Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

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  • Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

    Looking for suggestions of minor characters with effective subplots and goals of their own.

    Also, I keep reading where the goals of minor characters have to support the protag. Is this always true? You can't have a minor character's goal to be at odds with the protag's but they reconcile the two goals at the end?

    Thanks.

  • #2
    Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

    Is this a TV pilot? If so, yes, I think their goal should fold into the protag from a logic stand point.

    I'd be concerned that the reader/audience wouldn't be able to decipher who the real antagonist is until the end, lessoning the overall impact of your true foil.

    'Always' is 'never' a good idea with writing.
    DOPE CITY

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    • #3
      Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

      Inigo Montoya
      https://twitter.com/DavidCoggeshall
      http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1548597/

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      • #4
        Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

        Originally posted by ProfessorChomp View Post
        Inigo Montoya
        "You killed my father, prepare to die." classic.

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        • #5
          Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

          Inigo Montoya, yes!

          surftatboy re: I'd be concerned that the reader/audience wouldn't be able to decipher who the real antagonist is until the end, lessoning the overall impact of your true foil.

          It's a feature and you bring up a point that didn't occur to me... do you think it's effective to have an antagonist working against the protag without the protag knowing about it until she's ambushed in act 3? Or should the antag "always" have some physical contact with the protag throughout the film. (I love your always/never comment.)

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          • #6
            Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

            Normally the protag is dealing with the antagonist by Act 1. I'm never going to say it always has to be that way -- surely someone has written something, which works, where it's not that way.

            But I do think you're making it hard on yourself keeping them apart until the 3rd act, particularly for a feature. That's an extremely hard line to pay off while holding our interest. Do they literally not speak to each other until the 3rd act?

            Sight unseen, I feel like there's probably a way to fold their paths into one through-line to make the stakes more tangible and immediate. If the protag hasn't the slightest inkling until Act 3 [because she's blindsided], you may begin to lose your audience 'this chick is dumb, how does she not realize!?" I would say maybe a cleaner way to do it would be that the protag definitely knows, but can't prove it. Or, suspects, along with us, but we all question the guilt or innocence of the antagonize until the sinister blindside which should have been obvious in hindsight, but wasn't. Hard to say without knowing the story.

            I wrote something with a flip-blindside [I'll call it], but I put the protag and foil together in Act 1 and flipped it at the mid point [was a hindsight is 20/20 moment]. Gone Girl is a good example of a flip-blindside that few saw coming -- in the book. Personally, I think a blindside should represent a massive shift in what we assumed the story to be, not just a LATE realization by the protag as to who the bad guy has been all along.

            Someone must take the lead role of the antagonist early on, is my point. If you flip it, cool. Just give us someone to despise, so we can love the protag. If the foil is weak you risk the audience/reader seeing the protag as the antagonist of sorts -- which is good if you're flipping the roles via blindside -- otherwise not so much.

            Whatever makes a gripping story… hopefully someone else has better advice.
            DOPE CITY

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            • #7
              Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

              Originally posted by socalwriter1 View Post
              Looking for suggestions of minor characters with effective subplots and goals of their own.

              Also, I keep reading where the goals of minor characters have to support the protag. Is this always true? You can't have a minor character's goal to be at odds with the protag's but they reconcile the two goals at the end?

              Thanks.
              The whole point about secondary characters and secondary plots is that there should be a reason for those "plots" to exist -- and not simply a mechanical -- and by that I mean a plot-related reason -- for them to be in the movie.

              Generally, those secondary characters, in some sense, are an externalization of the internal thematic conflict that's going on inside your main character, which is also playing out through action and conflict in the dramatic space of the story. So characters, in some sense embody certain things that are relevant to the main character -- love, home, security, the goal, obviously there's an antagonist, but the antagonist has particular aspects which various characters also embody -- forces of chaos, cruelty, relentlessness, cleverness, or the attractive aspect of the antagonist -- all things that the Protagonist has to face and overcome over the course of the story.

              So what about characters and their sub-plots - presuming that you have them?

              Mostly, when you look at sub-plots, these are going to be variations on the main thematic thread.

              Another thread talks about Inigo Montoya and that sub-plot. But what is the central story about? It's about true love. They tell you as much. And what is Inigo's story about? What drives him? His love for his murdered father. So it plays out a variation on that central theme.

              Generally, you'll look for sub-plots to illuminate that central theme that's playing out with your main character by using them to explore variations on that theme -- what happens when you approach that theme from alternate directions? Does it take you along different paths, lead you to different ends, or to the same end?

              That's how you can make sub-plots feel as if they are an organic part of the larger story.

              NMS

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              • #8
                Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                Originally posted by socalwriter1 View Post
                Looking for suggestions of minor characters with effective subplots and goals of their own.

                Also, I keep reading where the goals of minor characters have to support the protag. Is this always true? You can't have a minor character's goal to be at odds with the protag's but they reconcile the two goals at the end?

                Thanks.
                Read Martell's Supporting Characters book.

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                • #9
                  Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                  No book should say you have to do anything. Along with the handling of exposition in a story, the handling of subplots is another feature that pros and amateurs do on two completely different levels.

                  Your story is a game of POVs. That means that multiple POVs exist and compete against one another over their desired outcome. Subplots give you the ability to explore that.

                  You'll notice sometimes that the subplot works in an inverse way to the main. That means a win for the hero in a mini battle against the villain is a loss for him/her in a subplot.

                  You'll also see subplot characters come into play in the main battle. A lot of twists in films is that a subplot character that has been friend of hero thus far suddenly switches sides or has been on the other side the whole time.

                  Depends on the genre too. A subplot in an action film may serve one purpose and a subplot from a drama serves the other.

                  How does Night Shamalyan work the subplot of 'this is a man in a troubled marriage' in at the end of Sixth Sense?

                  In The Game, how does the subplot relationship between Douglas/Penn characters influence the plot?

                  In Carlito's Way how does the subplot of Carlito/Benny From The Bronx relationship come back into play at the end?

                  A lot of your secrets, a lot of your reveals will lie, should lie in a subplot that existed the length of the film or 2nd act and this subplot comes back into play to have a huge effect I did not see coming. I didn't get that from a book. I just notice that the stories I admire and think that are well written do this.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                    Or this ^^^. Also *written.*

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                    • #11
                      Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                      'The Hunt for Red October' and 'Das Boot' both had effective sub plots.
                      Know this: I'm a lazy amateur, so trust not a word what I write.
                      "The ugly can be beautiful. The pretty, never." ~ Oscar Wilde

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                      • #12
                        Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                        Thanks guys. More stuff to think about and work on.

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                        • #13
                          Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                          Originally posted by Crayon View Post
                          'The Hunt for Red October' and 'Das Boot' both had effective sub plots.
                          BOOM!

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                          • #14
                            Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                            Hey, we posted this on our FB page, went down really well. Maybe you can draw some inspiration from it http://www.indiewire.com/article/12-...-film-20160204 Best wishes, www.shorescripts.com

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                            • #15
                              Re: Effective subplot and goal for MINOR CHARACTERS

                              Subplot/Main Plot, can't we all just get along?

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