friends, but circumstances may bring them together. (The following was approved for posting, with the author's generous permission.)

Choose at least one of the following exercises and develop it using your novel.

Find a Friend

1. Take a character you’ve developed in your character journal [or novel] and give him or her a best friend. Decide why they’re friends and what they like about each other. Also decide what they’d each like to change about the other. Write a scene in which they argue over something. Are they still friends after the argument is over?

2. Write [another] scene in which the friend decides to turn against the main character. Does this strengthen your story?

3. ... Rewrite [your] story without the [main character’s supportive best] friend. How does this affect the protagonist’s growth at the end?

Examples (excerpted list)

• A Separate Peace by John Knowles [Best friends don’t really know each other.]
• The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg [Kids form a complex friendship.]

MORE: SUBPLOTS

Excerpts from

The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children
(Writer’s Digest Books) by Nancy Lamb

The following passage from Chapter 12, “Story and Quest: Plot and Subplot,” is excerpted with the author’s generous permission.

A subplot is a story told in a quieter voice than the plot. Subplots add texture, interest and meaning to the plot. As storytelling devices, they supplement, enlighten and enlarge; they amuse, engage and complicate. The subplot is a way to tell another tale—a way to add interest, increase suspense, and enrich your story. The subplot can be a reflection of the plot or stand in opposition to it.

Some stories have one subplot. Some have several. The choice is up to you.

As a general rule, try to envision your story as a tale that includes both plot and subplot. This allows you to expand the narrative horizons, enrich the texture and increase the depth of both your action and your characters...

BASIC APPROACHES TO SUBPLOT

There are two fundamental ways to insert a subplot into your story... [Weaving] is probably the most common approach to subplot. In this method you integrate the subplot into the plot, advancing each as you go forward. Sharon Creech does this in [the middle-grade novel] Chasing Redbird—the story of a young girl named Zinny who uncovers a hidden trail near her home at the same time she uncovers mysteries within her own family. Both stories propel the plot forward in an intriguing, interwoven way.

SIX STRATEGIES FOR SUBPLOT

Subplots enhance your story in several different ways. Don’t be afraid to experiment with unusual approaches. Keep trying until you find the method that feels right for both your plot and your characters.

[In the section that follows, Lamb describes six strategies for subplot—each including an example from children’s literature—showing how subplots can reflect and complement each other. Here is an excerpt, with one strategy intact:]

1) Create a Subplot that Pulls the Reader Through the Story
[Example: Chris Crutcher’s novel, Iron Man]

2) Alternate Plot and Subplot
[Example: Peter Dickinson’s novel, A Bone from a Dry Sea]

3) Weave Plot and Subplot Together

In the middle grade novel called Nobody’s Family is Going to Change, Louise Fitzhugh tells the story of Emma, who wants more than anything to be a lawyer when she grows up. Her tradition-bound father roundly objects, carrying this disapproval to his son whose ambition is to be a dancer.

This is the story of two children battling to discover their identities and to affirm who they are. It is also a story about black and feminist rights, family relations and the pain of being fat in world that stigmatizes anything but thin.

Fitzhugh weaves the plots and themes together with skill, creating a story that is touching and thoughtful in its ability to convey interesting and significant ideas, while respecting the intelligence of the young reader.

4) Use the Subplot for Comic or Romantic Relief
[Example: Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream]

5) Use the Subplot to Reveal the Character of the Hero
[Example: Bette Greene’s novel, Summer of My German Soldier]

6) Dramatize the Subplot as a Story Within a Story
[Example: Kate Duke’s picture book, Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One]

YOUR TURN: ESTABLISHING PLOT LINES

1) ...Think about how you want to tell the story [in your novel], dividing the narrative into three acts. Consider how you want the characters to interact and how you want the story to progress. Pay close attention to the challenges set forth in each act.

Act I: Problem/obstacle
Act II: Conflict/struggle
Act III: Resolution

2) Once you have outlined the book, add a subplot. Decide whether you are going to weave the subplot into the plot, present it in alternating stories with the plot, or devise some combination of those two techniques.

3) After you have established both plot and subplot,... ask yourself how the main character’s story can be adjusted to honor the idea of the Hero Quest [described earlier in this book]. Keep the six steps of the quest in mind as you work on the details for your character’s journey.

4) Finally, as you write, refer to the guidelines for story, plot and subplot, remembering that even as these suggestions make demands, they also shape and strengthen story.

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