I'm now starting to work with people who are writing games, which is extremely interesting.  I find that many of the problems faced by games writers and people writing web-based episodic drama in terms of creating and controlling multiple storylines  are very like the problems faced by people writing TV series. So, here's some help for anyone creating multiple storylines (including serial content). 


It will help always to think of your storylines as a team of unruly horses that you have to drive. Each  will always be trying to pull you off course, which, if it happens, will mean the whole project will go off course - and you the writer may be  so distracted and so interested in that one horse that you won’t even notice the whole project heading straight for a ditch.   


This happens to the best of writers because this stuff is just so difficult, so be prepared for it to happen and  keep double checking.


Writers creating multiple storyline projects on their own (films,TV pieces or games) are articularly prone to going off course because they are one writer running a whole massive project on their own, with nobody to give an objective second view (this is one major reason why TV shows have so many people monitoring scripts as they progress). 

White boards for each storyline will help you to differentiate and control.  Create stories separately, then interweave, pruning back storylines to fit  Think in terms of  ‘story beats’ and use the old fashioned tried but true TV story-beat estimate for each ‘episode’ to give you  somewhere to start in planning how much story you need. The storybeat principle is  that one creates A, B, and C stories.  You will instantly recognise this from the TV series you have seen.  A is the main story (in your case the gang warfare story, linking the gangs) B is the serial element (in your case ongoing fights/love etc within families) C is a short story complete in that episode.  For fifty minutes of TV we used to calculate 36 beats: 18 A plot, 12 B plot, 6 C plot.  

Just stick to that ratio 3:2:1.  Index cards  are very good idea here, one card per beat.  This is just a start.  Depending on your material, may want to give more to the B story, or split the B story up into a number of smaller stories.  Important point.  Plot A will present itself with a timeline. Peg the other stories to that.  

Remember, a beat is a step in the story, not a scene, and you can combine two or beats in one scene.  You may have several scenes to a beat.  For more on all of this, see my TV ebook Television Writing: The Ground Rules of Series, Serial and Sitcom and my book on screenwriting, The 21st Century Screenplay pp 127-164 on practical plotting and the chapters on Multiple Protagonist structuree pp. 207-245 (by the way, for people outside of N. America, Google Play books is currently running a specialbargain deal on the ebook of The 21st Century Screenplay). 

BLOG.LINDAARONSON.INFO: Linda Aronson on Voice Over Linda Aronson on Voice Over
In the Screenwriting Group at LinkedIn this question was posed “We all know that voice-over narration is a crime against cinema. Or do we...? Voice-over: sin or salvation?”
I haven’t read all the responses (there were over 80 ), but the replies I read were all along the lines that VO was a valid, proven, excellent tool, with many people listing good examples (btw, it’s a good site, so check it out).  Here’s my response.

Great, we’re all agreed the technique is valid and proven over and over again to be vividly successful.   Our next step should be a careful analysis of successful and unsuccesful examples in films to establish, when, where and why VO  works, and when where and why it doesn’t.  That way we'll get guidance to how to use VO successfully.

For example, it seems to me that VO is often successfully used in a mininmal form to bookend a film, articulating ideas and themes while simultaneously  providing a hook at the start of the film and a payoff twist at the end (for example in 21 Grams).  
I would also add that it’s fascinating how often in screenwriting theory moral condemnation is attached to the  use of techniques.  For example, flashbacks are ‘lazy’ or ‘voice over is trite’.  

You can’t ascribe moral values to writing techniques any more than to a paintbrush or the the use of specific fingering by a violinist. The only issue is the degree to which the techniques achieve the intended effect.  In short (as many people  in the LinkedIn Screenwriting Group said about VO), the only issue is whether it works.

My own personal  response to the question is that VO  can indeed get out of hand because our job as scriptwriters involves condensing dialogue so as to utilise subtext.  We are always tightening dialogue!  Hence, given the chance with VO to launch into purple prose, it’s very easy to get drunk on words - rambling lyrically on, with the accompanying visuals stuck in the same plot point, stopping the film in its tracks.  This is a big problem with adaptation of novels. It’s very tempting to insert brilliant bits of the novel’s narrative while the visuals become a kind of travelogue.   

My motto is forewarned is forearmed, so, in the attempt to avoid a dose of redundant purple prose in VO ,  I would suggest that prior to  using VO, we define precisely why we want to use it and what ideas  we want to transmit.

I’d also suggest that we work out what needs to be on the screen (telling the story visually) before  composing the VO.    That way, we’ve imposed limits on ourselves and  can excel within them.