Cloud Atlas and Tying Together Plot Threads
A vital storytelling lesson from the ambitious Sci-Fi movie
I know many, many people found the ambitious Science Fiction movie flop Cloud Atlas to be extremely confusing and hard to follow, but I personally thought the confusing elements of its dense, convoluted interconnecting plots were part of the movie's charm (as well as the book it was based on). I actually liked the film, due in no part to the fact that I enjoy movies where the plots are like puzzles that need to be deciphered. I like trying to figure out what is going on before the movie makes it clear, if it does that at all (and it's why I like so many Christopher Nolan movies because he loves doing stuff like this). But if you as a writer find yourself writing a story with multiple disparate subplots, or even writing an anthology or collection of shorter stories, you might find yourself wondering how you can tie everything together. Cloud Atlas had a few mechanisms for that: it had details in some stories that grew in importance in other stories, and was formatted in a way where the disparate stories were “nested” within each other. In this format (which was made famous with 1001 Arabian Nights), each story stops halfway through (usually with a cliffhanger) to begin another story. This process continues until the final story ends, and the story containing is picks back up and finishes out, and so on. This is one approach you can take, but there are other ways to tie everything together.
Making the details matter
In the book “The history of the world in 10 ½ Chapters” the majority of the short stories making up the book are interconnected through recurring characters and details that influence each other from story to story. The woodworms that narrate the first chapter about sinking Noah's Ark are put on trial in the third chapter, while in the ninth chapter someone is looking for the remains of the Ark. This is a widely used method for tying everything together.
Learning from TV shows
TV shows are by nature episodic, where each episode is a self-contained story within itself. But at the same time, each episode contains plot threads, character subplots and themes that play out over the course of the season, or the duration of the entire series. Usually many or all of these threads come to a head in the season or series finale, where all dangling plot and character issues are resolved in some way, shape or form. This is another technique you can utilize, although it puts a lot of pressure on your story climax to wrap everything up in a way that makes sense.
How does your subplot relate to the main plot?
If your subplot or tangental plot has nothing or very little to do with the main story, you might want to consider taking that arc out and building an entirely new story around it separate from your core storyarc. Having totally unrelated plots run concurrently in a story can be very distracting to a reader, and they will instinctively try to find some kind of connection between them. If there is none, then that might take them out of both stories. Make sure all of your divergent storyarcs can connect to each other in some way, shape or form to prevent that from happening.
When to diverge from the main plot and devote time to the subplots
At some point in time you have to ask yourself how much screentime does your subplot actually need. You need to give your subplot enough space to breathe, develop and garner the interest of the reader, but giving it too much time takes away from the main plot and throws the pacing of the core story out of whack. You also have to figure this out on an even larger scale if you are juggling multiple subplots. One solution is to devote one scene in your chapter to one of your subplots. Terry Pratchett did this masterfully in his Discworld books, where most of the chapter in his books about The Watch focused on Vimes, but there would also be key scenes involving a subplot for the other characters, like Angua, Colon and Nobbs. For situations like Cloud Atlas where each storyarc is equally important, you have to figure out how to divvy up the screentime so that each plot is presented well and readers aren't spending so much time on one arc that they forget about the others. Cloud Atlas handled this with the nested story technique, but History of the World just gave each plot arc its own short story. There are numerous ways to handle these issues.
Where exactly to bring it together
With that all set up, now you have to figure out where in the story you want to converge all of your disparate plot points together. The most obvious solution is the climax, where you can bring everything to a head in one colossal series of moments. It's tried and true, but it's not the only approach you have to take. In video games, most RPGs have a plethora of sidequests to conquer while you are tackling the main story. Most of those are completed separate from the main story and all have to be completed before you initiate the endgame sequences and fight the final battles. I took this approach with my YA book “The Leopard Man,” where I had my heroine Ashlynn deal a significant blow to an archnemesis that had been antagonizing her for the entirety of the story shortly before dealing with the real threat in her story. Or you can even resolve your side plots early in the story, which might actually create room to add NEW subplots as the main story progresses. Some of my subplots in “Godmode” were created and resolved in flashbacks, while in my urban fantasy “Needle of the Southside,” subplots were resolved naturally within the flow of the main story. There are a number of ways you can handle this, and it's just a matter of picking methods that work for your story.
When to NOT tie it all together: setting up threads for follow-up stories
There may also come times in your story where it is more prudent to leave some of your subplots unresolved. Maybe you want to leave some ambiguity to spark discussion amongst your readers, like Asimov did with Raych's wife and daughter in Forward the Foundation, or maybe you want to leave some wiggle room for if you want to return to that world in future stories or spinoffs. Mark Twain did this brilliantly with Huck Finn's final fate at the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I even tried my hand at that with the Urban Fantasy I'm seeking representation for: key supporting characters are introduced and then leave the story in ways that allow me to revisit them in spinoff books. And the chief antagonist in my book “Double Entry” has a subtle subplot of his own that fully reveals itself in the story's climax, and I purposefully leave that subplot open in case I wanted to do a spinoff starring him where he tries to resolve it. In instances like these, it helps to have an idea of what you have in store for those unresolved plot issues after your core story ends, so that you'll know the right way to end those threads without making the reader feel like the story is unfinished.
When you have multiple plots and subplots going on in your story, You want to find a way to link them all together in a satisfying payoff for your readers. Your readers will enjoy it, and they will be more likely to reread your story to see if they can find all of the connections they may have missed the first time around.
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