For Plot and Characters, How Many/Little Is Too Many/Little?

[Dresdenus Prime]

These boards have been quiet lately! Let’s wake them up with a question!

   I’m in the process of revising my first book and I’m wondering if maybe I don’t have enough side plots or mysteries. I know I don’t want to overload the reader, but at the same time I don’t want the book to seem dull because there’s not enough going on. Let me see if I can give a description of my plots direction without revealing anything.

   Hero finds a crime scene. This crime scene sets up the main plot of the book. During the course of the book he finds 3-4 other crime scenes just like it and has to solve who is causing it and why.

   Side Plot A deals with a character who is a threat to the Hero’s life and is also in a small way connected to how the primary mystery is solved. This character appears in about 5 chapters.

   Side Plot B is very small. It deals with a powerful characters arrival in the city. This person is only featured once in the book, in the very middle. This is more a set up for later books in the series.
   
   Currently that’s all I’m doing with this book. I was considering adding a new side plot dealing with the revelation that a character close to the Hero is not who they seem to be, and it would be dealt with within a couple chapters, but I’m not sure if I should put that in this book or the next.

   What I’ve just described may cause you to go, “wait…what?!” and if it does, my general question is;

How do you know when a books plot is too cluttered or too empty?

[LizW65]

That sounds like plenty to me for a typical 100,000 word novel. 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

To my mind, that sounds reasonable but towards the less-complicated end, plotwise; depending on how complicated solving the crime in the main plot thread is, and how many twists that goes through.

[Quantus]

As far as volume goes that sounds fine.  You have a main plot, and a secondary one that sounds like it will seem more of an unrelated hindrance at first before it is revealed to be related.  I do like the idea of the third one as well, mostly because it sounds like more of an internalized problem, which is big when it comes to characterization and growth.  The first two are both external problems to be solved, whereas the third will challenge the character in more of an internal/emotional sense.