It took me almost four years to write “The Night Tiger“, not just because I’m a slow writer, but also because I had to resist the siren call of various subplots.
The great thing about writing fiction is that you can put in all your favourite obsessions and interests in the name of “research”. This is particularly useful when you have to explain to your children why you are all eating fried noodles for the fifth day in a row (in order to get the recipe authentically right—never mind that in the end, you never include the scene in which the protagonist fries noodles because there’s already too much eating and drinking going on in the book).
It’s also very handy in exploring interesting-looking places. A friend of mine mentioned an abandoned town called Papan near Ipoh, together with an intriguing photo of trees growing through the old Chinese shophouses, sparking my curiosity.
So the next time I went home to Malaysia, I excitedly set off to find this town, my poor dad in tow, as we explored the area and tried to avoid being chased by stray dogs. I had no idea exactly how Papan would be used in my book, but I was certain that a town this interesting really ought to make an appearance. And it did (with a funeral).
Not all of these diversions work out, of course. Some of them are just bad ideas. The trick is figuring out what to keep and what to get rid of, although when you have fallen in love with a subplot, it can be rather hard.
For example, I wrote in a childhood story about Ji Lin, the dancehall girl in “The Night Tiger” and her stepbrother Shin, and how they rescued a dog together. The tale of their stray puppy grew longer and longer, as mysterious events happened, including a strange disappearance. I’d thought that it would shed light on the characters’ backstories, but at some point, I suddenly realized this subplot was turning into something like “A Dog’s Purpose”, a movie that my kids enthusiastically said had made them cry buckets of tears.
Moving. Heartwarming. Yes, I did hope people would feel that way about the book, but perhaps not quite like that. Besides, I was starting to lose the feeling of 1930s colonial Malaya as I wandered further and further into canine escapades, and so with great sadness, I said goodbye to my shaggy dog story.
All this is to say that whenever you read a book, there’s probably a large number of subplots that never made it to the final pages, but are there to make up the back story. And perhaps one day, you’ll get to see them in some other incarnation.
