Writer/Instructor and Script Consultant Shannan E. Johnson (The Professional Pen): The Avengers
has all of the superheroes there but we're not following each of them separately in all
the things that they're doing right? We may be following them as a group
and then following one or two of them who may be doing something separately
and the others are just there for support in this particular movie.
Film Courage: Do writers get confused with subplot versus plot? How do we know the difference?
Shannan: I’m going to assume that if you're saying subplot that you mean different storylines and
that's the way that I kind of like to talk about it and I don't think I've seen too many people get
confused with it but not really knowing how to use them and make them impactful for each other
so when I describe sub characters I describe them as characters who are helping or hindering the
protagonist's goal we only care about these sub characters because they are pushing the a story
forward that doesn't mean that those characters don't also have their own story lines because
they're people and they should be doing things other than walking around behind your protagonist
all day right however the point of their stories is to eventually crash into the a story eventually
complicate the a story eventually help the a story even if they look like they're going this for this
way at some point they're gonna you know connect and so I think some people miss that and they will
then start to write an entirely different story for the b story that has absolutely nothing to
do with the a story and now we're watching these two stories go but they're not connected right
so going back to our family reunion if I were to come to your family reunion I expect to meet
your cousins not your neighbor's cousins so those sub-characters are here because they're important
to this protagonist they're not other random people in the world those random people weren't
invited to the barbecue right the people who are here the people who are helping or hurting
informing helping complicating what's going on with the protagonists so we only care about them
because of their proxy you know their proximity to the protagonist so I think people don't understand
that and they just say oh my subplot or my b story is just another story it's like no thematically
they tie plot wise they tie something about them connects them all and a great example of that is
crash the music crash right because there are 50 million main characters but they're
all dealing with the same kind of things and they all eventually connect right so spoiler alert they
all eventually get you to this dead kid who is the brother of one of those people who was killed by
one of the other people right so it all starts to connect when we first start to watch it we're like
why do we need to be following all these people what is what is going on but it's because their
world is smaller than we think it is they are all in the same world and they will all
affect that a story so in that particular film I haven't seen it in a little while but I wouldn't
say there's a standout protagonist unless we'll say it's Don Cheadle's character who is
the detective maybe but instead it seems like we just have a lot of main characters and they each
have their own storylines right but the a plot is what happened to this this boy because we open up
with learning that someone died so the main plot is what happened to this boy and then we go into
all of these other stories to eventually come back to oh that's what happened but then beyond that
the themes are about how we're all just people regardless of our differences so it talks a lot
about race and religion and all these other things so each of those groups of people is dealing
with that theme on their own level so that still connects them they're they're not random stories
that are being told they're all connected so if people can understand that about subplot or like I
like to call them story lines or a story b story c story east d story however many story lines you're
going to have they all have to connect and they all have to push your a story forward even if when
they first start it seems like it has nothing to do with that eventually it all has to come
back to this one thing or at least thematically tie and the theme is usually again going to be
shown in your a story so that means all of the other storylines are still going to thematically
tie into them let's take this family barbecue so let's say everybody's happy everything's wonderful
and then there's another scene where there's a man and maybe a beat up vehicle who's delivering
something and it's his personal vehicle and he's stressing out he's in traffic and you
know people are cutting him off whatever and he's trying to be a decent driver but he finally gets
there and he's sweating and he unloads this cake for this barbecue and when he delivers it
he finds out that one of the children there that's actually his kid and the wife and he
had been estranged for years and now this happy moment is awful because all the memories have come
back and he hasn't seen the sun in years because it was too it was too difficult yeah and so now
he's this subplot has now come into the main plot exactly okay okay and so then
how so then how long does this sub character stay at that barbecue yeah it depends on your story
going back to what's the goal is the goal for him to have the realization of this was my family
because if so then that's the end of the movie everything got us to the moment that he arrived
right if the story is about working on getting my family back or working on rekindling with my son
or you know whatever that was then it could be the inciting incident that he shows up with the cake
it could be the midpoint that he shows up with the cake right so we've been seeing him
he had his goal I need to deliver this cake we're watching up until the midpoint everything that
he's trying to do to deliver the cake I don't know what's happening with the other family but they
have their own goals and whatever they're doing preparing for the barbecue whatever they're doing
right or attending the barbecue and dealing with family drama because they're already talking about
her ex-husband and blah blah you know that kind of thing so when he shows up at the midpoint now
things are redirected right so what's happening for the rest of the time is it stay here and
work it out because this is the scene right it's it's pandemic so people aren't doing a
lot of different locations and blah blah blah so do we stay here and work out the whole thing
or does that end the barbecue scene and now we go into the rest of life as he's trying to rekindle
the relationship so depending upon what that goal is then you know how long this barbecue thing
needs to happen or this journey to the barbecue in the first place and then what scenes we need after
that for him to actually reach his goal and if you've done your work of making the goal relevant
while he's preparing this cake while he's driving through traffic while he's doing
blah blah blah we will learn that there is a loneliness there we will learn that there is a
like maybe we don't want to give it away that he lost his child you know whatever that stuff
is but we're getting some information to know that there's something he's missing something
that he's needing something he's given up on maybe it's because people are calling as he's
driving and he's I don't want to talk about it man you know blah blah whatever that is
we'll start to know something else is going on here so that when he arrives with that cake and
he gets out of the car and stops short yeah no one has to say anything right we know because we've
been given the evidence that something's going on with him and we've been given the evidence at the
barbecue as she's been setting up and oh he's of this and he's that and we've been hearing
the stuff it hasn't been like you know the a story because it wasn't yet but now that
these two things have collided they'll make one storyline and we'll go on from there
how many subplots should a movie have or a tv show have yeah so there isn't necessarily a set amount
but what I will say is your a story is going to be in every single one of your acts fully out
some movies will only have an a story if you have a b story it's now still all of the same amount of
beats but shorter right so if your a story is this long your b story might be that long your c story
and d story and e story all get shorter but they're still full story lines which means
they have their own goals their own complications climaxes etc in a television show you're usually
only gonna have maybe about three per episode even if you have six or seven characters like
if you watch this is us something's gonna be going on with one of the big three something's going to
be going on with mom and dad in the past and then we may also be watching something else maybe in a
show like brothers and sisters there were five kids and a mom so maybe we're definitely gonna
have at least three story lines but there might be a fourth small nugget of something that's
giving us bread crumbs from something bigger that's gonna happen you know down the road
what I will say is in features it's good to have at least more than one storyline depending on the
genre most horror movies have one storyline stay alive protagonist that's it they're also usually
only 75 minutes long so we don't really have time to be following up and other people and whatever
else is going on we're just trying to stay in this one little thing but other than that it's good to
have a b story because you want to break up the monotony of the a story because again once we
get into the second act it's about reaching that goal and if I'm just if every single page is about
what this one person is doing that can become monotonous right it becomes like get there or
don't get there you know we start to get a little impatient so if you have something to break it up
with another storyline another full story line then that can kind of help keep the pacing up
you know I've seen it a lot in love stories a lot of love stories will just have the love but how
much can we take together not together together not together together not together
it's like do they have anything else that they can be doing you know like what's going on in their
personal lives that can be a b and a c story you know what I mean what's going on with mom
that that can thematically tie to what's happening with them that we can be watching because if not
then we can start to get disinterested by the redundancy because it's a relationship how much
can they really go through even if it's a new piece of conflict it still ends in the same thing
be together or don't right so if we keep watching them do this for 40 minutes I mean that we need to
break that up a little bit so it's always good to have another but in general there isn't a standard
I think that you can figure out if you've if you've gotten too many of them if things start to
get a little messy and you can't really follow the storylines like even if you look at a marvel film
at the avengers right the avengers has all of the people all of the superheroes there
but we're not following each of them separately in all the things that they're doing right we
may be following them as a group and then following one or two of them who may be
doing something separately and the others are just there for support in this particular movie
and that's okay so you want to definitely make sure that it doesn't become
too much like if you look at at crash that was I don't know how many people that was but there was
a lot of story lines but they were simple enough right simple and thematic so each time we came
to them we were kind of mirroring whatever just happened with the other group of people on their
side of town or getting them closer to meeting one of the other group of people so it worked for them
so that's why again it's everything is going to come down to what's best for your story
so you have to be paying attention to that pacing and am I spending enough time to understand what
this storyline is or am I just dropping a couple of people every now and again which now confuses
us so instead of it breaking up the monotony it's confusing us and we have more questions
so you just have to again find another pair of eyes if you can't figure it out right hire a
script consultant like myself there are plenty of us out there or have someone who understands story
at least to read it to see how it's making them feel and what information they're missing
so with this family barbecue story if we have this dad that's now bringing this cake and now the rest
of the family's just stunned that he's doing this job and that he's there and that he's actually
shown himself you know maybe there were calls that say don't come by anymore who knows what happened
if we were to add another character it would somehow have to make it in it can't just be the
random guy at the bar that he goes pounds a drink and he goes hey man slow down what's wrong and oh
you know I can't talk about it somehow that guy at the bar has to be part of the story I mean again
every sub character has their own role to play meeting a guy in a bar doesn't have to become
a story line okay that sub character could just be the person in the bar that had some kind of
conversation with our actual character that motivated or changed them to go do something
right okay so that person doesn't have to become a storyline that person can just be a guy in the bar
who said whatever but whatever it is he said had to have changed our character because if not then
we don't need this conversation we don't need this bar we don't need this location we need to pay for
these people or any of that right right okay so that so that's going to be the difference but if
I watched guy at bar at home and then watched guy at bar get to the bar then I watched guy
at bar drive away from the bar then now I'm asking myself okay what does this guy bar have
to do with any of this right because now I'm watching their life from their point of view so
does guy from bar end up being her new boyfriend
right so he didn't know that when they were sitting next to each other these two men when
they're talking about the situation and guy from the bar is like you should go get your family back
right and now guy with cake shows up at the barbecue and then guy with bar a guy from
the bar drives up what are you doing here getting my family back oh that's my girl
we've got something going on now these story lines are connecting
I was actually thinking that the guy at the bar would be a negative
reflection of the of the protagonist that he didn't want to ever become and so he sees himself
in that guy at the bar and he go and the guy at the bar is drunk and he's like yeah my ex-wife
she's a you-know-what and you know I just you know whatever I i I walked out a long time ago
and and hey johnny get me another bourbon or whatever and then he sees like I could become that
man right and I don't want to be that and that straightens him out yep and that so in that case
then he's just a sub character okay he doesn't have his own storyline okay so he's not a subplot
yeah he's not a subplot he's just a sub character he's just a character who's helping to push
the story forward by his interaction with this guy but a storyline would mean that
the guy at the bar has his own goals and we're following him trying to achieve those goals too
and then eventually they align with what everybody else has going on I see okay so he's a catalyst
okay yeah interesting just coming in to push you in one direction or the other because again if not
then we don't need him right we don't need a guy who's just at the bar being belligerent that that
belligerence should affect our guy in some kind of way because if not then we don't need that.
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