I love it when a story has a completely different story running under it and as such, I want to use some of it for mine.

Any advice on how to pull it off?

906785 What, you mean like a hidden sub-plot?

906786
Yeah, but without having to explicitly say so or having a message or theme that's not plainly said and needs to be put together.

Honestly that kind of thing just comes down to planning. When you know where your plot is going in advance then it's much easier to do foreshadowing to a subplot than to just try and insert it after the fact. Also it will seem a lot more forced if you don't have it planned out really well.

This is the kind of thing that is done better in a longer, planned out fully story. As for the execution, the traditional advice stands. Read a lot, find good books by authors you like and look for instances in which they caught you by surprise with these types of things. Then go back and look for the foreshadowing, figure out how they set it up. Generally you want to start out very subtle and get a lot more overt as the event is nearing. That way it doesn't actually feel like a complete surprise, getting 100% surprised by an author is usually not a good thing.

I have several working in my stories at the moment. The way I'm handling it is to make sure I've got those stories/messages/whatever straight first, then seed them by referencing oblique details, or implying character knowledge without ever actually diving into a POV.

Just subtle hints, foreshadowing and the like. One trick I'm particularly fond of is having characters appear across multiple, unrelated stories, though I haven't published enough for that to kick in yet.

For better examples, dive into the rabbit hole of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. A fascinating place, to be sure, and a trend-setter of the type of thing you're talking about.

906792
Well, as it happens, I'm writing a story with one right now. The trick is that you need to create an atmosphere that suggests the story is going one direction, but with subtle hints that point out the coming plot-twist.

Don't pull a Dark Knight Rises, where the real villain is revealed at the last second with no evidence or clues that it's coming. It can be done, but usually it comes off as contrived.

906797>>906785
Hmmm, kinda this, but not really. You don't want everyone to have been able to guess what's coming when you reveal the hidden plot, but you don't want them to have no idea where it came from either.

The ideal reaction would be "Holy shit, how did I not see that coming?"

906797
This would be the correct answer.

If you have a detailed plan of where your story will go, you can look at points that can be moved into the background, to just be hinted at. You still want to leave that hint though, so it can be brought back later, and pointed at in an 'a-ha' moment.

A really important thing, in a story where you want that plots-within-plots feeling, is that such a story needs is that the readers know that there's something more going on, even if they don't know what it is. If you have a lot of speculation in the comments of your story, then you've managed to pull that off. At that point, you have a lot more leeway, since people are in the right frame of mind to expect big twists and reveals. You can still do it without that mood, but you risk a feeling of contrivance and deus ex machina.

I would examine the "Harry Potter" books/movies. J.K. pulled off the subplots masterfully. She made you think people were one way, based on how others percieved them, or leaving things out until the last second. I had many "what the" moments. Like when Snape turned out to be protecting Harry the whole time.

Another good example is the last episode of Batman Beyond. Never thought the resolution to the whole series would be that either, but when you really look back at every single episode it makes sense.

The key is subtlety. Drop hints without being too obvious. For example, don't have characters say "Rarity can't be a vampire, that's ridiculous!" Instead, have Rarity start wearing a wide-brimmed hat and carry a parasol, say that the sun would ruin her fair complexion, and mention that she has to work some "late nights" (for filling that large order of dresses, of course). That's kind of a random example, but it depends on what the story is.

I think it comes down to a different version of "show vs. tell" where you have to show us things without telling us anything about what they mean until the right moment.

Misdirection is also pretty good. My holiday-themed story A Season of Giving played off some common fanon expectations about Scootaloo that the audience probably already has, and I tried to make it so that nearly everything she said could be interpreted in more than one way. I also didn't have any characters come out and say that she might be homeless until the reader has enough evidence to make that conclusion themselves.

Heard in the gdoc at my collab: "I love you, Luce, but you drop hints the way Vinyl Scratch drops the bass!"

The main rule to follow is "just because you don't mention it, doesn't mean it's not there." Authors are often stuck with this idea that you need to write EVERYTHING that happens in the story and as such, any hint you might drop gets telegraphed a mile away.

If anyone tells you, "the key is subtlety", you are entitled to give them a bemused look and roll your eyes, cus that's a little like saying "the key to walking quietly is to not make too much noise."

The skill I have found the most useful is empathy. You need to be in each characters head and think about how they'd react to the events with the knowledge THEY have. If you do it right, the reaction should seem perfectly natural to the situation, or at least not so out of place that it raises an eyebrow. But if you go back and read the part, knowing what the characters know, suddenly you understand what's going on.

The example that parked the line above was a scene where a couple of characters is encountering a clue and one character knows where the clue leads, but doesn't trust the other.

In the original version, he nearly does a double take seeing it and then suddenly revert to "it's prolly nothing, let's move on." I simply removed the double-take and the result was a scene that, while clearly foreshadowing to an experienced reader, wouldn't really set up any alarms right away. If you think about it, you just sorta think he was dumb to dismiss a clue right away, although that could just be horror-movie stupidity.

Something I'm doing is giving a hint of what's coming, but not the whole thing. It's been alluded to, but only pieces, which is probably the best way, especially if you want the reader to figure it out; something like Agatha Christie did: put all the information right in front of you to piece together. If you can see it.
If done well, when the whole story comes out, it should produce, to quote Stephen King, "a megaton wallop". If you figured it out, then there's that wonderful feeling of satisfaction.

Both goals are good ones.