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You could allocate a single novel struct containing the structure of interest and any number of list elements that will contain it in a single malloc().

If the lists don’t need to know about each other, each novel struct could be different.

This would work, but it’s a bit exotic, so I’m not recommending it. But it addresses the locality and multiple allocation issues.

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isn't that exactly equivalent to an intrusive linked list in memory except harder to implement?

Not quite. With traditional intrusive linked lists, you'll have to modify the payload struct whenever you want to add it to another or different lists; with OP's approach, maybe not (but it depends on the implementation details).

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