Can I write my sub stories separately?
I am writing a novel with two groups of characters. They will have their own adventures, and meet somewhere after the middle to take on the main villain.
Now in the book, the stories will be interspersed, as they are happening at the same time and roughly the same space.
But I was wondering, will it be easier for me to write the sub stories separately (keeping in mind the overall picture), such that the whole story of group A is written first, then group B , and then combine them at the end? This is for the first draft of course.
Are there any downsides to doing this?
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1 answer
If you are having a huge problem getting the stories on paper because juggling both at once is confusing, then yes. I would certainly outline them individually.
I prefer to write linearly — in the sense of writing the story pretty much in the order it will appear in the book, with a few exceptions for inspiration or to get around writer's block — so that I minimize the amount of backtracking I have to do. You would need to backtrack if you realized you forgot some bit of exposition or explanation, for example, or if you needed to put in some foreshadowing, or to shift a point of tension.
If you have two A-plots going on at the same time, you generally want both plots to have similar levels of tension. Whether you want them both to rise and fall simultaneously or for one to rise while the other is falling is up to you and your story. For me as a writer, that would be easier to see if I were writing the scenes in the order they would appear.
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