Q&A: Herding Subplots, Rewriting in Third and Knowing When You're Finished

The pick of the Itch of Writing Ask Me Anything Chats

Almost every week, usually on a Wednesday, I start an Ask Me Anything chat for Itch of Writing supporters. The way it works is that I start a chat thread some days earlier, and it’s open for all supporters to drop their questions in whenever they want to. Then at the appointed hour, I get stuck in and answer as many as I can in the time, and anyone who’s around is welcome to drop in and join in.

With supporters’ permission*, this is the first of an occasional series of posts/newsletters which collect some of the most generally useful questions and answers into a post that can be shared more widely. (I always redact any exact details of individual projects)

Back in December 2024 I celebrated the Itch’s first birthday with two Ask Me Anything chats, and this post draws on the first of them.

If you’d like to be part of our weekly Q&A, just head over to the Itch of Writing Subscribe page and upgrade, and you’ll not only be able to join in, you’ll have the power to start a chat of your own whenever you like.

Q: Neck deep in a second draft re write, and concerned I may have written myself into subplot purgatory. The stray cat who gets lost at the beginning of Act 3. The Martian twin who joins the hero in the submarine. And on and on. All essential to the twisty plot but maybe too much for the skittish reader. So, tips for herding subplots into a coherent whole? When does instinct tell you it’s time to re structure?

Emma: I would suggest figuring out what each subplot and its cast are adding to the novel as a whole - to the main core, the central theme, the BIG reason the reader keeps reading. Then think about whether any of them could be condensed into each other: whether one character or subplot could do several jobs that are currently done by others?

Original Questioner: Yes, thanks, that’s helpful. Figure out the main channel and energy of the story. Edit and consolidate from there.

Emma: Yes, exactly! And use that as a sieve, as it were, to sift out what really matters, and what’s just an enjoyable extra, and is weighing things down as much as it’s enhancing them.

Q: I have written a draft novel in first person, but a reader suggested rewriting in deep third person. What are the benefits and how can I do this well?

Emma: The usual reason for this kind of suggestion is that for some reason the sense of ‘I... I.... I...’ is getting in the reader’s way (well, that reader’s way!). Either that - or the idea that being in third person, even a close third, would give you a little more elbow-room to show the reader the world not exclusively through the first-person narrator's eyes.

You might find thinking in terms of Psychic Distance helpful with these questions, and as it happens I have a shiny new post about it up on the Itch: https://emmadarwin.substack.com/p/psychic-distance-what-it-is-and-how

What you’ll see is that ‘deep third’ is really much the same as first, in the logic of it, just with different pronouns: you are locking the narrative into a certain character's point-of-view, but you don't have a sense of that character as the narrator, the way you do in first person.

Original Questioner: Yes the genre is speculative fiction with 3 stories coming together. They felt it would help me explore inner thoughts of my protagonist, provide overview of other characters and aid worldbuilding.

Emma: Ah, yes, that makes sense: you’ve got more room to slip a little out of the MC’s point-of-view, and point the reader’s attention towards other things, and convey things that the viewpoint character doesn’t know, which of course is very helpful when it comes to world-building. Although I wouldn’t, myself, describe that as ‘deep’ third, because it does stretch beyond the viewpoint character’s perspective. Certainly worth a try.

One of the reasons I think Psychic Distancs is so helpful is that it bring in more nuance, more of a sense of the spectrum of PoV, than a straight, binary ‘in or out’: you can be deep in a PoV, where the narrative actually takes on the flavour of their thoughts, but you can also slide further out, into a more objective, neutral narrator's space.

There IS an option, staying in first person, which is to think about your first-person narrator as a narrator, distinct from their role as a character: this is someone telling their own story, and (at least in past tense), they are choosing what they want to tell their hearer/reader about the wider world of the story. Of course, you're still limited to what that character would know, but if it's in past tense that can include things they learnt later. There’s more on that in that Psychic Distance post, or for paying subscribers there’s also a big post on Narrators which unpicks how it all works: https://emmadarwin.substack.com/p/narrators-an-itch-of-writing-guide

Q: What’s your take on how ‘easy’ it is to get a literary genre story published nowadays (I heard an agent talking recently and she admitted to being quite sad about how publishers aren’t bothering with them - if it hasn’t got a catchy hook, book-Tok style then publishers are passing). What does your ear to the ground say?

Emma: My ear to the ground - such as it is - does feel as if the barrier-to-entry, as it were, has got higher. (Not that it was ever low). The core problem is that books are sold to people who haven’t read them IYSWIM: on the pitch alone. Genre fiction is always easier to pitch, because it’s in the business of delivering a known set of satisfactions to a known readership: it’s much easier to explain what the reader will get if they buy THIS book. Whereas literary fiction, it seems to me, is always at least implying that it's doing something new, of a kind which is much harder to pitch: the newness is in the way the story is told, not necessarily in the basics of the plot.

And now that margins are narrower and the market ever noisier, the selling of books depends increasingly on catching fleeting attention with a quick, easily-grasped shout: there’s so much competition for readers’ time and cash from elsewhere. Depressing, I know - and, indeed for agents and editors. The ruthless case that they have to make to acquisitions meetings inevitably has to focus on that easily-grasped shout. Lit Fic is just much harder to boil down to that.

ETA: of course, with self-publishing options so much easier and more widely available, the DIY route is always there. But the problem of finding readers for work which isn’t clearly and swiftly pitchable is just the same for self-publishers as it is for publishers.

Q: How do you know when you have finished writing your novel? Even when I write a short story for my U3A Creative Writing Group, I am still making changes even after I've handed it in.

Emma: Such a good question. I'm not sure you can ever be certain - because as you say, you can always tweak it. I did blog about it over on Typepad https://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2012/11/when-do-you-stop-revising.html

Perhaps look at what sort of thing you're tweaking - how minor. And are you really making it better, or are you just making it different? But in the end you have to make your peace with the fact that there is no one, single, absolute Platonically-ideal version of a novel.

Another supporter: I think a pragmatic criterion would be to ask yourself: ‘Do I think this is good enough for the consumer of this work (ie reader or agent) to want to read it (or even better, pay for it). You will always feel you can do better. But, unless you are determined to be completely focussed on your art and not care about whether it ever gets read, it’s really the readers who will tell you whether it is finished or not. Of course, this a poor measurement mechanism, as if you give the readers something that they don't want, or dislike, or just plain give up reading on the first page, then it is very difficult to recover from that situation. So to test if it is complete, you need some experienced critical readers who understand your genre, your marketplace and your authorial intent. Ask them what they think - and use their opinion as well as your own, if they think it is ready to release to a wider audience. So I guess I’m saying, it’s not a question of it being finished (it never is) - it's a question if its good enough to be deemed to be ‘ready’.

Emma: Yes, I think that’s right - ‘finished’ isn’t really the point, because it’s not possible. Actually - thank you - that’s reminded me that art historians don’t talk about a painting being finished, they talk about it being ‘resolved’, which I love. When you start to write a novel you’re basically setting yourself a massive problem, and writing it is a long exercise in problem-solving, and editing an exercise in problem-finding-and-then-solving. Beta readers can help, of course - but only as long as you’re asking them to find problems as readers, which you will then solve as seems best to you. Maybe stop and send it out when as far as you can see, all the problems have been resolved?

To explore the full conversation click through to the chat itself.