How to Make a Novel Great with Subplots

I’ve written a lot this month about plots but haven’t addressed subplots. Subplots are unique to novels because short stories aren’t long enough to handle them. How do you make a novel great with subplots? Below are three ways subplots improve a novel.

Reflect the theme

In my Halloween mystery,A Riddle in the Lonesome October, Rae deals with fear and how to handle it as a Christian. Her cousin and uncle also struggle with fear after a terrible riding accident. Her cousin and uncle’s battles allow me to explore the theme with different characters, who have different responses to it, making the story richer for readers.

Complicate the main plot

Subplots in mysteries can help obscure the solution. Many times in the novels by Agatha Christie, a lesser crime is woven into the murder, which complicates discovering the identity of the killer. Subplots can add layers of complexities to the main plot, but they must support the main plot. For example, let’s say I’m writing a mystery about the owner an old local theater getting killed in it. So a lot of the mystery has to be set in the theater. My amateur sleuth is a retired teacher who volunteers at a community garden. If I have several scenes where my sleuth talks to friends and strangers at the garden and the only things readers learn is gardening techniques, then my subplot of working at the community garden isn’t supporting the overall plot of the murder mystery.

Inject fun

Subplots can add humor, if that’s appropriate for your novel. In each of my cozy mysteries, my protagonist’s younger brothers, who’s ten, is always working on an invention. It malfunctions somehow, attacking their father, and somehow, I always make the invention a component in solving the mystery. Since I’m writing about a close family, and my teen protagonist has a sense of humor, this subplot works.

Here’s all my posts on plot this month. If you have a question about writing plots, drop it in the comments.

April 30, 2026 0

How to Balance Plot and Character Development in Your Novel

My good friend author M. Liz Boyle posed this question: how to balance plot and character development in your novel. I had to give this a lot of thought because, although I know how I do it, I wasn’t sure how to explain my approach in a way others will understand. I’m a very instinctive writer. So when my story is veering off the rails, I rely on my gut to warn me. Since other writers can’t rely on my gut–and that might get messy anyway–here are some guidelines for balancing plot and characters.

Story Is King

When you write genre fiction, the rules of the genre set the boundaries for your novel. I write traditional mysteries. If plot twist or a character arc doesn’t serve the point of the a detective solving a mystery, I should examine it and either change it into something more supportive or eliminate it.

How do you know if an aspect of your novel is serving the story? You should be able to sum up the main problem of your novel in one to three sentences.

For example, I can sum up my third Rae Riley novel, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, this way:

A hidden inheritance, a family feud, a riding accident, a fake medium and rumors of bigfoot all lead to murder as Rae Riley tries to solve the riddle that will allow her great aunt to inherit a fortune and uncover the secret of the deputy she’s fallen for.

All those elements have to support solving the riddle because it’s the main engine of the story. All the plot twists and character development need to feed that engine.

But how do you strike a balance?

The best way to strike a balance between plot points and character development is to combine them. In my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, Rae is getting to know her father and learning how he feels about her and how she feels about him. I can show those feelings through their interactions as they try to figure out who is stalking Rae threatening letters vandalism. If your fantasy novel features a quest, then your characters develop as they meet challenges on their adventure.

But you can still add small tangents.

What do I mean by “small tangents?” Short additions of dialogue or action that aren’t directly tied to the mission of your novel but deliver some flavor to the mix.

In Riddle, rumors of a rogue black bear circulate around the county. Rae’s ten-year-old half brother Aaron invents an alarm to blast music if anyone gets too close to the family’s farmhouse. Now the alarm provides a clue to the mystery, but just for fun, I added that every time the alarm catches a family member, Aaron interviews him or her to see how scared they were to judge the alarm’s effectiveness. As he tells them, he can’t interview a bear if it triggers the alarm.

It’s short, funny, and reveals something about Aaron. Keep your tangents brief and few to increase their impact. The more often you combine a plot point to reveal character, the more compelling your novel will be.

Here are all of this month’s writing tips on plotting a novel.

April 23, 2026 1

3 Tips for Writing Internal Dialogue With Tension in Your Novel

How to write high-tension scene for your novel

Since tension is the key to keeping the plot moving in any story, how do you maintain that tension when you only have one character in a scene? This is a question I often wrestle with because I write mysteries. I often have several scenes where my amateur sleuth Rae Riley is thinking through what she’s learned so far about her case. So how can I write scenes like that without boring readers? Read on for the 3 tips for writing internal dialogue with tension in your novel.

Let’s examine a one-character scene for tension. Here’s the opening scene from my short story, “A Rose from the Ashes”. Rae is in this scene alone.

*****

“Glancing left and right, I crunched across the frozen weeds to the abandoned children’s home. I could not afford to be spotted now. If only I could take a few seconds and snap some pictures. The light from the early December sunset was perfect. Gashes of blood-red light seeped through the clotted clouds, creating an ominous background for the gray stone building that was rumored to be the scene of a murder.

“At the back wall of the home, I slung the strap for my camera across my chest and climbed through an opening that once held a window. I dropped to the bare ground, my long, dark gold braid catching on a loose nail in the sill. I disentangled myself and crossed the dirt floor. The fire had burned the wooden floor away. And the roof and the whole interior. The four stone walls loomed above me like a medieval fortress as the sunset’s rays spotlighted sections of the garbage-strewn floor.

“I knelt by a large fireplace, straining to detect any sound of psychics, ghost hunters, or thrill-seeking high school kids who had come to catch sight of the ghost of Bella Rydell.

“Nothing but a few caws from crows and sighs as the wind sailed through the empty window frames.
A lonely place. Very lonely, stuck on twenty acres of unused county land.

“Shaking off a shiver, I unzipped my down vest and removed the two roses. I laid them on the rusty iron grate of the fireplace.

“These would start everyone in the county talking again.”

*****

So how did I tension to this scene?

Description

I use description to show that my protagonist isn’t entirely comfortable in this setting, using words and phrases like “gashes of blood read light” “ominous,” “a few caws from crows”, and “the wind sailed through empty window frames”. Also Rae shakes “off a shiver.” Here is a post about how to use uncomfortable settings to add tension to your novel.

Foreshadow

Hinting at plot points that will become significant later in the story keeps readers turning the page. “The gray stone building that was rumored to be the scene of a murder” and “any sound of psychics, ghost hunters, or thrill-seeking high school kids who had come to catch sight of the ghost of Bella Rydell.”

Raise questions

Rae lays two roses in the grate of the fireplace and thinks that will get everyone in the county talking. Why? The key to raising questions is that while you can be mysterious, you can’t be confusing. Although readers wonder why the roses will provoke talk, they understand exactly what Rae is doing.

These aren’t the only ways to write internal dialogue with tension. Next week, I’ll discuss what I think is the most underused plotting technique for creating tension and one I rely on all the time.

Who is an author who writes tension-filled internal dialogue?

Here are my previous posts on plot this month.

April 16, 2026 0

How NOT to Plot a Series

A lot of the advice I read on plotting concerns stand-alone novels. When a novel is a stand-alone, then the advice authors give about creating the highest stakes and the worst setbacks for your main characters makes sense. As a writer, you want to leave it all on the field because you won’t be returning to these characters. But when you write a series, you must plot differently. Below are tips about how not to plot a series, lessons I’ve learned as I’ve worked on my series, Rae Riley Mysteries. Next week, I’ll have advice on how to plot a series.

Writing Without an Ending

If you are writing a series and know exactly how many books you are going to write and how the series will end, good for you! You are a rarity in the writing world. That makes plotting your series easier when you have the whole picture to work from.

But most series don’t develop that way, especially mystery series. A writer may had a great idea for the first novel, and a good grasp of what she wants to write in the second. But she might not have any idea what happens next.

I happen to know how I want to end my series. But I’m not sure how many novels it will take to get there.

Series writers have to be flexible, looking at what works in the novels they publish, and then figuring out to incorporate those aspects in the next book.

It Can’t Always Be Highest Stakes and Worst Obstacles

If you write a series in which your main character (MC) is always fighting for the highest stakes imaginable and the worst events possible keeping happening to him, then you don’t have a series. It’s more like you have a retelling of the Book of Job. Or worse, a soap opera.

I don’t want to read a mystery series in which the MC’s father is murdered in the first book. In the second, she learns he led a double life. In the third, she finds out she has an evil half-sister. In the fourth, her mother led a double life. All these horrible developments do raise the stakes very high for the MC. But they also stretch believability to the breaking point.

Bad things do happen to people. But if I overwhelm my MC with such tragic events, then the fifth, sixth, and seventh novels will have to focus on the therapy she undergoes to handle such trauma. If I want to be realistic at all. It’s much easier to introduce all that heartache in a stand-alone because you don’t have to deal with the aftermath in the next novel.

To make my novels in a series both interesting and realistic, I have to balance the dramatic events that occur in my MC’s life by spreading the drama to other characters, while still giving my MC personal stakes and setbacks.

I’ll cover that in next week’s post about how to plot a series. For more tips on plotting, click here.

Writers, how do you plot a series? Readers, what series has especially good plotting.

May 22, 2025 3

When You Have to Tell, Don’t Show

Yes, you read the title right. And you may look as shocked as the woman in the photo. There are times in a story when you have to tell, don’t show. The reverse of the time-honored technique of “show, don’t tell” can be appropriate in certain situations involving plot.

When You Don’t Want to Repeat Information

If my deputy interviews a suspect and then informs his sheriff, I don’t have to repeat the entire conversation. I can just state the obvious.

The sheriff scooted back in his swivel chair. “Did you finally get a hold of Old Man Thompson?”

I repeated what Mr. Thompson had said about the crime. “But he stumbled around his words. I think he’s hiding something.”

Or I can add a little information, such as:

Mom said, “So what happened in school today?”

Sighing, I took a seat at the kitchen table and told her about the whole miserable mess, only leaving out what Ava said to me.

Repeating information that readers have already read is not helpful, unless you need characters to discuss or think about a specific point.

When You Need to Compress Time

I use this one a lot in my mysteries because the case unfolds over several weeks. If the investigation has stalled, I don’t need to “show” every attempt the cops make at solving the crime. I can compress their investigation into a sentence, like this:

After a week, Sheriff Malinowski was no closer to finding the killer than when he had walked onto the crime scene.

The point of my “tell” is jump ahead in the story’s timeline, and I can do that in one sentence, keeping the story moving.

When You Have to Mention a Plot Point for Realism

I often want to convey to readers that the mystery my main character is confronting is a very hard nut to crack. I can do that with a “tell” like this.

After a week, Sheriff Malinowski was no closer to finding the killer than when he had walked onto the crime scene. No one had come forward with any new information, and researching the victim’s socials had yielded not one lead.

In one sentence, I can convey that there is no new information for readers without creating a lot of pointless dialogue or scenes. It also makes the mystery more realistic to tell that the police are struggling to solve it. Most likely, I will have a “show” scene first, in which a few officers talk about leads they’ve followed and that led them nowhere. Then I follow that with my “tell” sentence, demonstrating that the struggle continues.

I also use “tell” sections for realism concerning my main character’s family life. Rae Riley is part of a large extended family, who are critical to the series, but not all their actions affect the mystery in each book. But I want to give readers a sense of the family dynamic, so I might use a “tell” sentence like this:

After I helped Gram clean up the supper dishes, I helped Micah with his sight words and gave out Spanish vocab to Rusty. When Dad came home, I had to wait until he’d finished his late supper before I could ask him about the case.

The two sentences tell readers something about Rae’s family without getting bogged down in a lot of unnecessary detail.

Keep It Brief

“Tell” sections are always brief in current stories. You can’t get away with more than a paragraph or two. If you find yourself writing a whole page of “tell” information, you should review what you’ve written and see how you can create a “show” scene for most of it.

What are your thoughts on “show, don’t tell” and “tell, don’t show”?

For more tips on plot, click here.

May 15, 2025 1

Tag: Tips for writing plots