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Q&A Can you have too many story arcs running at the same time?

I've written about 15k words of my story now and the plot is developing nicely. Perhaps a bit too nicely. I have about a dozen of named characters which all have something interesting to do in th...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Totumus Maximus‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:57:38Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36544
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Totumus Maximus‭ · 2019-12-08T08:57:38Z (almost 5 years ago)
I've written about 15k words of my story now and the plot is developing nicely. Perhaps a bit too nicely.

I have about a dozen of named characters which all have something interesting to do in the next part of the story. They will separately add something uniquely to the plot. They all seem to go a separate own path and will cause a change in POV up to where they will connect again in some way. This doesn't feel bad, right now. But it seems really hard to do right. Currently I have like 4-5 story arcs running next to each other. All contributing to the theme and main plotline in some way. It also adds motivation to some of the characters which makes me believe they are important.

Should I consider this a good thing or should I try to cut story arcs for better overview? Is there a general rule for this kind of things?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-05-30T11:17:11Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 21