How to Avoid Getting Lost into Subplots. Even If You Love To

The one simple and actionable way to keep focus and finish your novel.

There are countless ways to write a novel, and there are even more articles here on Medium that explain it very clearly, so I’m not going to write another one. What I’m going to do, is telling you how to avoid one of the most recurring and classic traps many authors fall into when they are writing a novel’s first draft, and that is losing themselves into subplots.

Subplots are like rabbit holes. You are fascinated by a specific character you have created, because they are growing and you start to have a glimpse of their past; and what you see is alluring and fascinating, something you would like to expand.

You know you have a story to push forward, the so-called main narrative, but that character is so compelling, attractive and multi-faceted and has an incredible growth potential, that you can’t do anything other than following them. And they will take you a long way, if you let them.

Their story is very seducing and you get your hands into it; you sink knee-deep into their past, exploring where they come from, who they met, what they experienced to become who they are today; you meet other characters belonging to that timeline and you start telling about them too, then you find out you don’t know a lot about that era in history when your character is still young, so you start to research on it. And soon you realize you’re writing another novel. Good! Well, not really.

Here’s another example of rabbit hole; when a couple of characters are acting inside of a situation they originated, and you see their dynamics are working, you expand upon that scene and then you realize that scene demands an even deeper analysis. You may feel the need to expand on those characters’ backstories in order to justify why they are like that in the present, or why they are able to perform a specific task; for example, martial arts. So you halt the storytelling to get into their common backgrounds, and only later you realize…

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