Writing and Selling the YA Novel by K. L. Going Page A

Flashbacks slow down the action, allowing the reader to take a breather. They can easily be used to create a nostalgic or sentimental tone. Alternating chapters can allow you to look at the same event multiple times. A combination of these techniques might allow you to accommodate many points of view and piece out information slowly to your reader. Just beware of using forms simply for the sake of the form. The simplest way of telling the story is almost always the best. Remember that any writing technique risks calling attention to itself, pulling your reader out of the story, so keep believability in mind.
    ORGANIZING YOUR PLOTS AND SUBPLOTS
    Once you've made some basic decisions about the form your plot will take, it's time to start planning things out—what will happen when.
    Writers approach this task in many different ways. Some writers use outlines. This allows them to think out each plot element ahead of time and saves a lot of confusion and rewriting along the way.
    Other writers use various systems of note taking, or more loosely based methods of gathering ideas. If you write your notes on index cards, for example, those cards can be shuffled again and again to try out different time lines. If you're still unsure about what form you want your plot to take, this can be an excellent way to experiment without actually writing the text. This approach is similar to the storyboards that moviemakers use.
    Some authors know only the basics of their story when they set out and have to discover the plot of their book along the way. I've always been this type of writer. I usually have one or two key scenes in mind, but other than that I let the characters direct the story. This can be a tricky approach because you can easily write yourself into a corner or stray too far from the path of your plot. But when it works, it allows for the most freedom and surprises.
    No matter which approach you choose (or perhaps you'll come up with one of your own) the important thing to remember when creating your plot is to make sure there is something that ties everything together from beginning to end. I like to imagine a straight line running through my books. That line is my theme, or my central dilemma, and no matter what happens around it, the line must be present.
    But what about subplots? How do they fit in? What if there's more than one theme? Plots and subplots are similar to main characters and secondary characters. There's almost always one main character, and although you can develop several major secondary characters, if you try to develop too many the book becomes crowded and the reader starts wondering, "Whose story is this anyway?"
    Just as the secondary characters exist to help tell the main character's tale, subplots work to strengthen and enhance the main plot. A love story subplot can release tension through humor or sentiment, or it can create tension if the love interest ends up in danger. Either way it can enhance the experience of the characters in the book. A parent's developmental subplot in a teen drama might round out the depiction of the character's world, or it could juxtapose the decisions the main character makes with the decisions of his parent. Subplots are wonderful ways to enrich your novel so long as they exist to further the main story line.
    A metaphor I find helpful when balancing plots and subplots is the image of weaving a tapestry. When I start a novel, I imagine each plot and subplot as a strand of colored thread. I have all those strands in my hands as I begin, and I must have all of them in my hands as I end. The colors will overlap and intertwine, but there's one dominant shape or picture they're all working to create. The important thing is not to let any threads go and to make sure each stays in its rightful place.
    What kind of tapestry are you creating? Whether you know exactly what it will look like beforehand or you want to be surprised, you've got to have a recognizable pattern by the end.