#ensemble casts

I always struggle with ensemble cast stories, especially ones where I want to establish a sense of closeness and found family because you have ALL THAT and still need to move the plot forward. How do you balance building this closeness without over-shadowing the plot?

Hello friend! I know I "suggested" to you that you should send me an ask, but I'm still delighted that you did. And you sent in a question about one of my absolute favorite things to talk about!

I absolutely thrive writing anything that contains a large ensemble cast, especially a found family situation. There is a lot to be said about this particular topic so I will do my very best to try to stay on target.

How do you balance building the bond without overshadowing the plot? Let's talk about some options:

2015 was the prime of my YA reading years so I have no idea how I’d never heard of this series before - especially because it’s very, very good. 

Jess Brightwell is son to a family of book-smugglers, in a world where the Great Library of Alexandria never burned and became the largest power in the world as a result. Knowledge is considered more important than even lives, and the Library has a stranglehold on both. In order to give his family an inside man, Jess goes to Alexandria to become a Scholar, one of their librarian-mages. 

I LOVE a story with an ensemble cast, and this delivered - once Jess arrives at Alexandria and meets his fellow students, I had so much fun learning about them and their teachers

Speaking of which, their teacher Wolfe is my favourite person I’ve read about all month. An A+ character right there.

I loved the conflict of morals between the Great Library and the Burners (rebels whose greatest weapons are burning books and themselves along with them) and the book smugglers. None of them are completely right and all of them do terrible things. Unlike most stories where the main characters will have to pick a side, it wasn’t immediately obvious what the side should be.

The second act of the book takes place in a city under siege and it was very very good, thrilling and horrifying.

I thought that Caine could have gone further with some aspects of her alternate history - if the Great Library is the greatest power in the world, why is English the lingua franca that all the characters from diverse places have to conform to? But for the most part, the steampunk vibes were there.

Plot: once it got into it, it was great. The first three or four chapters of the book are markedly different from the rest of it. If you don’t like them, stick it out until you get to the meat of the story. I was not interested in reading another series about a criminal empire and the scion of it when there was a whole world outlined and waiting to be discovered. I was very excited once we got into the world. I do think the pacing dragged a tiny bit in the third act, but never enough to ruin the story for me.

Characters: I had so much fun with these dudes. Jess is an engaging protagonist who isn’t too annoying, although I had a lot more fun with the secondary characters. My favourite was Christopher Wolfe, mentioned above, although telling a lot about him is a spoiler. I also liked his classmates Khalia (badass and clever Muslim mathematician), Glain (think about the gentle giant type and then think about how much you’ve always wanted to see it applied to a girl), and Dario (a rich asshole who’s actually fun to watch and be around). Their friendships were really fun to see, and the romance wasn’t bad either, although not exactly memorable.

Setting: I feel like Caine could have gone further with the alternate history, but fun. I really enjoyed everything I learned about the Great Library - Caine puts in letters and historical documents to give you a better sense. I think, though, that if you’re making such a dramatic shift in the world so early on, that it should impact the world a lot more than it did - not ‘this is our world but there’s steampunk added in and Alexandria is a different place’, but ‘same land shapes different world.’ I’m very excited to see the different locations the rest of the series takes us to, though.

Prose: good at landing points, if not memorable. The beginning scene of the book, where someone eats the only copy of Archimedes’ On Sphere-Making, was fantastically horrifying. The scene at the end of the second act as they leave the city was also fantastically horrifying, though I won’t spoil it. It wasn’t poetry, though.

Cruel, cruel!

Kidding, this is a fun question. 

Well, if of equal quality--which is important--ensemble cast. 100%. The thing is I think it is harder to maintain a story with appropriate attention given to all characters in an ensemble cast, but what I love about ensemble casts is how exciting it is to have so many characters to relate to, to analyze, to explore. I struggle with MCs sometimes because many are sanitized to be likable, but that’s less likely in an ensemble cast and even if it does happen, then there are other characters to adore, too. 

It’s part of the reason I love manga (which often have ensemble casts) and MXTX’s novels. Like, for Tokyo Ghoul:re, I think that technically there were just too many characters--that said, I honestly think cutting any would have been a shame too, because they were all so fascinating. 

The Umbrella Academy: Super Odd, Yet Even

Greetings, my fellow bloggers! While biding my time over the next installment of “Stranger Things” to hit our Netflix screens on 4th July, I am currently biding my time streaming other Netflix original shows to fill the void until that date. One strong contender for this position is the new hit show “The Umbrella Academy”, which debuted on the platform in February 2019. Based on the comic books…

They also have to be kind to people who need kindness. Like they are always looking for a fight but they want someone that can either defend themselves or someone who deserves it. They aren't going to hurt someone for no reason

But an ensemble just doesn't feel right if you don't have the angry one who seems half a second away from stabbing someone

Leader, Lancer, Heart, Brains, Big Guy.

The most traditional form of the 5 man band of adventurers and the core of any ensemble cast. It is one of the oldest archtypes out there but bizarrely it comes with also one of the greatest problems in writing and one that's weirdly more about math than anything else.

After all, the amount of time required to make each character feel like an active part of a story isn't additive with each character in your primary cast. It's exponential.

But let's actually back up for a second and define terms. After all, I'm here to talk about Ensembles, right? What are those? Well, it actually can have a lot of meanings from gesturing to the entire supporting cast, simply those in the background, etc. like that. I'm specifically focusing on the ensemble cast though where you are talking about a wide primary cast made up commonly of a main character and then primary side characters. Regardless of their labeling, all of these are genuinely important characters.

In which lies the problem. See, for a character to feel important is a rough problem. A comic relief character can show up as much or more often than your primary love interest but they won't feel important just because of that. Usually, to feel important they need to some extent feel like they're alive and a part of things and one of the core ways to do this is to have them responding and interacting with other characters rather than just standing in the back, blankly staring into the void as they wonder what they're doing with their life. They have an entire tragic backstory but they haven't said a word in three episodes because the writers haven't remembered they might have something to do here or, worse yet, that they may trivialize the problem. They are simply trapped, lost in purgatory.

And purgatory is not what an important character should be trapped in. But as you get more characters in the group, they quite literally consume time and effort in order to have react to things. In just a five man band, every time the smart one gives out a plan, do you really need all four to give affirmation? When the silly one of the group does something dumb, how many characters do you have react to that before it gets tedious? How many people need to panic about the heart being kidnapped? Because with each character you add to that number, you risk having them say something that should incite banter which can already drag out something that feels superfluous to the audience out even longer. So how do you fix this time problem?

There are two main ways most media goes about solving this. The first is just straight up being willing to recognize who isn't important in the story. Who are your side characters even within the ensemble. For most five man bands, this is the smart guy and the big guy. Each one might get like one episode a piece each season but they aren't getting the multi-part arc that really ties deeply into the plot of the show like the Lancer, Heart and Leader and that's a MAYBE on the heart since she's commonly just the love interest.

This version is actually a lot more frustrating the more invested you are in something and the more the show tries to build up these characters early on as being important. The Owl House does this with Willow and Gus, one of whom literally doesn't get episodes focused on her, not properly bare minimum, while the other gets one MAYBE every half season. The problem is that they were introduced first as the main character Luz's best friends and possibly her first friends in a while and post S1 of that show they mostly just vanish, let alone when it comes to Luz or the plot. The show just shuffles them off to the side and a LOT of people got pissed about it in that fandom because, well... Why wouldn't you? They seemed like a big deal and were just discarded for the most part.

However, from a strictly objective writing standpoint, it is better to recognize when you have vestigial characters and cut them away. That way you have more time to spend on your primary cast and let them help when it's needed. Done gracefully even, this can be great as a character feels like they bow out of the limelight more naturally because they as a character would do that.

The one that is often FAR worse from a strict writing perspective is smashing characters in your ensemble into what are effectively groups that simplify interactions. That way you're not dealing with a wide cast, you actually only have a narrow amount of groups of people. It often requires boiling down to their most basic traits so as to have simplified interactions that can start following a formula with how the groups interact. The more groupings, the more complex the storytelling admittedly and groups for the characters is not essentially bad. It's when you use it not for exploring group dynamics but specifically to treat it like you have less characters to write because it homogeneity.

Persona 5 actually has a lot of its main content writing fall apart because of this. The game is smart in that it doesn't want to balloon the time cutscenes take even as you eventually double your main cast from what you have at the beginning but how they do it is kind of awful. It's split between effectively the main characters, who aren't the ones your controlling because you play a voice protagonist in that, the dudes, and the ladies with their being some overlap.

You can probably see the problem with making these groups. It's made worse by the fact that the guys are categorically the comic relief and so there are entire scenes dedicated to shitting on one of the dudes for the same trait over and over again. You have objectifying the girls so the guys can be pervs like teenagers are. You have two characters who do 90% of the plot talking for the majority of the game, and eventually are finally joined by the one dude not treated as a joke, and the rest of them just kind of sit there. Worse yet is that a sexual harassment victim is one of the girls but NOT a main character so for the majority of the game, she is just a sex object effectively and it's REAL uncomfortable.

So how do you get around these problems? Well, the first is to understand the scope of your story. How long is it going to be? That length effectively determines how many characters you CAN have in your primary cast. If you're doing five one hour specials, it's probably best just to keep it to a pair of main characters and a primary antagonist with side characters coming in and out to help facilitate the plot. If you're a passion project that's updating with a chapter every week for upwards of a decade? Go fucking crazy because you have all the time in the god damn world to make these characters feel fleshed out and important, though your pacing will probably suffer for it. Hello One Piece (I can't say too much here because I don't have a deep familiarity with it.)

The second is to recognize how important every character is from the get go and treating them with that level of importance. To make sure you sunset a character properly instead of just shipping them off to a peace conference ala Power Rangers. That way you don't give incorrect expectations for your audience and you can trim the cast as is required. If you recognize early on that someone needs to be around for a few episodes to introduce some elements and familiarize your MC with things they need for their longer journey but would be detrimental to have around for the grander arc, you need to prepare a reason they won't continue to be a part of the story.

This is part of the reason why a LOOOOOOT mentors straight up die. And arguably it's why Marcy is effectively killed in Amphibia because while she couldn't literally die, her continued existence is important to tone and other character's motivations, she herself has no purpose in the plot anymore besides being a background motivator. That isn't to say it was a great choice but it did allow the story to continue to focus on the characters and elements that were more important to the overall story without having her just sitting in the background questioning her existence. Or sleeping like Persona 5 literally has one character do for upwards of twenty days due to gameplay mechanics. Not a coma... Sleeping.

You are never going to please everyone with an ensemble though. By the nature of an ensemble's wide appeal, there's a reason they're used so much, some people are always going to be upset to see their favorites sidelined or simplified simply for the sake of narrative tidiness. Accepting this early on will help free you on just making sure each characters gets the run they should for the sake of your story. After all, even for a character first writer like me, you have to eventually get your story done. You can't spend eternity on every character without something else suffering... Commonly pacing admittedly.

So just try and be mindful and when you're making your ensemble, make sure to ask just how many characters you need for it because you don't want to make this problem any harder for yourself than it has to be.

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I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

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B: a fun heist book with surprisingly deft points about imperialism that only suffers from its obvious comparison to Six of Crows.

In a magical Paris at the height of High Imperialism, teenage hotelier Séverin, last scion of a defeated magical house, assembles a gang of his closest friends to steal a treasure map and win them all their goals.