The Ensemble Characters

Something I really appreciate is when you find a story where you can’t help but love all the characters. You know what I mean- a story where the protagonist doesn’t just dominate everything, but is rounded out and added to by the other characters around them. Give us those goofy, yet always reliable friends or swoon-worthy love interests or, yes, even those villains we love to hate. Stories are always better, in my opinion, when everyone’s there working in tandem to create the most compelling story possible.

The catch though?

Actually writing multiple characters without making them too repetitive or stereotypical or unimportant.

Some stories, by definition, might require a lot of characters. For example, sci-fi and fantasy tend to have many characters just because it would take a lot of people to crew a starship or warriors to protect a kingdom. I’m always impressed when I see writers who are able to handle a lot of characters at once, especially if they’re juggling storylines as well or unique voicing. But even if you don’t have multiple characters highlighted as narrators, I still think it’s important for writers to try to ensure that all of their characters feel just as real and developed as the protagonist.

Sure, your protagonist may be the “hero” of the story, but I would imagine it’s pretty rare that your hero would be completely alone within the confines of their plot- unless you’re going for something like a survival story where the main point is for the character to be alone. But still, even then, surely your character knows someone to think about over the course of the story- colleagues, family, etc.

Enter your ensemble cast.

In my mind, these characters are here not only to help tell the story, like in the case of multiple points-of-view, but also to be a springboard for your protagonist. Do you need people with a certain type of skill or knowledge to aid your protagonist? Do we need mentors, lovers, friends, enemies, antagonists? The ensemble cast is there to make the story compelling because relationships are what make life compelling. People add drama, people add romance, people add meaning and help you grow along your own path.

Just like in the description example I gave in my last blog, I think choosing what kind of characters to pair your hero up with requires asking a lot of questions. What you need from your ensemble cast probably depends a lot on how you designed your protagonist in the first place: what would complement/irritate them personality-wise, what kind of characters could help drive the story forward, what kind of characters make sense in the world?

If you have a dangerous fantasy world whose protagonist might be a little iffy on their fight skills, you might need some kind of protector, for example.

One tricky thing that Kristin and I encountered while writing our manuscript The Visionary is that there are sometimes when you have to be very careful about what you say about your ensemble characters. The Visionary’s plot surrounds a mystery, so therefore, we needed several characters to be suspects, all of whom we could reveal little information about in order to not ruin the story.

Though this adds suspense for the first section of the trilogy, not being able to say much about characters, especially one’s who’ll eventually be cleared and available to play a larger role in the series, causes a bit of a problem. So, how can you flesh out a character if you really can’t say very much about them?

I think what helped us was that we wrote Visionary with a sort-of overarching character idea in mind. Even though we knew there were at least two (if not technically more) characters considered suspects that would play much more important and deep roles later, we were really limited on what we could say without blowing the mystery. This meant that we had to take what we had already figured out about said characters and just kind of subtly let it inform what we were able to show about them through personality, mannerisms, clothing, emotional behavior, etc.

Obviously, we didn’t- and probably don’t- know everything about these characters because they’ll continue to evolve and grow as we uncover new aspects of them while we write. Still, writing with the vast majority of where these characters have been prior to the story’s beginning, as well as where we want them to go later, I think really helped filling them out as characters. Unfortunately, this pretty much meant that all the things we knew about these characters couldn’t be said until the second section of the trilogy, if not the third- so by the time we started drafting Book Two, it was kind of like, “FINALLY!”

Just thinking about the stories I love, I really like when writers can achieve that feeling where it seems as if every character is the main character. I have yet to figure out how exactly authors do that, but I’d love to know because it makes the story incredibly interesting. Specifically regarding the ensemble cast, my favorite kind of character pairings are ones that really complement each other- main trios that round out each other’s strengths and weaknesses, antagonists or villains that betray the heroes in the worst possible way, the interesting people that make the world around your characters seem real.

My idea of a successful ensemble cast is a story that makes you fall in love (or hate) with everyone. Remember, these are the people who make your world real, the friends who’ll always be there for you between the pages. Give them as much thought as you can.

What are some of the books you’ve read with great ensemble characters? Are there things you really like/dislike when dealing with lots of characters? Any specific tricks you can teach us about writing realistic, loveable characters? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading. Write on.

-Kamryn