Keeping the Inner Consistency of Plots and Subplots
Whether we are talking about plots or subplots, they both have to have inner consistency.
Inconsistencies are a cardinal sin for fiction writers. To fully appreciate a story, the reader has to be given all the tools to “suspend disbelief”. The world the writer creates for the reader cannot be riddled with inner contradictions.
For example, we have seen in “the position of the narrator” that Lizbeth’s car has an accident with a refrigerated truck. Refrigerated trucks are huge and heavy, a perfect instrument to crash a car with a high degree of certainty that it will kill all aboard that car.
John is a smart bastard, he would not use his own truck to kill his girlfriend since that would make him far too much of a prime suspect.
In another scene, we see how he tricks Willy to climb in the truck’s driver’s seat of the used for the murder and so leaves his fingerprints all over the place. Yet, that truck, as befits John’s work as fruit and vegetable seller at the market, is a ventilated van.
Now we have a problem. We have two different trucks, and that sorely detracts from the story’s credibility. We could easily replace the refrigerated truck with the van, yet the van is so much lighter than John would be a fool to rely on that lightweight weapon to ensure his victim’s death. Yet, we have already established that John is anything but a fool.
Willy is not an idiot either, so he cannot be fooled into believing that a refrigerated truck is John’s truck.
This leaves us with an unacceptable inconsistency. We will fix it later in the post titled “Unnecessary Writing”.
For the time being, let’s remember the point of the day.
The devil lies in the details, and the devil keeps the reader away, so we need to keep a watchful eye for details that introduce inconsistencies.