Buffalo Flats, Ep. 7: Subplots
A novel requires more than just one main plot. In this episode, we look at three major subplots in Buffalo Flats by Martine Leavitt, one that involves Rebecca’s family, one that involves her local community, and one that involves the larger community. We look at how Martine weaves in these subplots and how she makes them work hard for the story and for Rebecca’s internal journey.
Links:
A KidLit Craft post on using best friend subplots in middle grade novels
Another look at subplots: thinking about threads introduced and carried through a story.
The KidLit Craft Podcast is hosted by Anne-Marie Strohman and Erin Nuttall.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Anne-Marie Strohman: Lovely analogy.
[00:00:01] Erin Nuttall: Well, I'm so talented. I just thought of it on the fly.
[Music intro]
[00:00:04] Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to the seventh episode of the Kid Lit Craft podcast. This season we're taking a deep dive into the YA novel Buffalo Flats by Martine Leavitt. Today we're focusing on the B plot and other subplots. I'm Anne-Marie Strohman and I write for children and young adults as well as short stories for adults.
[00:00:26] Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall and I too write for children and young adult but I focus mostly on those, those young adults.
[00:00:36] Anne-Marie Strohman: On Kid Lit Craft, we look at mentor texts to discover the mechanics of how writers do what they do, so we can apply it to our own writing.
[00:00:44] Erin Nuttall: We do indeed. And as you mentioned, we are looking at Martine Leavitt's Buffalo Flats in this series because it's amazing. And it is the story of a Rebecca Leavitt, who in the 1890s lives in the Northwest Territories of Canada. And what she wants more than anything is a piece of that gorgeous land for herself.
[00:01:07] Anne-Marie Strohman: So Erin, as we do every episode, let's start with vocabulary. What vocabulary do we need to know today?
[00:01:14] Erin Nuttall: All right. Well, these are probably words you already know. But just in case, let's do a little refresher. Make sure that we're all looking at the same thing. So plot is the first one, and that is the interrelated sequence of events that make up the main story. It's how the story develops, unfolds, and moves through time.
Subplot is the same idea. It is the events that make up the secondary stories rather than the primary stories. And sometimes people call it the B plot instead of subplot, but it's the same thing. I prefer subplot because often there's more than one. And so you, you limit yourself by calling it the B plot.
I guess you could call it the B plot C plot D plot.
[00:01:57] Anne-Marie Strohman: I usually think of multiple subplots, but there's kind of one main subplot that becomes like the B story. So I think of it as like the special subplot. In this one I, I think romance…
[00:02:11] Erin Nuttall: Of course.
[00:02:12] Anne-Marie Strohman: It’s kind of the special subplot.
[00:02:14] Erin Nuttall: It is a Martine Leavitt book, so romance is the special subplot for sure.
So subplots. They are distinguished from the main plot by taking up less of the action. So they are sub, not main. They have fewer events that occur and they have a smaller impact on the world. Frequently they feature side characters. Subplots may connect to the main plot either in time and place or thematic significance. And if you ask me, they ought to connect at some point.
[00:02:47] Anne-Marie Strohman: We've already discussed our main plot, Rebecca's desire to get her own land and to become the person God wants her to be. So let's focus on subplots. I'm sure we've heard whisperings of them in other episodes. I'm remembering Radonna, romance between LaRue and Ammon, the Sempels. So I know we've mentioned some of these before, but let's look at them specifically. And I know Martine is into romance, as we said. So do you wanna start there?
[00:03:14] Erin Nuttall: Yes. Let's start with romance because of course, I too am into romance, so I'm happy to report that there are a number of romantic subplots in this book. And romance is a common subplot or B plot and Martine has many. She has Rebecca's brother Gideon and Philemon, Rebecca's brother Zach and Florence, Rebecca's brother Ammon and her best friend LaRue. And don't worry, Rebecca has her own romantic subplot. Who does she love? Does she love Levi? Coby? And what about Radonna? Is she gonna get in the way? And we will discuss all of these in a later episode because we have to! Romance is a big part of this book and it's a big part of our lives in general. So if romance is your jam, stay tuned.
[00:04:07] Anne-Marie Strohman: We will cover all that in our romance episode later. But let's start with a different subplot today. Martine does have a lot of fun subplots, engaging, rooting for people subplots, but she also has some really difficult subplots too. So let's start with one of those uh, more heart wrenching moments.
[00:04:27] Erin Nuttall: She does have a number of heart-wrenching moments in the book, along with the fun and the, and the adventure, like you said. And of course, the romance, but so…Rebecca's brother Gideon has his own romantic subplot where he courts and then marries Philemon and they get married and then Philamon gets pregnant.
And then her baby comes a little early and it ends up being stillborn. And Rebecca is the person who, she's the midwife. She's the person who delivers the baby. I think that it is the most beautiful chapter in the book. And we will discuss it more in our metaphor episode, but I wanted to mention it here because it is a subplot that primarily happens to Gideon and Philemon, but we as the reader see it through Rebecca's eyes, and it affects Rebecca in relation to her internal journey. And so I think a good subplot will do that where you have—you care because it happens to Gideon and Philemon and it is this meaningful event. But also it relates to the main character. So Rebecca feels the baby's death as her own failure because she is the midwife.
And then because of that, she has a character growth. And she decides to learn to become a better midwife because she wants to help people, not just because she wants to earn money for her external desire of her own piece of land. So that maybe is a, a tough subplot to start with for our subplot discussion, but I thought it was a really good example of a subplot that is meaningful on its own, but also involves the main character and connects with her internal journey.
[00:06:17] Anne-Marie Strohman: Let's move to a different subplot outside of Rebecca's family, because she is a part of this larger community. And I want you to talk about the Simples because Martine uses them in a number of different ways for both humorous subplots and really serious subplots. Can you talk about them?
[00:06:36] Erin Nuttall: She does. So we start out with the Sempels and we meet them in church. Rebecca lives in a community of people who are, of her same religion. And so most of the people that she interacts with are people from her church, which the Sempels are.
And Mr. Sempel is pretty grumpy and rude, and Mrs. Sempel is quiet or isn't there. But we first meet the Sempels in kind of a humorous setting where Rebecca's father talks to Brother Sempel about the cow, that his cows keep coming over to the Leavitt's land to eat their grass. And you know, that’s, that's stealing 'cause it's grass that their own cows can't eat. And when you're living on the knife's edge, it's a big deal.
But Brother Sempel does not respond the way that one might think. On 51 it says “She found Father talking to Brother Sempel in the churchyard. ‘I must ask you again to mend your fences and keep your stock on your own land,’ Father was saying. Brother Sempel grinned. ‘I've told those cows not to wander, but they don't speak English.’” So you have that kind of funny response.
And then, it escalates a little bit, with Brother Sempel finally saying, “Look, if you don't like this, go talk to the Mounties.” And Rebecca's dad saying, “I don't wanna take this outside of our community. Why don't you just take care of your cows?” And Brother Sempel says, “Pray about it, Brother Leavitt, and perhaps God will provide a way” and then he stomps off. So we have this kind of funny introduction to the cows. But these cows end up intersecting with Rebecca's desire to earn money.
One of the things that I noted when I was looking through this was trying to figure out how Martine spaces her subplots. And so we have the cow story: just a little bit on 51, a tiny bit on 55, like, you know, just what I read, two or three sentences, and then we jump all the way to 110 and Brother Sempel comes over to the Leavitts and he is mad. And he said, “my milch cow has been giving us barely enough for our own use for some time now. First my wife thought it must be sick, but now I know somebody's been stealing” and that is, you know, not how the Leavitts roll for sure.
Brother Sempel talks about how his cow was stripped dry, when he went home. And there's some funny pieces in there. And then finally Rebecca confesses that the cow kept coming over and eating not just their grass, but their hay, which is expensive feed that is in limited quantity.
And so Rebecca decided that she could, she could milk the cow a little bit. And so Father asked daughter, “would you know anything about this?” And she says,
“‘I do, Father.’ Why did all her good ideas shrivel under the scrutiny of her parents?” And then she says, “the Sempels’ cow eats our grass and the milk cow has been in our barn eating our hay. I tried to get it out, but it wouldn't understand English. So I suppose I thought milk for hay. It seemed only fair.” She thinks her dad's gonna be like no. But her dad's like, yeah, that's pretty fair.
So we have kind of this funny subplot of interaction with the Sempels and the cow and Rebecca; again, an intersection with Rebecca's desire to earn money.
There's also a, a more concerning subplot with the Sempels where Mother is worried about the safety of Sister Sempel. These pieces of the story are very short, again at church. So on page 48, “Rebecca saw Mother calling out to Sister Sempel, who stopped, reluctantly it seemed, to speak to her. Sister Sempel always looked like she hadn't had enough sleep the night before.” And so we have a little bit there on 48 and then another 10 pages. We see basically the same thing where Mother is reaching out to Sister Sempel. And then nothing until 108. So we just have these little tiny bits scattered through the whole story.
And it's just, you know, at the most, a couple of paragraphs and usually a couple, three sentences. So we have those. And then that same abuse subplot, shifts a little bit into a feminist subplot where Mother wants to go help Sister Sempel and Father is saying, you know, that's not our business.
And Mother is saying it is and I'm making it my business. So we have all the way into 174. We don't see it again until, until later, which I think is a good thing to remember. Sometimes I feel like my subplots gotta be a lot and, and heavy. But it really, it can just be little pieces that are interwoven.
If you think of like a plaid fabric, you have one main color and then you have thinner lines of different colors running through.
[00:11:43] Anne-Marie Strohman: Lovely analogy.
[00:11:45] Erin Nuttall: Well, I'm so talented. I just thought of it on the fly.
[00:11:50] Anne-Marie Strohman: So she scatters these little bits of this concern for Mrs. Sempel, just little bits through and then that comes to fruition later, both in making it her business, and then there's quite a large section on helping Mrs. Sempel.
[00:12:06] Erin Nuttall: There is.
[00:12:07] Anne-Marie Strohman: And everything that goes on with that. Correct?
[00:12:09] Erin Nuttall: It comes into a big crisis moment. And as we discussed actually in our last episode, it comes to where Mother ends up shooting Brother Sempel to save Sister Sempel. I think it's really fascinating that it's such a small piece of the story and then becomes such a big piece of the climax.
But the most important piece of that is Mother and how Mother's reaction to the Simples, and then how that affects Rebecca's view of the world. We talked about that with her misbelief, that she thought that her mother was perfect and followed all the rules to the letter.
And then in this subplot we see that Mother may still be perfect.
[00:13:01] Anne-Marie Strohman: But the definition of perfect has changed.
[00:13:02] Erin Nuttall: The definition of perfect has changed for sure. And it's a revelation to Rebecca in a very big way. And so it is quite interesting to see that the way that Martine set up this tiny piece of a subplot.
I guess you could think of it, if you're gonna go with metaphors, you could think of it as a little stream at the top of the mountain that goes and becomes a big lake that changes everything. And that's kind of how that specific subplot works.
[00:13:31] Anne-Marie Strohman: Or she plants little seeds early on and then they grow into fruition.
[00:13:35] Erin Nuttall: Let's just keep thinking of metaphors.
[00:13:40] Anne-Marie Strohman: So we've looked at kind of an in-family subplot and we've looked at something in the community. What about the larger society? What's going on there?
[00:13:49] Erin Nuttall: So the larger society is, as I mentioned, Rebecca lived in a religious community that was somewhat welcomed because they were taking land that people really didn't want because it wasn't as arable. Because the, the conditions were really dry.
Rebecca's community wants a canal put in. Coming from Utah, they are experts at irrigation. They had to learn or die basically. And so they had several generations of being from Utah, where they became good at irrigation. But the larger community: they're worried that if they irrigate, then more people of Rebecca's faith will come and they will overtake the area.
And so we talk about the canal early on, on page 39. There's also the dynamic that the government doesn't want people in general to know how hard it is to farm there, that the water isn't sufficient, because they want people to come and take the land and, and make profits so they can pay taxes.
And so we learn all that in the matter of a conversation between Father and a few of the men at church. And then we don't really hear about the canal much again until page 106, where we find out the government has decided that the need for settlers outweighs their desire to keep the water usage on the down low.
And so they made a deal to have a canal come in and have Rebecca's people work on that canal. We have this intersection of what's happening in the larger community with the canal, which shouldn't affect Rebecca at all, except that she now has the opportunity to make a lot more money by working on the canal.
And she obviously doesn't do the digging. She becomes a cook for the canal, but that helps her out. So we have that outside piece that helps Rebecca because it—I did wonder in the beginning, how is Rebecca gonna earn all this money? It's $483 and that is, I just don't even know how many thousands now.
For someone who has very little ready cash available to her and very little opportunities to make cash, so how is she gonna earn it? And so we have this outside thing come in and, and give her that opportunity. Also, it intersects with her inner desire to become a better person because guess what?
Working as a cook on a canal is really hard work. It's unpleasant. They're cooking outside over smoky fires with a million flies, and it's boiling hot and the men come and they're crabby 'cause they've been digging and it's just really not the pleasant job that Rebecca imagined it was gonna be.
So she had a hard time not being grumpy back to the men. But LaRue, LaRue was also a cook with her. And she bears it all with good cheer. Stoic, good cheer is what Rebecca says. And so Rebecca decides that the least she can do is smile. And once she starts doing that she becomes a little more friendly and then she becomes kind.
And despite her weariness, she finds herself. Becoming a person who can love other people and show that love through small means. So we have that intersection with her internal desire.
[00:17:13] Anne-Marie Strohman: It also provides an opportunity for this social group that we've seen within the community, Coby and Levi, and Radonna and Rebecca, all the friends there that are kind of moved into a new setting with new conditions, and we can see those relationships shift within this new setting as well.
[00:17:32] Erin Nuttall: Oh, for sure. Especially if you're talking romance.
[00:17:36] Anne-Marie Strohman: Mmm-hmm. Which we will, pretty soon. So Erin, what are you taking away from today?
[00:17:43] Erin Nuttall: I think the two lessons that I learned are one: you really don't need a lot. You don't need a lot of content for your subplots. And then two: they are better subplots if you can have them relate to the characters' desires lines.
[00:17:59] Anne-Marie Strohman: And I am really inspired by the simple storyline, that she's using one little family unit to do so much through the course of the story and to use those same characters in different ways. I think a lot of times I'm like, oh, well we need a funny subplot, so that's gonna be these two characters I just invented, and now we need a serious one and so I'm gonna invent some more characters for that. And so I tend to kind of fragment my subplots and that if I can double things up or triple things up and kind of build a subplot with just a couple characters, that's gonna be possibly a really good move for my novel and for my readers not getting confused.
[00:18:41] Erin Nuttall: Well, Martine does have a lot of characters. So it is good that she used the Sempels so judiciously like…and the other thing with them is I hadn't really thought about using something that is sparse through the story to then be…you think you have to build this climax in a certain way and you really don't. You can avail yourself of the smaller subplot to build to your climax. So there's a lot to learn.
[00:19:09] Anne-Marie Strohman: There is. So Erin, tell us, what is your one beautiful sentence for today?
[00:19:15] Erin Nuttall: Okay. This is page 102. She was just talking about stakes and she just put in something about a ticking clock.
And so then we have this beautiful thing. She said “she had felt in that moment that living was just a thin floating thing, like a cloud, a skim of dust on the river, the call of a wolf, filling the air, striking the sky as if it were a glass bowl and ringing away, forgotten.”
[00:19:44] Anne-Marie Strohman: That is a beautiful sentence. Thank you.
[00:19:46] Erin Nuttall: I know. Martine is so good at these sentences.
[00:19:50] Anne-Marie Strohman: That's it for today, but next time is romance as we have been promising.
[Music outro]
[00:19:59] Anne-Marie Strohman: So if you're enjoying this podcast, you can find more content like this at kidlitcraft.com, and you can find us on social media @KidLitCraft.
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[00:20:21] Erin Nuttall: Please download episodes; like, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen; and let your writer friends know about the podcast or even your not writer friends. We can't wait to nerd out with you.
[00:20:32] Anne-Marie Strohman: Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
