Ensemble casts and multiple POVs

Welcome back, friends!

When I think of an ensemble cast, my mind tends to go to Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo; a group of characters, usually four or more, who have defined roles to play and more or less equal involvement in a story. Another frequently cited example is the 'Oceans' series of films, which not-coincidentally is also a 'heist' genre story - this is significant because, as stated in the description above, the premise of a heist by necessity involves a group of people working together to overcome a specific set of obstacles using creative solutions which are only available to those individuals in the group who each represent a very particular skillset. Writing an ensemble cast doesn't have to mean a 'heist'-type plot, and you can have large casts of characters in a book without the story being an ensemble - something like Harry Potter, for instance. It also doesnt have to mean multiple-Point Of View, although that is one technique that is especially useful for fleshing out and giving legs to characters in an ensemble where there are multiple stories being told and a number of voices that need to be heard.

I wasn't setting out to write an ensemble when I began The Gravedigger Scribe, but I did want to write an unlikely-found-family type of dynamic featuring a larger group of characters, and I realised quite quickly that to execute that I *could* go down the path of an ensemble and fulfil a lot of the conventions of that type of story. Nevertheless I always thought of it first as Annie's story and the rest of the Scribes as secondary to the main focus. (My agent and I have slightly different views on whether or not this is in fact what I've done, which is why she convinced me it would be best to submit the book to editors under the new title, The Scribes, to more accurately convey the weaving together of different threads of story.) Ultimately I decided not to give all the characters equal weight and the POV remains with Anne, my main protagonist, through most of the story, with the exception of just two chapters - a prologue and an interlude midway through - which are given to the antagonist, to add colour to her story and build upon her motivations. (Otherwise the reader wouldn't see much of her and her driving motivation would be more or less a mystery until the very end. Giving her a POV also allows for the reader to make a sympathetic connection with her to a degree that otherwise wouldn't be possible.) In my mind, it's still Annie's story first and foremost, and works because she's the reader surrogate - encountering the motley crew of her own variants from other worlds and making sense of them all in light of her own (our?) perspective. If I wanted to give Aubrey, Emion, Esbeni, Mercer and Vasla POV chapters too, it would be a much larger undertaking, much more complex, and would have involved a deep dive into each of their backstories, ways of thinking, and the numerous differences between the worlds they come from. Not impossible, but would have required a longer word count, and for this type of adult fantasy I was probably already pushing it.

This is a bit of a contrast to my current WIP, which *is* multiple POV, and in which I really wanted to portray the different ways each of the characters think about and interact with one another - the relational dynamics at play between the brothers and the other people in their lives. I don't actually consider this one to be an ensemble either, but I think there's less scope for disagreement than in The Scribes as I have a much smaller supporting cast and their roles in the story are clearly secondary to the main protagonist. At time of writing this, I have three viewpoint characters, and they alternate chapters on a more-or-less 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 1 ... pattern. This means the reader spends twice as long in my main protagnist's POV than either of the other two secondary characters over the course of the book, which is intentional and I think it works. There is no prescriptive, one-size-fits-all formula for this, and one of my main tips for managing a larger castof characters or multi-POV project is to remember that not all characters have to receive the same amount of attention. Not all characters are created equal, and they don't all need to get the same number of words or chapters devoted to their story, AS LONG AS you bear in mind that, if you're going to give a character a POV, you need to give them 1) a satisfying arc - starting point, conflict, resolution, new status quo - and 2) a distinct voice. Even if they aren't getting as much airtime in terms of agency, backstory and development, they still need to come across to the reader as an individual, with mannerisms, motives, and nuance all their own. As a matter of fact, the same should be said of any supporting characters you introduce, regardless of whether they are a POV or just stage dressing. The key to making your world feel real is to populate it with people that aren't just 2d cardboard cutouts but actual characters that feel as though each one of them could be the hero of their own story.

Because at the end of the day, isn't that what all of us are?

Talk at you next time.

-R