The only way I have managed something like this is as follows:
- Make your default master pages “empty”, i.e. no headers/footers.
- Create new master pages with headers and footers called, e.g., LeftBody and RightBody.
- Make a master page mapping table that linking LeftBody/RightBody to one or more paragraph formats that will appear on normal “text” pages (Body, for example).
- Use Apply Master Pages to apply LeftBody/RightBody to all text pages, leaving the blank pages blank.
This works, but one oddity has persuaded me that the game isn’t worth the candle: I find that empty pages based on LeftBody/RightBody are not deleted on save as one would expect. So if, for instance, editing or reformatting a twenty-page document cuts it down to 18 pages, pages 19 and 20 will be empty apart from the header and footer and will need to be deleted manually. So you win in one area but lose in another.
Would be interested to know if you can make it work.