A plot within a story, subsidiary to the main plot.
1978, R.B. Lee & R. Misiorowski, Script Models: A Handbook for the Media Writer,Subplot, a story line enclosed within the principal story to provide relief from the main plot's tension, add character dimension, etc.
1998: Stephen Roy Miller, The Taming of a Shrew: the 1594 quartoStructurally, the two most variant scenes (outside of Scene ii) are Scenes 3 and 4 in which the compiler works out the variant subplot.
2001: Dennis O'Neil, The DC Comics Guide to Writing ComicsIn a sense, Superman's romance with Lois Lane was a subplot and ...
2001, Nancy Arbuthnot Johnson, Vic Neufield, Forging Links for Health Research,But this story has a subplot — a subplot about fairness and how people have divergent levels of access to knowledge and resources.
1996: The American Midland Naturalist, published by the University of Notre Dame... on sixteen 8/10-acre plots (12.8 acres) well distributed over the area. ... A 1/160-acre subplot was established in a randomly chosen corner of each ...
1999, E. K. Sadanandan Nambiar, Christian Cossalter, Site Management and Productivity in Tropical Plantation Forest,There are 72 trees in each plot (6x12) and 36 trees in each subplot.
2002, M. Boya Edwards, Proceedings for the Eight Biennial Southern Silvicultural Research Conference,Hardwood and shrub stems (besides gallberry) were counted by species and measured for total height (if greater than 2 ft) on 3 strip plots per subplot that were 0.01 acre …