James Hatch, I thank you for hosting me on the website with
my favorite name in cyberspace. I’ve got a few literary thoughts to offer as
well as info on my new novel, The Maxwell
Vendetta, and I hope your readers will enjoy the thoughts and, of course, buy
the books. Yes, books, plural. The Second
Vendetta is the sequel to The Maxwell
Vendetta and they’ll make a great pair for your library. Anyhow, here we go:
Secrets of the Subplot
There’s lots of ink devoted to plot
technique, but relatively little to the subplot. It also seems to me that
contemporary writers pay scant attention to this opportunity not only to spice
up the action, but to add dimension and depth to their work.
The still-reigning subplot king is
the bard of Avon. From the Toby Belch-Maria-Aguecheek-Malvolio action in Twelfth Night to the
Laertes-Ophelia-Polonius family dynamics in Hamlet,
Shakespeare knows how to keep us so involved in the secondary action that we
sometimes forget what’s happening with the main characters. But never for long.
In the end, he always brings the two streams of action together in a way that
not only complements but enlarges and influences primary plot and character. In
Twelfth Night, the humiliation of the
Puritan Malvolio serves as a warning to those who would overreach and pervert
the course of true romance such as that of Duke Orsino-Viola and
Sebastian-Olivia. In Hamlet, of
course, Laertes becomes the instrument by which Hamlet not only accomplishes
his goal of avenging his father’s death, but fashions his own demise as well.
A more modern example is F. Scoot
Fitzgerald’s use of Nick Carraway as the narrator of the title character’s rise
and fall in The Great Gatsby. So
skillful is Nick’s storytelling that it’s easy to forget that he’s
romanticizing the image of a narcissistic gangster with a perverted idea of love.
In that sense, the book is as much about Nick as about Gatsby. However, Gatsby
carries the story, and important as he is, Nick’s part in the action is a
subplot, an essential element without which the story would not have happened
as it did, but is nevertheless background. Gatsby & Daisy are the
characters we remember. Nick brings them together, and Nick helps Gatsby cover
his and Daisy’s hit and run. But Fitzgerald is not satisfied with only one
subplot. It’s a character from a second—George, the husband of the hit-run
victim—from killing Gatsby and bringing the whole edifice tumbling down. We,
the readers, view Gatsby’s death, then, not so much as martyrdom, as Nick does,
but as rough justice. The point here being that 1) Without the subplot(s) the
main plot could not survive; 2) without the subplots the view of Gatsby as a
victim of his romantic yearnings would remain untarnished.
Different though they are, the
common thread running through all these works is that the subplot operates
parallel to the main action, but merges with and becomes vital to the finish.
Furthermore, the subplots add color and dimension to the ideas and themes which
would be impossible without them.
I offer here an illustration from
my own work, not because I count myself in the ethereal realms of these
masters, but because I believe it’s important to study and learn from them. Plus,
of course, I want to plug my book.
In my recently released historical
thriller, The Maxwell Vendetta, Andy
Maxwell sets out to quash a vendetta that threatens to wipe out his prominent
family and destroy their Sierra Nevada Ranch. The inciting incident is the
murder of his younger brother on a San Francisco sidewalk in the summer of 1908.
Along the way, Andy runs into a Chinese underworld lord named Charley Hung, to whom
said brother owed a considerable sum, which Hung wants to collect from Andy.
Andy goes through some harrowing adventures to escape Charley and his henchmen
early in the book, then proceeds to his main mission of defeating the main
agent of the vendetta, one Michael Yellow Squirrel. Near the end of the book,
just when it appears Andy is about to accomplish his goal, Charley’s minions
show up again at a most unexpected time and place and put his entire scheme in
jeopardy.
True to the principles I’ve
outlined above, these subplot characters become essential to the book’s finale,
and (I hope) help add some texture to this novel that is more than an
action-adventure-romance tale, but one with some telling insights into such
matters as racism and political corruption as they manifest not only at the
turn of the last century, but even today.
Give it a go at http://amzn.to/16KTlyU, & don’t
pass up its sequel, The Second Vendetta at http://amzn.to/PXmxt8.
Biography—Carl R.
Brush
Carl Brush has been writing since
he could write, which is quite a long time now. He grew up and lives in
Northern California, close to the roots of the people and action of his historical
thrillers, the recently-released The Maxwell
Vendetta, and its sequel, The Second Vendetta.
A third volume of the trilogy, set in pre-gold-rush San Francisco is
nearing completion. Its working title: Bonita.
You can find Carl living with his
wife in Oakland, California, where he enjoys the blessings of nearby children
and grandchildren.
Journals in which his work has
appeared include The Summerset Review,
Right Hand Pointing, Blazevox, Storyglossia, Feathertale, and The Kiss
Machine. He has participated in the
Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the
Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop.
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