: Re: It is a sign of bad writing to have many scenes that are disconnected with the main plot? So my novel look like this (I took this diagram idea from this site, but I'm not sure exactly from

@Mendez196

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One main idea about scene construction is that each scene should do two things. It can move plot and change the emotional feeling of a character/characters, or provide backstory and move plot, or do any combination of one of those and another thing. But it should do at least two things. So the biggest thing to look at is what each of your scenes does.

You have a scene with the boyfriend right before the climax. Does that scene progress the emotional plot and provide backstory? Then it's, by that definition, a good scene, and probably useful to the story. If it is just a scene where the MC and the boyfriend are talking about their favorite fruit, it probably isn't so useful.

You don't want every scene in the beginning and the end to be plot and backstory or plot and relationship, and you don't want every scene in the middle to be emotional and backstory (as examples), because that will lead to a feeling of having two different stories in one, but you can generally have the outside progress the plot and inside progress emotional, or something like that.

In the end, it isn't good or bad writing to not always follow exactly what the main plot is doing. One way to avoid a feeling of discontinuity is make it clear where each scene is related to the others in space and time. It could be as simple as saying "later that day" or "at the same time" or "across town", where it gives a feeling that everything is tied together. If suddenly start a scene with the father being in another state six months later with no tie-in, it would probably be confusing. If he is buying a gift for his child at the store they went to years ago, that gives a feeling of continuity.

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