wetranscripts | Entries tagged with ensemble

Writing Excuses 17.26: Hanging Separately

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/06/26/17-26-hanging-separately/

Key Points: What can go wrong with an ensemble story? Waiting too long to bring them together. Breach of promise. No cohesion or lack of bond. Ensembles need both arguments with each other, and we are a found family. If you fail, make the arguments shallow, but make the family strong. There may be one character who needs to change or just be tossed out. Listen to your readers, then figure out what the real problem is.

[Season 17, Episode 26]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Hanging Separately.

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we should be hanging together.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] I'm Howard, and I'm stealing the thunder of our whole title.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Sorry, Dan.

[Dan] Awww.

[Howard] Who was it who said that?

[Dan] That was Benjamin Franklin.

[Howard] If we don't hang together, we will...

[Dan] He said when they were plotting the revolution. If we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately. Or some variation of that.

[Dan] So we want to talk about this time the pitfalls of on ensemble. If the ensemble fails, if the characters don't mesh, there's lots of different ways this can go wrong. We are going to talk about it. So, let's start with that first. What are some ways that ensemble can go wrong?

[Howard] I want to clarify here that we're not talking about the pros and cons… The cons of an ensemble. We've already established that you're going to try and write an ensemble. What are the common mistakes? What are the disasters? What are the failure points? For me, the most common failure point is when we wait too long to bring them together or to bring them back together.

[Zoraida] Right.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Zoraida] I have some examples.

[Dan] Okay, let's hear them.

[Zoraida] One example to me which is… I guess this teeters on the success/failure rate for me. I think that The Defenders was a great show in the second half of the show. But as an ensemble… I… To me, it failed to ach… Like, the adhesion of the characters waited too long. If I hadn't gotten deep enough into episode four, which I think is too late, I would have turned it off.

[Dan] Yeah. I do think that there is room in the world for slow burn stories about teams coming together. Season one of Heroes did the same thing. But a lot of it comes down to promise. Heroes promised, look, people all over the world are suddenly developing powers for no reason. Over the course of the season, we're going to very slowly watch them begin to come together. The Defenders promised us, hey, all these other shows you love? This is the show where they team up. Then it didn't give us that for way too long, so it felt like a breach of promise.

[Howard] One of the things… This isn't necessarily an apologist approach to The Defenders…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But one of the things that made Daredevil so strong in its first season was that the four act format of TV with commercial breaks wasn't being adhered to. So, the flow of the show was much different. Conversations went on longer than they would have in broadcast TV had this been something that had commercials in it. So I feel like they leaned into that when they built The Defenders and shouldn't have. We needed to put people together sooner. But talking about the promise, the first Suicide Squad movie, the trailers promised me witty banter and antics. What I got was a depressing movie about criminals with bombs in their heads.

[Laughter]

[Dan] There's room in the world for depressing stories about…

[Talking about bombs]

[Dan] Criminals with bombs in their heads. But that's not what anybody wanted or thought they were getting from that particular story.

[Zoraida] Right.

[Dan] So what are some other ways…

[Zoraida] For me.

[Dan] What are some other examples of ensembles that… Ensemble stories that failed in some way?

[Zoraida] Kaela, you were starting to talk.

[Kaela] Yeah.

[I'm going into depression, sorry.]

[Argh…]

[Dan] You didn't want to go on public record bashing somebody's arc?

[Howard] Look, I went on the record saying that I loved the Hobbit movies.

[Laughter]

[Howard] So nobody's heating you more than they hate me.

[Zoraida] I love them too. I really dig them.

[Kaela] I like a lot about them, but at the same time…

[Zoraida] Look, honestly, I feel like I most creator's ideal target, because I really just watch to be entertained. Right. Like, I will have a good time almost anywhere. Right? I enjoy so much that I feel like my friends who have, in their opinions, more discriminating tastes…

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] But, so, like I… So when something like lets me down, I feel really like passionate about it. I actually watched Oceans 8, and I think that like as an ensemble cast, I wasn't invested in them at all. I think it's like a powerhouse [garbled actresses], then there was like… It's like there was… The tension that was there, there was no cohesion. I think that when you don't have that bond between all of your ensemble, it just feels like there's just somebody there doing a job as opposed to we are… As opposed to, like, we said in previous episodes, we're all in this together.

[Kaela] Yes. I was going to say, I think that the big draw of an ensemble story is the bond between the characters and how their bond affects the plot and how they have to come together in different ways in order to accomplish the thing that needs to be accomplished. So when you have characters who, like, don't care about each other, particularly, or don't get to a place where they care about each other, that's a big let down. If you have characters who you're like, "I literally don't even know why you're here." You know?

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] Like, they just showed up in your house and you're like, "Why are you here? Get out. Please." Except it's the movie or it's the book, like, I think [garbled]

[Howard] I'm a drummer and you had a couch.

[Kaela] Yeah. Exactly. You're like, "What? Why are you here, man?" Anything that does that, one, it throws you out of the story, of course, like most flaws will in a story. But, two, like those are the things like in an ensemble, everything gets compounded when you make mistakes in characterization or in the way that the characters affect plot. Because it will like keep pinging around all of the other characters in the ensemble. It would be a domino effect of, like, one character here doesn't have their motivation figured out, we don't know why they're here, and everyone interacting with them either has to address that is like an actual character point or it gets confusing why these other capable characters aren't addressing that, and why, like, all of their decision-making processes get affected by this person who we're like, "Why are you here, though?"

[Laughter]

[Howard] I'm trying to create a dichotomy here. This is… This might just be the medication talking…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But you're familiar with the phrase surprising yet inevitable. When you write surprising yet inevitable, if you fail at inevitable, you've got deus ex machina and we hate you. If you fail at surprising, we might just feel smarter than you, and that's actually not a bad thing if I've bought the book. So I lean toward if I'm going to fail at surprising yet inevitable, I want to fail on the surprise, I don't want to fail on the inevitability. The dichotomy I'm reaching for is what are the poles… Surprising on one pole, inevitable on the other pole. What are the poles for an ensemble? Like, we hate each other, but we're a family. Or something. If you have to pick which one to fail at, which one do you pick? Which one is worse? I feel like if there's that thing where we argue with each other, but we are a family… Boy, howdy, let's err on the side of we're a family and make the arguments feel a little shallow, rather than make the arguments feel just unovercomeable. Oh, man, there's not enough medication…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] In the world for me to parse all these thoughts at once. I don't want to fail on that, because, at the end, I don't have an ensemble, I have a group of angry people who all got to be in a book together.

[Zoraida] Like a structural Thanksgiving.

[Dan] We're going to pause here and talk about an ensemble that absolutely worked, and did not fail. The Expanse.

[Howard] Oh. My. Goodness. Which one of us was going to pitch that?

[Dan] Zoraida.

[Howard] I'm talking.

[Dan] Or you.

[Zoraida] You do it.

[Howard] I love the adaptation of the Expanse. It's its own master class in trans media, translation from book to show. But, just as a show, the building of the ensemble, the setting up of the promises, the characterization, it's… It is brilliant and beautiful and I love it. I've watched it end to end… End to end, all the seasons, probably three times. But, like the first four seasons, because they're older, I think I may have gone through those eight times. Just turning it on while I did other things. Because I love the way those characters interact. They are in such horrible trouble so much of the time. They have so many reasons to fight with one another, and yet, they are a found family and they love each other, even their sociopath Amos.

[Zoraida] Yes. Oh, my God. Amos forever. I… So I chose The Expanse too because it… I started reading the book, and the book has one of the best openings that I've read in a very long time. This is like… I'm 10 years late to this book. I started it a month ago. So, it's… For writers who are like worried that their work will never find a reader, like, I'm 10 years late to this series. Okay. One of the things that I found while watch… Switching over to watch the TV show, was that everybody has their own clear motivation and reasons to stay together. I think that when a book doesn't give me that… That's… It's all subjective, because I've read books that are ensemble cast that people love and I'm just like I don't get it. But it's… It really is so tightly woven that I feel like I'm going to have to go and watch it eight more times. Like Howard.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] So, that is The Expanse TV show, that's our thing of the week. It's also a book series, starting with Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. So, go…

[Howard] Real quick, let me just say that the books… The series ended where the books took a big time jump forward. The ensemble would've had to change… For one thing, we'd have to age all the actors up. So, the fact that there isn't an Expanse season that takes us all the way through to the end of the whole proto-molecule galaxy spanning whatever story is nicely illustrative of the understanding that people are watching this, even if they don't know it, they're watching it for the ensemble, and if we break the ensemble in order to push through into the big Galactic story, people will be disappointed. The books can do it. It's really hard to keep that audience on TV though.

[Dan] Yeah. I will say as a closing note, if you are interested, Howard and I did an episode a few years ago with Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who are the authors that make up James S. A. Corey. They wrote the books and they are the show runners for the TV show. So look back through the Writing Excuses archive and you can hear a lot more about how they did that.

[Zoraida] This is me discovering that they are two people.

[Laughter]

[Dan] Yeah. James S. A. Corey is a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

[Zoraida] Incredible.

[Dan] But let's talk about some more… While Kaela was talking earlier, a really cool example of a failed and then repaired ensemble came to mind, which is the TV show Parks and Recreation.

[Yeah!]

[Dan] In the first season, season and a half, they had Mark. Mark was kind of intended to be… When that show first started, it was basically The Office, but re-done with a government office instead of a corporate office. Mark was supposed to be the sardonic Everyman. He was the Jim of the cast. Then, over time, as they refined their show, as they changed the focus, it stopped being a show about look at all these losers and their terrible job, and it started to be, hey, look at these good people who are trying their best in a crazy system that they have to work within. Once that focus changed, then Mark, the sardonic Everyman, absolutely did not fit in the ensemble anymore. Because his job, his archetype so to speak, was to make fun of everybody else. But we liked everybody else. It was not the Office that was full of misfits and losers anymore. It was full of people we genuinely loved. So he did not fit. They wrote him out of the show completely because he was a failed part of that ensemble. They brought in instead two other characters, Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, whatever their characters are named, I don't remember. They fit better, because they were part of the we're kind of strange people, but we love our jobs which the ensemble had morphed into. So identifying why the ensemble doesn't work… Maybe it's just one character and you can tweak that character or change them completely. Then everything suddenly jells. So what are some other ways to fix on ensemble? If an ensemble is broken, what are some things people can look at to help identify the problem and then fix it?

[Howard] There's a principle here that I learned when I was drawing a Munchkin deck, and that is that the customer always knows when there's a problem, but never knows what the actual problem is.

[Yeah!]

[Howard] Learning to listen to your alpha readers or your beta readers… When they say, "Oh, the story's not working for me. I hate this one character." Does that mean that the character needs to be cut? Does that mean that the character needs to be made likable? Or does that mean that they need someone in the story to agree with them that this character is being a jerk so they can feel vindicated in not liking this character and be okay to move on? It is really tricky to understand that. But, for me, the key piece of the toolbox is having a beta reader or an alpha reader who has been well enough trained to be able to say rather than I think you should get rid of this character to say I don't like what this character is doing. I don't like… I don't feel like these two people would be friends. I don't think that their plan is the smart one, and I don't like reading about stupid people. Whatever. You get them to say what it is that they are feeling so that I can step back and troubleshoot it and find the core of the problem.

[I think that…]

[Howard] Yes, this may be extremely difficult to troubleshoot books that you're writing just on your own. I am exceedingly fortunate in that I have a couple of alpha readers, Sandra Tayler and Bob Defendi, who I know how their opinions work. I know… They know how writing works, and that's awesome. They know how to tell me things in a way that I know what to fix.

[Dan] All right. Let's jump to our homework now. Zoraida, you have our homework.

[Zoraida] We have our homework. I would like you to pick an ensemble story that you think fails, and explain how you would have fixed it.

[Dan] There you go. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

[Mary Robinette] Oy. Have you checked out the Writing Excuses 2022 cruise yet? We've got all the details about guests, dates, and destinations at writingexcusesretreat.com. This will be the 10th workshop we've done. We'd love to have you join us.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 17.25: Archetypes, Ensembles, and Expectations

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/06/19/17-25-archetypes-ensembles-and-expectations/

Key points: How do you differentiate the members of your ensemble? What is the story about, and who needs to populate that world? What archetypes do you need? Archetype may not be the right word. Roles? Mix it up, make the mentor also dopey comic relief. Consider roles in the plot, along with personalities or characterization archetypes. Beware of falling into stereotypes, of making characters just like your favorites. Make sure your ensemble has to come together as a group, that they have to work at it.

[Season 17, Episode 25]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Archetypes, Ensembles, and Expectations.

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Dan] So, we... This... I've been looking forward to this one all masterclass long. Archetypes and ensembles. Really what we're talking about here is...we've talked in the past about making every member of the ensemble meaningful. Now we want to talk about why are they there? What do they do? How are they different from each other and what is each one bringing to the table? What skills or baggage or whatever do they have? So, when you're looking at this, Zoraida, when you sit down to start an ensemble story, a story that has an ensemble cast, how do you start differentiating the characters in this way?

[Zoraida] It's hard to say. I've been thinking a lot about this, but sometimes it's hard for me to identify that because I think that as I write what the story's going to be, I start with plot first sometimes, not always character. Which has changed in the last few years. I used to start with character first, and then go to plot. But again, it goes back to the question that I asked in a couple of episodes ago, which is what is the story about? So once I figure out what the story is about, I understand who needs to populate my world. Obviously, we have a leader. The leader should also have another kind of archetype, right? Like, are they important for example? Are they a mastermind? Is it the villain? Once I start identifying their archetype, that archetype for the leader, then I understand what is the actual job that needs to get done. Heists are little bit easier, because I think that in heists, you… Which is going to be my book of the week. In a heist, somebody has a very, very specific job. So what happens when you have an adventure? Right? Does somebody bring in a skill? Then, so, I think about skill sets, personalities, chaos… Right? What is the character that brings chaos and creates tension? That's kind of where I start. In chaos.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I like the way that you started by talking about sometimes you start with plot, and sometimes you start with character. Because I do think it's worth pointing out that the point at which you make the decision of this needs to be an ensemble cast might be in the beginning, it might be halfway through. You might have a big chunk of your story already in mind or outlined or whatever, and realize, "Oh, you know what? This is not going to work with a single person going through this alone. I need to add in… I need to turn this into an ensemble." Or it might be at the very beginning, you just set out like Howard did to tell a big group story solving a mystery. So that can happen at different points for everybody. Once that decision is made, Kaela, have you written ensemble stories before?

[Kaela] Yeah. Actually. When I look at it, I'm like, "Oh. Maybe I…" I never thought I was, and then I look at it, and I'm like, "Maybe I always do, actually."

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] I think they all are.

[Howard] I don't do this. Wait. I do it all the time.

[Kaela] Oh, my gosh.

[Laughter]

[Dan] That's kind of the unofficial subtheme of Writing Excuses is all of the instructors realizing we do things we didn't know we did. So, what about the archetypes themselves? That's in the title of our episode. What is an archetype? And how does it help us put together on ensemble?

[Kaela] They're reoccurring. Like, they're reoccurring characters or roles almost that you see a lot. Like, the mystical… Like, the hag or the… I don't know why that's the only one that comes to mind whenever someone says archetype. I'm like, "The hag!" I think because I secretly want to be the hag when I grow up.

[Laughter]

[Kaela] That's my dream.

[Howard] As life goals go, that's a good one.

[Kaela] Thank you.

[Howard] I think that archetype might not be the right word for us here. Because… I mean, you look at Leverage, the opening credits for Leverage. Hitter, hacker, grifter, thief, mastermind. Those get defined in a way that kind of makes them archetypes, but Carl Yung would not define hitter as an archetype. But for our purposes, it very much is. I was reading an article just last night, I think, about how many black superheroes have electrical powers. I realized… Actually, to the point that Mark Wade years ago did a comic book story that called it out. Let's see if I can find the line of dialogue. Yeah, the hero says, "Surprise. I'm a black superhero with electrical powers. I know, I know. Because there are so many of them." I bring this up because when you think of, say, Elliott in Leverage, when you think of the hitter, he's a guy who doesn't want to use guns, but he is super good at punching, and he's former special forces and whatever. Are there tropes there that make the definition of hitter predictable? Have you created the archetypal black character with lightning powers unconsciously? So, for me, anytime I'm creating a character that feels like an archetype, the first thing I look for is… The first thing I start doing is interrogating myself. Am I doing this because I've seen it somewhere before? Am I just re-creating a character from Warehouse 13 or Ocean's 11 or Fast and Furious five?

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I needed things with numbers so that that rule of three worked.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Or am I doing something fresh? In a recent manuscript comment, Sandra said, "Oh, I like the way the dopey character puts his foot in his mouth and keeps digging and actually successfully digs his way out the other side and everybody's like…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Good job." Because that's not what we see. What we typically see is the dumb character digs his way in deeper and then we don't on him and we move on with the conversation. So I look for opportunities to take the archetype and make it different than what I've seen before.

[Dan] Yeah. Well…

[Zoraida] Yeah. I mean I feel like… So, there's like a skill, right, that character can have. Right? This is like a part of their job. But I also think that there is like a symbol that they represent. Right? Like in Star Wars, right? [Apologies] to Yung, right, and Campbell. The dreaming farmboy. The trickster in Han Solo. The mentor in Obi-Wan, right? Like those are… Those are archetypes. They, like, represent something in the story. But I definitely agree with you, like, what if like what you think is an archetype is actually maybe a stereotype, right? How do some shows that have ensemble casts or books that have ensemble casts subvert that? So that's actually a really interesting point, yeah.

[Howard] Take the mentor… Take the idea of the mentor character and make the mentor character also be… I don't know what the archetype would be, but the dopey comic relief.

[Laughter]

[Howard] This is the dumb guy, but every so often, the dumb guy just drops wisdom that puts it together, so we're all going like, "Hey. How are you… No, that's good. I have learned it. I have now mastered the laser sword."

[Laughter]

[Dan] Okay.

[Zoraida] That's actually…

[Dan] I want to keep this conversation going, but I am going to stop in the middle and do a book of the week.

[What?]

[Dan] Sorry. It's gone on too long with no book. Our book of the week this week, Zoraida, you are going to tell us about Six of Crows.

[Zoraida] Okay. Let's see if I can do the book justice. Six of Crows is a book by Leigh Bardugo. It is about a group of unlikely friends. They are criminals in a fantasy world called Ketterdam. They have taken on an impossible job to break out a magical prisoner from a jail that is a literal fortress. It is one of my favorite books. It's an ensemble cast. It… To me, this book is one of Leigh Bardugo's best works overall. It is a masterclass in writing, in the way she introduces the stories and the characters, and to me it's just the perfect book. It is also one of the storylines in Shadow and Bone, the TV show currently on Netflix.

[Dan] Six of Crows is one of my very favorite fantasy books. Fantasy heist is difficult to do. But she absolutely hits it out of the park. So, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.

[Dan] So, let's get back into this archetype conversation, because I find it really interesting. One thing I wanted to point out listening to Howard talk about it is that there's two different ways to think about these archetypes. Because hacker, hitter, grifter, thief, mastermind. Those are the roles that they perform in the plot. But also, when you're dealing with an ensemble, specifically, there are archetypal personalities and roles that they can serve kind of emotionally. Characterization archetypes rather than plot archetypes. They have the very sophisticated elegant one. They have the kind of loose cannon crazy one. They have the really confident sassy one. They have the kind of quiet pragmatic one. You don't have to have the really elegant one be the grifter, like Sophie in Leverage. You could have the really elegant one be something else. That is one way to make sure that you're not falling into these stereotypes. But maybe your ensemble requires a leader who pulls everyone together and it requires kind of a really friendly person who is the glue that keeps them together and is the peacemaker that stops the fights. Maybe there's another person who's the younger one that everyone looks out for. Like there's lots of different kinds of emotional archetypes and group dynamic archetypes that are very different from the role that they serve in the plot.

[Yeah]

[Howard] The Doctor Who episode that I mentioned a month ago. Character's name is Mickey. His line describes the roles that he thinks he fits. He says, "I'm their man in Havana. I'm their tech expert. I am… Oh, my God, I'm the tin dog."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] That… If you understand what man from Havana means, you can see what Mickey thinks he is and where he arrives. There are… Oh, I had another example of it, and it's gone now. So I'm going to hand it back off.

[Well, I think…]

[Howard] Kaela?

[Zoraida] Oh, go ahead, Kaela.

[Kaela] No, I was just going to say…

[Zoraida] Well, if you look at Six of Crows, there are six crows, there are six people in this heist. I think if you look at… If you break down sort of their characters, Kaz Brekker is an orphan. Like, his archetype, I think to me would be the orphan, and his job is the leader. Right?Inej, who she is… Her job is, like, a keeper of secrets, but she's also a shadow. So she like… And also the foil of Kaz Brekker. Then you have somebody like Wylan Van Eck, who is sort of a hostage, sort of a demo guy, but his archetype is the innocent. Right? So I start with… When I study this book, I feel like I'm looking at, like, okay, this is their function, and this is what they represent in a larger story. That's sort of an interesting angle to come at an ensemble cast, I think.

[Dan] Yeah. Definitely. Now, when… A concept that Dave Wolverton used to talk about when I was taking writing classes from him is called braided roses. The idea is that your characters all have this wonderful rose that makes them vital and important, but they also are covered with thorns. When you braid them together, they poke each other. So when you are putting together an ensemble cast, to what extent are you doing it on purpose to create conflict? Not just people who will inevitably work well together, but people who will inevitably butt heads. Because every ensemble we've talked about involves characters fighting and arguing and… They have to come together as a group, they can't just start together as a group.

[Kaela] That's one of my favorite things about ensembles. Like I mentioned earlier in an earlier episode about the sandpaper. Like, that's the thing that I'm there for. Admittedly, I've said that about like everything about ensembles. But…

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] I love angling them so that they rub against each other the wrong way in a way that will ultimately make them better. Like, again, bringing up Guardians of the Galaxy again, the transition from Guardians of the Galaxy One to Guardians of the Galaxy Two is so interesting, because we get the coming together of the group, which has plenty of thorns, as you're trying to get these people together. But then you also get the way that those thorns keep moving as they grow as people, because all of them have grown by the end of the first episode. I mean, not episode, movie. In the second movie, you watch how they're still the same people, so they're still going going to going to be rubbing each other the wrong way in ways that make each other better. That's… Character growth wise, I just find that so fantastic that they end up being the river stones that end up smoothing each other out. They end up… They always…

[Howard] The moment where in Avengers: Infinity War, when they find Thor and everybody's talking about Thor and saying, "Oh, my gosh. It's like a pirate had a baby with an angel."

[Yes]

[Howard] Starlord is like, "What am I? Chopped liver here?" Well, you are getting a little soft. You're one sandwich away from another chin. The… That bit of characterization where we see that Starlord, even though he's ostensibly their leader, feels threatened any time he sees someone who's better looking than he is…

[Kaela] Or more competent. Or stronger. Or…

[Zoraida] Yeah. That's vain.

[Garbled]

[Howard] Even with just one eye.

[Zoraida] I mean, it has to go into your character work. Like making sure that there's cohesion. But cohesion doesn't always mean harmony. Right? Like, these people can work well together, but they don't all have to be friends. Or they have to work to be friends.

[Dan] Well, this doesn't mean that every character has to conflict with every other character.

[Right]

[Zoraida] Right. Howard has been very excited.

[Dan] Danny Ocean has his sidekick… I can't remember Brad Pitt's name in that series. They are inseparable. They never butt heads. They agree with each other almost all the time. Even when they disagree, they don't fight about it. That helps give a lot more texture to what's going on.

[Howard] I just remembered a… It's a piece of biology that has stuck with me forever. When you have a fertilized egg cell that then divides, those two things are genetically identical. Okay. Yet, they're going to grow into an organism that has bazillions of cells, all of which have differentiated. The genetics did not tell which cell to do what. They didn't tell a cell, "Oh, you're going to go be the nervous system." No. You know how they developed that? They fight. They argue over resources and push each other to the outside. The ones that get pushed the furthest to the outside? Hey, congratulations, you've become the largest organ in the body. You've become skin and so on and so forth. So this idea that the ensemble comes together through conflict is in biology.

[Laughter]

[Dan] That's fantastic.

[Incredible. I'm made of ensembles.]

[Dan] All right, Kaela, you have our homework this week. What is it?

[Kaela] I do. Today, I want y'all to identify the archetypes of each character in your work in progress. Take whatever you're working on, figure out, like, what each archetype is, what role they're serving, stuff like that. But I want you to try something out. Change that archetype or give them a sub archetype to try to branch out and create rounder, unexpected characters. Like we were talking about earlier. I think one of my favorite things is when you have a… Like a role and you expect it to be a certain way. You have a stereotype in your mind or something like that, but then you combine it with this emotional archetype that's not always together. Like the cold, emotionless warrior like, let's say. But they turn out to be the maternal figure, like the mother of the group. I love that combination, because you don't always see it, but they work together. Like new ways of exploring to give your characters more humanity, I suppose. More nuance.

[Dan] Sounds great. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

[Mary Robinette] The Writing Excuses 2022 cruise and workshop aboard the Liberty of the Seas is filling up fast. If you want to join us, go to writingexcusesretreat.com and register today. Looking forward to seeing you.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 17.23: Are We Stronger Together?

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/06/05/17-23-are-we-stronger-together/

Key Points: It's a classic archetype or style of story, answering the question, are we stronger together. Start by looking at what story you are trying to tell. Not who is the story about. Be aware of the fun of character introductions, and the tendency to overdo them, leading to bloat. Don't try to answer the question are we stronger together just by splitting the ensemble and then bringing them back together, without adding something. There are other ways to answer that question, like the tin dog. Look for the desire for connection as part of the ensemble. If you break up the ensemble, pair them up in new ways. Make sure we are invested in the characters first. Think about how to bring in a new member, a new character, as part of the ensemble.

[Season 17, Episode 23]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Are We Stronger Together?

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] I'm pretty sure we're definitely smarter together.

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] I would agree with that.

[Dan] Definitely.

[[Zoraida] I agree with that.

[Kaela] Our powers combined...

[Dan] So, are we stronger together? This is kind of a classic, I guess, story archetype or style of story. Zoraida, when you put together the outline for the classes, you started this by asking the question, what is the story I'm trying to tell? Why is that the first thing we think about when we look at this concept of being stronger together?

[Zoraida] I think that… So the question is what is the story I'm trying to tell, as opposed to who is the story about. Right? So the distinction to me is the story itself is… Represents the internal life of my character. Right? So, like, my character has this rich internal life. Then everything around them is what they're reacting to. Identifying that part of the story really makes it easier for me to understand whether I have something that is an ensemble cast or whether I have a singular, let's just say, hero's journey of one person making their way around the world. So once I know, for example, my The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina is a multi-generational magical realism novel. I originally wrote the first draft with only the main character, her name is Marimar. It was only her. As I wrote the story, once I identified that this story is about the entire family and not just one person in a family, I added the different points of view. That came with revision, obviously. But first I needed to identify this story is bigger than one person. That change the entire scope of how I was telling it.

[Dan] Absolutely. Has anyone else come across the same issue before? Figuring out what story you're trying to tell?

[Kaela] Yes. So the sequel for Cece Rios and The Desert of Souls, it comes out in September, it's dual point of view versus the first one, which was just singular point of view. That's because the story I was trying to tell, I realized there was no way to have Cece and her sister in the same place at the same time without it changing the point of… A large part of the story for both of them. So I was like, "Wow, I'm going to have to add another point of view here, because it's just a bigger story." Their stories connect and what I like to think is a nice important way. But that, it was too big for a single point of view. I'm currently drafting the third book, and let me tell you, I'm also still wondering whether I need to add another point of view to that. So, the revision and writing process is filled with many questions like this.

[Dan] Yeah, with my cyberpunk series, I had this same question pop up, and realized the story I was trying to tell was a heist. All three books in the trilogy ultimately are heist stories, because that's what got me really excited. That meant that they needed to turn into ensemble stories. Which is not necessarily what I set out to do, but heists really require that. Because you need to have all the different specialists and they each have their own thing they can do that no one else can do. Then that turned into a big team dynamic story, and then eventually, in later books, turned into a family dynamic story. Because I was… As I changed which characters I was focusing on. But because of the story I was trying to tell, that really did force me into a specific type of cast.

[Zoraida] I think that one of the things that I encounter a lot when I'm writing… One of my favorite things to write, and as a reader or consumer of media generally, is character introductions. I just… I die for them. I'm like, "Yes! Introduce another one. I don't care that there's 200 people in the cast already. Give me another one." Which is something I have to also control about myself, because my editor's like, "Do you need another person though?" I'm like, "But they're cool." And he's like, "Yeah, but do you need them?"

[chuckles]

[Zoraida] I think that's…

[Kaela] Well… Yeah. I mean, I feel like I've had situations where… I've had to cut entire characters out of books because I'm like, "Okay, you're dead weight. The… Another character… Two other characters are doing the exact same thing." I just want… I just thought it would be funny to have, like, a talking dog. Not really. Like, that's…

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] I don't think I've ever had a talking dog in my books.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] But, for example…

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] Right? That's sort of what I was thinking, like, if you look at, again, the Fast and Furious movies, they all work stronger together. Because you can't... well, you can rob a car by yourself, but you can't rob like 17 cars by yourself.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] So it is… The question is, and that's where the dynamic comes in, can you trust everybody on your team? Right? What happens in Avengers Civil War or Captain America Civil War when all of a sudden our ensemble is broken. Right? Because two sides are… There's a line in the sand is drawn.

[Dan] Yeah. Comic books are such a great use of this particular thing. The X-Men in particular. The X-Men is absolutely a group that falls into this we are stronger together kind of archetype. Because their powers are so unique and often so strange, like Jubilee or Dazzler or some of these other strange kind of minor X-Men, you couldn't necessarily… They're not going to stop a bank robbery on their own. They're not going to stop any of the huger stories on their own, certainly. But put them all together and you have the one character who can make bright lights and the other character who can do this or other little minor thing, and together they can all do this… Overcome this big evil. But also, that starts falling into the same thing that Kaela was talking about. You go back to the 80s and 90s, Chris Claremont run of X-Men and they were introducing new characters constantly. Because it is really fun to think, "Okay, what if there was a character who had this cool power? Or was from this background?" You can really see him just kind of letting his imagination run wild and introducing more and more characters constantly, which can lead to bloat. That is what is really bogging down The Song of Ice and Fire series, because there's just more and more characters and we've got to give them all their weight and their time. It becomes a bigger and bigger house of cards with every new person that you add.

[Howard] A very common story structure for the ensemble, and I... we complained about it last week with one of the seasons of The Expanse and one of the seasons of Stranger Things, is that when you answer the question are we stronger together by splitting them apart…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Then you bring them back together and it's wonderful for the audience because it's something we've all been waiting for. Boy, I'm here to tell you that I've seen enough of this… I've actually written enough of this, that it's not that cool all by itself. Also, there's other ways to ask that question. One of my favorite ensemble moments, the question of are we stronger together, is in an episode of Doctor Who, and I think it may have been David Tenon as the Doctor, I don't remember the name of the… Of Rose's friend, the goofy kind of dumb guy who ends up going along on some of their adventures. But at one point, he's got K-9… He's putting K-9 in the boot of a vehicle or something, and he says, "Oh, my gosh. I'm the tin dog."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] He has this realization that he doesn't belong on the team.

[Oh, wow]

[Howard] He's useless. He's the tin dog. It's such a… It's a fun, soul-searching moment, and it's the sort of thing you can do without breaking the ensemble up. You just have one of the characters have this realization I'm not helping, I don't think we're actually stronger together. I think you're better off if I stand over here and keep score. That's… The point here being we want to ask that question, are we stronger together, we want to answer it with a resounding yes. We can do it in ways other than just showing and they come back together and everybody goes rar and we win.

[Right! Yeah!]

[Dan] I've got a question I want to ask about this exact thing, but first, let's do book of the week. Kaela, you've been telling us about Cece Rios.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] You got a new book, book 2 in that series comes out. Tell us about it.

[Kaela] That's right. So, it's a sequel to the first book, obviously. That's how series work, I guess.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] I'm so excited about this one. Like I mentioned earlier, it's dual point of view. You get Cece's adventure and you get her older sister Juana's adventure. The set up is that Juana has realized that part of her heart is missing. Her heartbeat… Her heart isn't beating, part of her soul is missing, and it's stuck in Devil's Alley. In order to get it, she has to go in by herself. Cece tries to go on an adventure to go get it herself, first, but Juana goes instead in secret because she wants to fix it herself. She's tired of being saved by her little sister.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] They go on a wild adventure. She ends up teaming up, Juana ends up teaming up with Lion, diving into Devil's Alley on their own. Cece begins to uncover some secrets about dark criaturas, how they were made, and maybe even her curandera powers. Woo hoo. For anyone who's read the first one, context. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's going to be taking a lot of the themes of the first one and going deeper with them and giving some nice resolution for the pretty hard things that Juana went through in the first book. We get a little bit more context about what happened and how she's dealing with it. So… Oh, yeah, then of course, the big hook. We end up meeting and facing the king of Devil's Alley himself, the king of fears, El Cucuy. So… Very proud of that.

[Dan] Awesome. That is the title of the book, Cece Rios and the King of Fears. Remind us of the title of the first one, again, if people want to start at the beginning.

[Kaela] Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls.

[Dan] Desert of Souls. By Kaela Rivera. Go out and grab those now. You can get the first one, the second one is up for preorder, I hope.

[Kaela] Yes.

[Dan] But it comes out this fall. So, anyway, great.

[Dan] Let's get back to this question then. So, let's talk about this idea of are we stronger together, and then how season two or book 2 or whatever breaks that group apart. In something like Stranger Things, while we have complained about oh, no, but I wanted to keep my team together, I love the ensemble interaction, it was ultimately a very satisfying story the way they told that. Compare that to something like the TV show Heroes. Where season one was let's bring the team together, are we stronger together, yes, we are. In the end, the final episode, they're able to defeat the big bad guy. Then, season two, they broke them apart and told that same story of coming back together and it was not satisfying. It was frustrating. What is the difference? What makes that, that kind of severing the team, how can we tell that in a way that works versus what are the pitfalls that make that not work?

[Oh.]

[Dan] It's a hard question to just throw right in your faces, because it's not in the outline.

[Howard] In the…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] In the Joss Whedon Justice League… Might have been in the Zack Snyder as well, I don't remember because that one was way long… When they introduce Flash, Bruce Wayne says, "I'm putting together a team." Flash says, "Nn, I'm in." "I haven't even told you what…" "Nn, I need friends."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Flash's desire to connect is what, for me, held that whole team together. I think our desire for connection is what draws us into an ensemble. If you break that ensemble apart, you are taking away my friends. Stop that. You're a bad person.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] I think that… Like, I'm actually okay with breaking up ensembles. But…

[Gasp]

[Kaela] Like, you have…

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] Howard just decries my name for the rest of my life. But I feel like you have to do it in a way that's giving you more dimension that you wouldn't have another way. Like… Okay, once again, cartoons. Duck Tales.

[Laughter]

[Kaela] But the new version.

[Yoo hoo!]

[Kaela] The new version of duck [garbled] Ooo-hoo! So, like, towards the last season of it, there was a whole episode where everyone had to split up because there was multiple things they had to get. Right? They paired them up in some really unexpected ways. Like, they had Lena, who is one of the magic characters, who is best friends with Webby, and then they had Huey… Huey, Dewey, Louie… Yeah, Huey. I'd never seen those characters together. So I was suddenly like, "Wow, what in the world are they going to be up to?" It was fascinating the way that being with Lena ended up helping Huey through his whole… His last character arc thing that he needed to get through. I was like, "That was so unexpected and satisfying." That, like seeing… Sorry, go ahead.

[Zoraida] No, I was going to say, like the unexpected part. I mean, when I first watched Lord of the Rings, everybody starts off together and then they break apart into different groups. I think I'm okay with things like that. Where it's like we have now… We're delegating. Right? Everyone has different tasks. You go to Mordor. You go over here. You'll get some allies. But that has to happen after pre-establishing a big win, or why we are here together, why we are a collective. Then… Because then, when you break it apart, when somebody dies, it is that much more impactful because we have invested. As a reader and a viewer, like once I'm invested in characters, I feel like they're somebody I know. That's really the goal for me, like, creating characters like that.

[Dan] Yeah. I think, for me, what makes something like Fellowship or Duck Tales work, these places where they have broken the fellowship, they've split the ensemble, and it still works, is that they're using it as an opportunity to tell some new stories, to combine characters in a new way. Community was great at this. You very rarely got for example, a Jeff Winger and a… Now I can't remember Yvette Nicole Brown's character. They rarely had stories together. But when they did, it was fascinating because of how rare it was. It was like, "Oh, this is a side of them I have never seen before, because they bring out different qualities in each other."

[Howard] The foosball episode.

[Dan] You compare that against something like the second season of Heroes or the fourth season of Arrested Development where they weren't really doing anything new. They were… Second season of Heroes was the exact same story as the first season of Heroes. They're apart, and they're going to come together over time. So they weren't using that as an opportunity to reveal new things about the characters or to delve into new aspects of who they are as people. So it… I think that's really the separation.

[Howard] Yeah. That's… That feels like the crux of my complaint, is that if you're doing it just to answer the question are we stronger together, yes we are, look, because we came back together, everybody's happier, and our readers, our viewers, like it more. That's just formula. That's just canned green beans. But if you give us something fresh, if we're exploring new story bits, then I'm okay with it. Like with Fellowship, we still had an ensemble. We still had Legolas and Aragorn and Gimli as a small ensemble. So…

[Zoraida] Yeah, they're just like [bigapeas?] One thing I want to add is, like, also once you have all these great casts and ensembles established, right? And they're stronger together, what happens when you bring in a foreign entity? Right? Like, there's this episode of Friends where they are all hanging out at the apartment, and then somebody knocks on the door. They're like counting each other. They're like, "Well, we're all here. So who is at the door? Who has come to interrupt our carefully curated space base?" Right? Of course, it's Rachel's sister or somebody who like brings in chaos, and then creates tension in the group.

[Dan] Yeah. I think ultimately that's why so many people consider the ending of How I Met Your Mother to be unsatisfying is because they couldn't figure out how to solve that problem. They had built, over six or seven seasons, this really strong ensemble cast with the fundamental promise of we're going to add a new character to this eventually. They never really were able to. I thought that Cristin Milioti did a phenomenal job as the mother…

[Yes]

[Dan] When she finally appears at the end. But the writers didn't really know what to do with her, how to bring her in, how to disrupt those ensemble mechanics in a way that let her really feel like she was part of it. So they eventually, I think, kind of took the coward's way out and wrote her out and went with Anne what's her name. But…

[Dan] Anyway. We have let this episode run just a little long. We've got homework. Kaela, this is your homework this week.

[Kaela] Yes. Okay. So, both practically and in a way that should help your writing generally, I want you to sit down. Take out a piece of paper. And, like, an actual pen. Physically. You could also do this digitally. But, like, try it. Create a connection map for your characters. This will both help you keep track of everybody, but it will also help you understand how they interact with everybody in the group. So, make connections between like… Describe first what their relationships to each other are, like, each person. What their relationship to each other person in your ensemble is. Then, one challenge in that relationship. Then, one way they enhance each other, or have an interesting something. It might not be enhancing sometimes. You don't know. But you'll find out that way.

[Dan] All right. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

[Mary Robinette] Do you want to go write… With us? Register for the 2022 Writing Excuses Cruise at writingexcusesretreat.com. Hope to see you there.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 17.22: Establishing the Ensemble

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/05/29/17-22-establishing-the-ensemble/

Key points: How can you make all of your character matter? Start by giving everybody an introduction tied to the big change at the core of your book, show us their reaction to it. Play up those changes as they meet each other for the first time. Show us why we should like these people. Use a task list, character name, introduce them, describe them, make us like them, aim them at the story. Help the readers know the characters, and then you can use them. You get more combinations and fusions then. Pair them up and explore the sandpaper interactions. Use another character to help readers know what to feel.

[Season 17, Episode 22]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Establishing the Ensemble.

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Dan] We… Last week, we talked about making sure that all your characters are different. What we want to talk about this time is making sure all of your characters matter. Giving them equal space, equal weight, equal time, whatever it is. So, Zoraida, we're going to throw this to you, like we always do. Why is this important, and how do we start?

[Zoraida] This is important because every character in your ensemble needs an equal amount of importance. Right? Like, they need to share in this goal that they're going to go forth and conquer. When I start, in my books, I give everybody an introduction that has to do with the big change. Right? So, I feel like in a book there's something that has changed in the world, and now these people are all reacting to it. This could be in contemporary, it could be in fantasy, sci-fi, whatever. But the inciting incident, the change, is now transforming every single person. But before that, we get to see a glimpse of who they are before they meet each other. Because sometimes you have ensemble casts where it's strangers coming together, or, like, The Fast and Furious movies, right? Huge ensemble. They already know each other, and then you have an outsider coming in, right? So, playing up with those changes is my starting point.

[Howard] There's a couple of cinematic examples that are super useful. One of these is the… Serenity, the movie. Where, in the first few minutes, we are introduced to everybody aboard the ship. It goes very, very quickly. Wash says, "Things are about to get interesting." Mal says, "What do you mean by interesting? Oh, God, oh, God, we're all going to die?" That's… In two lines, we've established a little bit of relationship between those two. This is an ensemble that's already come together, but they needed that opening romp there on that planet to introduce us to them as individuals and how they function as a team. The other good example itself, and I've mentioned this before as a master class sort of thing to study, is the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Where, as we are introduced to each of these characters, James Gunn is using every cinemagraphical tool in his toolbox to let us know that we're supposed to like these people. The example I always come back to is… Now I've forgotten her name. The green skinned one.

[Garbled. Gamora.]

[Howard] Gamora.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I know. How could I… It begins with a Z? No, it doesn't begin with a Z. No, that's not right. Gamora. When we are introduced to her, she is the only green thing in a room full of blue and black. So even though what she is saying is very aggressive and threatening, we have been told this is the person that we like. Anyway, between those two visual examples, I have a whole toolbox of things that I use when I am introducing characters via prose. I recognize… If I'm introducing you to someone not in their own POV, but I want you to like them and they're going to be part of my ensemble, what am I doing to set them apart from the people around them? What am I doing to make you like them? What am I doing to make you interested in them, so that when we come back to them, we're like, "Oh, yes. I'm so happy this person joined the team."

[Dan] Absolutely. You get a… The book that keeps coming to mind, and this is not an ensemble book, so it is not necessarily a good example. But, in Pride and Prejudice, early on, you get to meet all of the sisters. Actually, maybe Little Women is a better example, because that one is much closer to an ensemble cast. It still is primarily about Jo, but you get to know who all of the sisters are and how they interact with each other. You get introduced to them fairly quickly. Now, not all of them have equal space by any means. But they all, in their own way, are important to the story. You've got the sick one, and we have to really get to like her, because, spoiler warning for this 200-year-old book…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Things are not going to go well for her. That affects everybody else. One of the reasons…

[Howard] She doesn't die, does she?

[Dan] That I absolutely…

[Laughter]

[Dan] Howard!

[Garbled]

[Dan] One of the reasons that I love, love, love the Saoirse Ronan movie of Little Women is because it gives much more weight and a little more space to… And now I can't remember her name, but the sister who's in the book kind of the snotty one who gets all the stuff that Jo wants and can't have. Giving her that little bit of extra attention, so we get to see things from her perspective, absolutely rounds out her character. Suddenly, she's no longer kind of the villain of Jo's story, she's just part of this ensemble who helps make everyone who they are. So being able to give the right amount of weight and space to the characters really helps everyone come together as a unit.

[Howard] I think it's useful when you're outlining, and even if you're not outlining, even if you're discovery writing your way into this, have a task list that's like character name, and introduce them, describe them, make us like them, aim them. Just four little things where you just have this in front of you so that you know I'm not meandering through their dialogue and their scene. I have four goals here. Especially, early in a book, when I'm trying to establish an ensemble. I have to name the character, I have to make them distinctive, I have to give them a… I have to give them personality. And I have to aim them at the story, so that as the story unfolds through other points of view or other scenes, when that character shows up again, they show up on the vector that we expected. Or, if they're not on the vector that we expected, that's interesting. We thought they were going to show up wearing the top hat. But, no, they've turned the top hat into a gun, or something.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I'm making dumb stuff up, because I didn't think this out well enough before hand.

[I want to see that character]

[Howard] Do better than I'm doing, please.

[Zoraida] No, but I understand what you're saying, because we're tasked with making… Yes, okay, we have protagonist and supporting protagonists, and they're all working together for a common goal. They all have their own voice. We've done all of that work. So, now, how do we introduce them in a way that becomes memorable, in a way that says, like, I want to see more of this person. I want to see their point of view, or I want to see them in a scene. The really rich part to me when I have multiple groups of people is getting them alone together, like, so, breaking them into smaller groups and seeing how those dynamics play around. I just finished binging The Expanse TV show. The way that they introduce every single character, they… I immediately wanted them all to be friends. As the seasons progressed, I wanted them… Like, if they were not in a… There was, like, one season where they weren't together all the time. I was like, "Where are they? Why aren't they together?"

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] "Please get them back on [the route to Dante?] as soon as possible." That's the feeling that I want readers to have when they walk into a story. Like, get my people back here.

[Howard] Yeah, I think… The second season of Stranger Things, I think, had the same sort of problem. Where our ensemble had been broken up and they were in different places. Yeah, sure, they come back together at the end… Maybe it was season… I don't know what season it was. But the point is, it was… I was enjoying the season, but I was angry that I didn't have my ensemble for so much of it.

[Dan] So, our book of the week this week is actually mine. It is Ghost Station. This is my Cold War spy novel. It's about cryptographers in Berlin in 1961. Very paranoid and… Anyway.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] But… When I submitted this, the editor who bought it, their very first comment was we need to fill out this ensemble better. A lot of it is workplace. He works in a listening station in West Berlin. There are several other spies there, whether they're cryptographers or surveillance people or whatever they are. His main note for me was we need to get to know all of these people better. He was absolutely right. It made the book much, much better to spend more time with that group and get to know them, because it gave more chances for friendly banter. It gave more chances for suspicious things to be dropped. It gave more chances for the main character to feel nervous and self-conscious, because of the things he didn't want people to discover. All of that came together so well because we got to know all of those characters. So it… I didn't plan it as an ensemble book, but the editor helped make it into one, and that made it much better. So, Ghost Station by Dan Wells. We just got a printed edition of this out, you can get it on Amazon. So, hooray.

[Yay!]

[Dan] Hurry and go buy that.

[Excellent. Buy the book.]

[Dan] So. How does that work for the rest of you? Knowing who the characters are, and helping the reader to know who the characters are, really improves everything about the ensemble. How do we do that? How does that… First of all, let's ask the question why. Why does getting to know the characters really, really well affect the story and affect the interactions?

[Zoraida] I think it's because once everybody has established personalities, you have sort of… You have an endless opportunity for different character dynamics and interactions. You have somebody who can make a mistake, you have somebody who can keep everybody on task, you have somebody who, like, they might have nefarious things, they might be playing both sides… It's very vague, because I'm not picking a genre to go with it, but the more you know about a character, the more you can utilize them. Like Howard said, right, it's like aiming a gun, aiming something, and entering them to do the thing that they are there for on the page.

[Kaela] Yeah, like…

[Howard] The very… Oh, go ahead, Kaela.

[Kaela] I was going to say that the more familiar you are with anything, the more you… It's like being a chef. When you know how everything works, you're able to start combining things and seeing them and seeing all the different possibilities for new combinations, for fusions, etc. I actually think that's something that the MCU does super well, like, Guardians of the Galaxy Two, I was really curious how they were going to set that up and how they were going to explore new character dynamics. Like, I never expected Yondu and Rocket Raccoon to have, like, one of the most emotionally moving story lines in film to me. I was like I did not expect a blue man and a raccoon to make me cry, but they did.

[Chuckles]

[Kaela] But that's because they knew those characters so well that they knew that they were really similar, and they wanted to explore that. There was an opportunity there. I loved how they did that. It's one of the things that, like, I'm most interested in in ensembles is how, like… I call it sandpaper. Is how you know them well, you can pair them together and you know exactly how to get the right angle on it so that they're scraping in a way that's interesting, that's sanding them both down into something new, but is also getting a lot of interesting friction, a lot of interesting conflict for the reader. That's something I love to do in my books even.

[Howard] The very… I was just reading this last night. The very first Superman comic book, and in fact, I think it's the very first line of dialogue we get from Superman, he is a jerk. He's carrying this woman who is tied up, and he leaps to safety, and sets her down and says, "I don't have time to untie you. Attend to it yourself." Then he jumps away to go do other stuff. Okay?

[Chuckles]

[Howard] That's our first introduction to Superman. Now, this was, depending on how you feel about the creators of Superman, and they were young guys who learned a lot about writing, whatever. None of it matters. This was sloppy because she's actually the bad guy. But Superman doesn't know it yet. So him dissing, sort of… Discomforting the person who the writers knew was actually a bad guy is fine, but we don't know it. My point here is that when somebody says something, if it's something that's going to rub the reader the wrong way, if is they're insulting someone or being mean or whatever, if you give us another character who has an opinion about that, you can tell us how to feel. If she'd had a thought bubble… This would be dumb, but if she'd had a thought bubble, like, "He's being so mean to me. Does he know that I'm really the murderer?"

[Laughter]

[Howard] Okay. Don't do that. But that would totally make the line okay from Superman, because maybe Superman does know. So that's one of the things that I think about, is that any time I'm introducing these characters, any time I'm trying to define them, I make sure that they say a thing and that somebody else has an opinion about it that helps inform how I want the reader to feel about it.

[Yeah]

[Dan] We are going to end with that, and have some homework. What we want you to do this week is to pick an ensemble work that you like. This could be a book, this could be a movie, this could be a TV show. Maybe you want to do Community or Star Trek or Little Women or whatever it is. Identify each member of the ensemble, and why they are important, and why the story could not be told without them. Not just it's fun to have Drax in this movie because of X, Y, and Z. But specifically, why would this movie not work without Drax? Do that for every character of the ensemble. See what you can learn about it. Anyway, this is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

[Mary Robinette] Brandon, Howard, Dan, me, Mary Robinette, and a few special guests are going to go write this September on the big group Writing Excuses cruise. We'd love for you to join us. See writingexcusesretreat.com for details and for information on other upcoming in person events.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 17.21: Casting Your Story With Character Voice

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/05/22/17-21-casting-your-story-with-character-voice/

Key points: How can you start making your ensemble cast members unique, interesting, distinct? Well, start with the protagonist protagonist, and how the other characters interact with them. Look at shared and individual goals or motivation. Sitcoms highlight the differences between characters. Make sure the right person has the right lines. How do you make characters distinct? A catchphrase! Physical features, way of talking, or even a distinct problem.

[Season 17, Episode 21]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Casting Your Story With Character Voice.

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] Brains!

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] I'm obviously the zombie.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] That's what's left of Howard.

[Dan] So, this week, we're talking about Casting Your Story With Character Voice. You've got a bit ensemble cast. How do you make every member of that ensemble unique and interesting? Zoraida, where do you start with this?

[Zoraida] I usually start... I... As I talked about in a previous episode, I start with the protagonist protagonist. Then I make sort of this spiderweb of how the other characters interact with them. I think about who they are as people, making sure that every single character wants their own thing that is separate from the protagonist protagonist. So everybody has a shared goal and individual goals. I start there. What they want usually tells me who they are as a person, what they're willing to do to get the thing that they want, and making sure that they have very distinct personalities.

[Dan] Yeah. I… Motivation is such a great place to start with this. It's something that you can see a lot in role-playing games, if you've ever played D&D or any of the other role-playing games. That's a slightly different situation, because in that case, each character is being run by a player, and that player likely thinks of themselves as the main character of the story. They have specific things that they want, specific goals that each individual is trying to achieve. They all come across then as fairly vibrant. They're not… I shouldn't say it never happens, because there's always one player whose content to just sit in the background and happy to be included. But…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Yeah, making sure that they each have their own goal, that they are really trying to do something that is different from what everyone else is interested in. Even though they do all have that shared goal of destroying the Death Star or whatever it is they're trying to do.

[Howard] Tricks of characterization and motivation in a tabletop role-playing game is even more complicated than that. Because you have a group of five people, all of which have gotten together in order to play a game. But why? Is it because I wanted to spend time with my friends? Is it because I wanted to escape? Do I just want to smash monsters and roll dice? What do I personally want from this? I'm just here for the pizza. I'm probably the GM. I'm working way too hard for pizza, but that's the only reason I'm here.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Then you layer on top of that all of the character motivations. Boy, howdy, does that get complex. It's one of the reasons why studying what is happening at a tabletop when you're participating is such a great way to begin wrapping your head around how you might make members of an ensemble distinct in your book.

[Dan] Um...

[Kaela] Yeah, and…

[Dan] Nope, go for it.

[Kaela] Okay. I was going to say, something you hit on earlier, Dan, about, like, each character kind of being their own main character. In their heads, they're their own main character. I think that's one of the things that ensembles really excel at. It's one of the things that… That's why I want to watch an ensemble, or read an ensemble, or things like that, is because each character has their own strong motivation. They have the reason that they came, whether it's pizza or it's rolling the dice or intense wish fulfillment, whatever it is that their goal is. It's like that's the thing that compels me to like the characters. When I'm writing characters like that, I think I pull from… Like the… I'm a kind of a hoarder in real life. I mean, not like concerning, I'm not going to be on a reality show for it, but…

[Zoraida] Will they find 17 cats underneath your pile of [garbled]

[Kaela] Yeah. I'm like, go look at them. I have five more, but it's not a problem. But I kind of do that with creative stuff, like I hoard things in the back of my head. I hoard stuff that I like. Where I'm like, I love the character of, like, the super cool guy who's like, "Oh, I don't have any feelings." But then you find him petting cats and cooking food for his mom. You're like, "Adorable." Things like that. You just grab… Just, like, hold all of those… Hoard all of those together. Then you start plugging them into different characters to make them distinct, like Zoraida said.

[Zoraida] I spend a lot of time thinking about voice. Usually before I write, like, I'm... I want to say I'm an ideator as opposed to a procrastinator because, like, I spend…

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] A lot of time doing the nonphysical part of writing and just thinking about… Just thinking, like, well, what does this character… I would they sound like? I was walking down the street, like, thinking in my characters head, like, and then just, like, laughing. But it's sort of… It makes me think of something that's not book related, which is the TV show Friends. Right? There's that story where if your friend's Stan or Stan, you know that… Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston originally auditioned for the opposite characters. So, like, Courtney Cox auditioned for Rachel, and Jennifer Aniston for Monica. Then they switched them. So I just think about how different those characters would be with the different voices, with each actress's voice. I feel like the same thing applies to your own characters. They have… Like, their singular voice makes them who they are, right? Say, on Friends, Joey doesn't share food. What are these taglines that they might have? What are this thing that only this person can say and get away with? That's a thing that really… The dynamics really come out.

[Dan] I think it's really interesting that we're talking so much about sitcoms as we go through these episodes. It's because these are very overtly ensemble stories. Often, one of the things that they are able to do really effectively is tell stories specifically designed to highlight the differences between the characters. Community does this all the time. Great example, they had a Christmas episode. Every member of that cast is a different religion and different background. So they all interacted with Christmas in different ways. There was a Seinfeld episode where… That's set in a movie theater… Where the four main characters were just trying to find each other. Then you got to hear them like describe each other to the ushers and things. Like, have you seen this person? They look like this. Hearing them describe what the other people look like just became really fascinating. So that kind of… This ensemble story is a really great way to tell those kinds of stories, is here is a central issue. How is each person going to bounce off of it in a different way?

[Howard] Years and years ago, we did an episode of Writing Excuses where we talked about a writing principle. I don't remember what book it's from, which is, focusing on the character who is in the most pain as a way to pick the most interesting POV. In writing Schlock Mercenary, which has a huge cast of characters, and members of that cast rotate book for book, rotate into and back out of the ensemble, I found that in the outlining, in the construction of the stories, I had to be careful that the most interesting POV, the most painful POV, wasn't someone who wasn't part of the ensemble in this book. Because if I switched away and did something really interesting with somebody who was just on the side, I was kind of throwing away a good characterization moment. Similarly, if I had a really, really good joke I wanted to tell, because it was wordsmithed well, I couldn't give it to one of the characters who didn't speak wordsmithy. I had to give it to somebody who had the vocabulary to deliver it. Often, with jokes like that, with plot moments like that, I had to bend the plot in ways to make sure that the right person was on stage in the right mood, in the right place, in the right mindset, to deliver this great line of dialogue… The lines were not actually that great.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But [garbled] to deliver this great line of dialogue, because if I deliver it with the wrong character, it knocks people out of the story. Because if done voice characterization correctly, something that… A fantastic line of dialogue that's out of character for someone will knock the reader out of the story, and that's not what you want to have happen. That's the opposite of what you want to have happen.

[Dan] Hey, so let's follow on this same line of thought. Howard, you are also our book of the week this week.

[Howard] I am. Right now, we are running the beta read of Shafter's Shifters and the Chassis of Chance over at the Schlock Mercenary Patreon. It is a cozy murder mystery science fiction comedy. It is… I have bent a lot of rules in order to get all of those genres in one place. What's fun about it is that it is a single person… It's a first person POV. But I had to make sure that every member of the ensemble sounded different. So the way in which this character describes what the members of the ensemble are doing had to be distinct. If you want to read it, you can join the Patreon at the five dollar level and we have been dropping a chapter a week through the month of May. The month of May will give you the whole novella. You will get this before anybody else does. Based on feedback from beta readers, I will then make it good enough to be a commercial product.

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] That sounds excellent.

[Kaela] Yes.

[Dan] I like how you just said read this thing before it's good and still made it sound really appealing…

[Laughter]

[Dan] So…

[Howard] One of…

[Dan] Well done.

[Howard] One of the things that I've learned in writing comics, in writing a web comic, I did not have the luxury of writing all the way to the end and then going back and finishing things. Every installment of Schlock Mercenary had to be publishable because it was going up on the web. The… It was… It was kind of a running gag here on Writing Excuses. You guys would talk about going back and revising something so that it works. I would quote the old Monty Python sketch and say, "Luxury!"

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The… But with Shafter's Shifters, that same mode of writing… I've made four passes through the whole manuscript already. So you're not alpha reading. You'd be beta reading. I think you're going to love it.

[Dan] Awesome. All right. Before the book of the week, Kaela, you were about to say something.

[Kaela] Oh, yeah. I was just going to say that one of my favorite things, like what Howard was talking about, was, like, you have to change things according to who's talking. That can be from high level down to like really minute line level editing. There have been so many times where I have written down… I'm like grocery shopping or I'm waiting in the airport or whatever, and I'm like, "Ooh! Perfect line I need to use in my book. Oh, that's great." I'm currently drafting the third book in my series, so that's really top of mind right now, and I'm like, "Oh, okay." I write that down. Then, when I'm actually in the document trying to fit it in, I'm like, "Ryan would never say that. Man." Or this character would never say it like that. That's way too poetic for them. Then I have to rewrite it several times in order to get it into their voice. Or give it to another character. But I always end up changing, because I think that just speaks to how distinct character voice and how essential it is to the ensemble cast.

[Dan] Definitely. So, that's a good thing. Let's talk a little bit about this then. It's not just making your characters unique, but making them identifiable. Kaela and Howard have said that they come up with a good line of dialogue that has to be from a certain character or can't be from a different character. That comes from really strong solid characterization. How do you achieve that? How do you make your characters so distinct that dialogue can only be from that one person and wouldn't sound right with anybody else?

[Howard] That… You used two different words here. You used unique and distinct. If you have a pair of characters who are identical twins, they don't look unique. They don't pass the silhouette test when they're standing next to one another. But we still need to tell them apart. They still need to be distinct. That's why I use… That's why I try and use the word distinct. All I need is for the reader to be able to tell them apart. Some of the tools that I use are, if any of you have seen Free Guy… A catchphrase!

[Laughter]

[Howard] [garbled] here. I have things that only they will say, and that they can almost be expected to say in certain circumstances. So by the time you get to the end of the story, when someone says catchphrase, you know exactly who it is. I don't need a dialogue tag to prove it.

[Zoraida] Right. Right. Absolutely. I actually… I really love that, because sometimes it's frustrating reading something where you can't tell characters apart or if you look at [garbled] and it's like… It's a handsome brunette man. Right? Like, what makes this handsome brunette man unique? And distinct? The distinction is the very thing. I feel like the thing that goes into that is the personal touch. Right? If I'm… I've had, like, readers come up to me and say, like, "I recognize you because of your jean jacket with, like, XYZ buttons." Right? They've identified me because of this thing that I was wearing. Right? Like, if you look at all the Avengers, obviously they all have different uniforms. So I think that everything from [garbled] dialogue goes into that as well.

[Kaela] Yes.

[Dan] I'm… Go ahead, Kaela.

[Kaela] I was going to say, like, I love that we're using the, like, outer equivalent of, like, distinction to represent also the inner equivalent of distinction. So, I love anime, again, cartoons. One of my big beefs with anime, though, is that, like, when you create a bunch of characters who have so many cool little things that they're wearing…

[Laughter]

[Kaela] That it all becomes meaningless. I mean, like, literally, it's like everything and the kitchen sink outfit. I am like everyone has weird hair here, so it's not actually distinct anymore.

[Laughter]

[Kaela] Like, I'm watching everyone…

[Zoraida] [garbled]

[Kaela] Yeah, I'm like everyone's a UVO protagonist, no one's a UVO protagonist now. But, one of my favorite things is to, like, in the books that I write, because, again, anime. I love anime. I love to give characters a very distinct physical feature, so that the moment you see that, when you're glancing down the book, you know who's there. But, also a really distinct way of talking or a distinct problem, that whenever you see somebody is facing that, that's their inner distinction. So you're like, "Oh, if Ryan is in this scene, I know he's going to be angry most of the time." That's his thing, he's the angry one. Now, of course, that goes deeper. We'll talk more about avoiding flat characters later. But I think that adding a distinction that is recognizable… Like, when you get lost as a kid in the store, and you're looking for your mom's pink coat. Like, you don't want to have too many pink coats around, or else you have the terror of grabbing some lady's hand and looking up and it's not your mom.

[Zoraida] That happened to me once.

[Kaela] And it's a terrifying woman.

[Laughter]

[Zoraida] That happened to me once when I was a kid at the supermarket.

[Kaela] You don't want to do that to your readers, right?

[Zoraida] It was the 90s. Everyone had jean jacket skirts.

[Dan] Okay. So, last week, Howard had the very unpopular opinion. I think that it's my turn, because a really beautiful example of this comes from the Netflix Marvel shows. Particularly Iron Fist. Iron Fist was awful and everyone hated it. But…

[Chuckles]

[Zoraida] But you?

[Dan] Once he was part of the Defenders, you could… He worked. He was still not necessarily likable, but you put him next to Daredevil, who was grim and competent, Luke Cage, who was grim and competent, Jessica Jones, who was grim and competent, and then Iron Fist got to be this kind of arrogant hothead who was eager to jump into fights he couldn't win and things like that. He didn't work necessarily on his own, but in the ensemble, he absolutely filled a vital niche that kind of rounded out the group as a whole.

[Howard] I think one of the reasons he worked is because the other characters all got to say what all of us had been thinking during his Iron Fist season.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Especially Jessica Jones. Man, her scoring points on him was my favorite jam for a couple of episodes. It was great.

[Cathartic]

[Dan] Well, it's not just that it was fun to watch people knock him. But I don't think Defenders would have been as strong without him. Because he added some really necessary texture and distinctions.

[Dan] Anyway. We've let this episode go on really long. So we're going to end with homework. Howard, you have our homework.

[Howard] I do. We got a glimpse of this when we were talking about that episode of Friends in the movie theater.

[Dan] Seinfeld.

[Howard] Two-part homework. Have each of your ensemble characters describe themselves. How they see themselves. Go ahead and write a mirror scene. Because, heaven knows, you're not going to be able to put it in a book. Second, have each of your ensemble characters describe each of the others. So, that second part suddenly gets really big. Because, I mean, you know how matrices work. You've got four characters, and suddenly, you're talking about writing 16 things.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But, there's your homework. The point of this is to let you see how voice affects perception, and ultimately, audience perception of this ensemble you're going to be putting in your story.

[Dan] You are out of excuses. Now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 17.20: Basics of Ensemble Characterization

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/05/15/17-20-basics-of-ensemble-characterization/

Key points: What is an ensemble? Everyone has their own weight, emotional or physical. Everyone matters, and they play a part. One hallmark is multiple POVs used not to change locations, but because other characters can move the story forward. A story with a lot of important characters in it. Where do you start? Start with the protagonist protagonist, the leader of the group. Why does the story need the ensemble? Answering this question separates an ensemble from the story of a single person and the people who assist them. Are the other people just spear carriers or are they real characters?

[Season 17, Episode 20]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, the first episode of our new masterclass about ensemble casts. This episode is the Basics of Ensemble Characterization.

[Zoraida] 15 minutes long.

[Kaela] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Zoraida] I'm Zoraida.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Dan] We are very excited to have Zoraida Cordova with us. Kaela Rivera is also on the show, and you've heard from her before in one of our previous masterclasses. Zoraida, tell us about yourself.

[Zoraida] Hello. I'm Zoraida Cordova. I am the author of several young adult, adult, and romance novels. I predominantly write YA fantasy. I have a series, The Brooklyn Brujas series. My latest adult novel is The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina, which is more magical realism. I'm trying not to write the same thing twice. But you never know. I also write for Star Wars.

[Dan] Cool. Well, we're very excited to have you. You're kind of the leader of this class about ensemble casts. So let me ask the very first question. What is an ensemble? Lots of stories have more than one character, what makes it an ensemble specifically?

[Zoraida] The thing that makes it an ensemble to me is everyone sort of has their own weight. The story couldn't function the same without every single one of these characters. Sometimes it's emotional weight, sometimes it's a physical presence. I like to think of things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Friends. I'm just using those as big shows that people already are familiar with. Every single person almost matters in those stories, and they play a part. There's really interesting dynamics. Obviously, The Avengers movies are a big ensemble cast. But when it comes to books, it's almost harder to navigate those waters, because the text has to do so much work than the visual. So that's what an ensemble cast is to me.

[Dan] Yeah. So, like Orquidea Divina, your book, I think has a really great ensemble cast, because it's specifically about a family, and eventually narrows in very tightly on three of those characters, but you could not tell that story without discussing everyone and how they relate to each other and kind of letting them bounce off of each other.

[Zoraida] Yeah. Thank you.

[Howard] I think one of the hallmarks of… Hallmark… The flag that goes up that says, oh, this is actually about an ensemble, is when you have multiple POVs, but you didn't switch POV because they were in different places. You just switched POV because this other character needs… The way they are perceiving what the group is doing is what is moving the story forward right now. It's… I mean, that's not hard and fast, but anytime I see that, I expect, oh, this is an ensemble. The Powder Mage books by Brian McClellan, he introduces I think three POVs in the first three chapters. But all three of those people are in completely different locations, and it doesn't read like an ensemble book. I'm not knocking it. I loved the Powder Mage series. But, just because there's lots of POVs doesn't mean you're writing an ensemble.

[Dan] Yeah. There's a difference between telling multiple stories under the umbrella of a single book and telling a story that has a lot of important characters in it. So, if someone is writing or wants to write about an ensemble cast, where do they start? What are some important considerations for doing the characterization?

[Zoraida] I think it's important to look at the protagonist protagonist. I always call… I call my hero that, or my heroine that. Because sometimes, even though you have a group of people, there is still a leader. To me, they shape the relationship between themselves and everybody else. That is the beginning of characterization when I start writing a book.

[Howard] Yeah. You've got the pro protagonist and then all the other protagonists.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I…

[Zoraida] The co-protags.

[Howard] Yep.

[Dan] The co-tagonists.

[Howard] I think of… I mean, we've mentioned the Avengers film. Analyzing that, the first Avengers movie… Analyzing it is a lot of fun, because part of what makes it work is the realization that this is kind of Tony's journey. Everybody has brilliant character moments, and it's great fun all the way through. But you begin picking it apart and you realize, oh, Loki picked the top of Tony's tower, which is where Tony got dragged into this. When… Oh, what's his name? Phil Coulson…

[Laughter]

[Howard] He has a name. He was dating a cellist. He's a real person. When Phil shows up and Tony's the one at the end who does the thing that Captain America said he wouldn't do… Jumps on the grenade for everybody else. So… That thread is not a strong thread throughout the film. But nobody else has a stronger thread. So, Tony's our pro-protag, and everybody else is just one step below that. That's a useful… For me, that's a super useful consideration.

[Dan] Yeah. Another example that is coming to mind is Star Trek. Most of the Star Trek series are very strong ensemble casts. In Next Generation, Picard, if anything, is our protagonist protagonist. He's the one that is kind of at the center of a lot of the stories. But we get to know everyone on the bridge, everyone in other parts. They play poker together, they do sports and other games together. The stories are not about just a thing happening, but how does this group of people respond to the thing happening. Compare that to Star Trek Discovery, which is very specifically about Michael Burnham. The first few seasons, most of the characters in the show didn't even have names. It was Michael, it was Saru, a handful of others, and then a bunch of nameless nobodies on the bridge, because it was not an ensemble show. It was the Michael Burnham show. So the same kind of story, but told in two very different ways.

[Kaela] I think one of the things that distinguishes a protagonist protagonist for me is the fact that, like, the most essential, in that, like, all of the ensemble are important, but it's like all of them are sort of threaded through the protagonist protagonist journey. Like, they all have touch points in there. As an example… You'll have to forgive me, I'm a middle grade writer, so cartoons are the first thing I think of when I think of media.

[Laughter]

[Kaela] But I loved Hey Arnold! growing up. If you look at Hey Arnold!… Yes, thank you. Hey Arnold! was so good growing up. Still watch it. Like, Hey Arnold!, Arnold is the key character, he's the protagonist protagonist. But at the same time, throughout like the several seasons it got, he only has like four episodes really that are focused solely on him. Most of them are like people have touch points with Arnold, that is about Arnold's heart. Like, his heart, his themes, his character journey as a person. But they thread in Arnold's experience and he becomes an important touch point for them on their character journey. So, I think that's also an important part.

[Zoraida] I think while we're talking about cartoons, for me it was Sailor Moon.

[Laughter. Yes!]

[Zoraida] That I sometimes when people ask me, like, why do you like this? I feel like a combination of Sailor Moon and Gargoyles. Both of those are the touch points for me as a creator. I feel like Sailor Moon is a story of these girls fighting against evil, fighting for love and goodness in the world. Right? They're the guardians of love. One of the things that separates them, for me, is, without her group, without the other sailor scouts or sailor sun shields, Sailor Moon is just a girl by herself. But with them, this group together, they're… The dynamics of the group change as she finds each one and the story progresses.

[Dan] Yeah. Let's pause here. Do our book of the week. This week, that is Valentina Salazar is Not a Monster Hunter. Zoraida, can you tell us about that one?

[Zoraida] Yes. Speaking of ensemble casts, Valentina Salazar is Not a Monster Hunter is my second middle grade novel. It comes out on June 28th of this year. It is about a young girl named Valentina Salazar who is a monster protector. But her family is descended from a long line of monster hunters. After her dad dies, her family gets landlocked. They no longer travel around the country saving monsters. Instead, they're just living in upstate New York. One day, she finds a viral video of a very, very rare monster egg. She convinces her siblings to steal the van, called the Scourge of land and sea. They take the van and they go in search of this monster egg before the hunters get hold of it. So, it's about family and not all monsters look monstrous. That comes out this summer, so… I'm very excited.

[Dan] Awesome. Yeah, that one will be out end of June, so you can go and preorder it right now. Which we strongly encourage you to do. Again, that is Valentina Salazar is Not a Monster Hunter, by Zoraida Cordova.

[Dan] So, let's get back into a couple more questions about what an ensemble is and how it works. In future weeks, we'll talk more about how to do all of this. But I do want to ask kind of a crunchy question. When you are working with an ensemble cast, we know that the protagonist protagonist is kind of… They're the lead of the ensemble, so to speak. But every part, every other character in there is important. Why does the story require all of those extra people? Why can't the story or the main character function without that ensemble behind them?

[Zoraida] I think answering that question is what separates it from… An ensemble and then just a singular journey. Right? Then just a journey of one person and the people that assist them along the way.

[Howard] I'm going to state the super unpopular opinion that I have. Which is that I loved the Hobbit movies…

[Me too]

[Howard] Because they took a story that made the dwarves just faceless short angry dudes with beards…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I'm a faceless short angry dude with a beard.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I'm sorry, I want to be a person. It turned them all into people and it created an ensemble. Now, we could argue until the rock trolls come home about whether it created an effective ensemble. But for me, it worked. That was… For me, that was the principal difference. A lot of people say, "Well, Tolkien was able to tell that story in one little novel. Why did you need three movies?" Because we wanted to tell the story… Pieter Jackson wanted to tell the story in a way that turned all of these into people. Honestly, when you're making a movie, and you have a dozen people on the screen and they're just all spear carriers, that's a waste of camera angles. That's… you can throw those people away easily in a short story, in a novella, in a novel. But if you're trying to build something where we actually look at the characters, we have to justify their existence.

[Dan] Absolutely. So. We are going to get into that a little more in future episodes. We'll talk more about how to do this, how to make the characters unique, how to establish your ensemble.

[Dan] But for now, we want to give you some homework. Okay. This, we're going to look at your main character. At your protagonist protagonist. We want you to free write just a little short thing in which they are applying for the job… Applying for the job of being the protagonist of your book. They get to talk about why they are going to be good at overcoming the challenges, why they're going to be bad, and therefore interesting, at overcoming the challenges. Whatever it is you want to do. Just free write that. Get a sense of who that person is.

[Howard] Hey, what's this blank spot on your resume? Oh, that's when I was one of the dwarves in The Hobbit.

[Laughter]

[Dan] [garbled]

[Howard] I wasn't really employed.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

[Mary Robinette] Put the go in go write at one of the Writing Excuses 2022 retreats in Capital Reef National Park in Utah and aboard the Liberty of the Seas in the Western Caribbean. Go to writingexcusesretreat.com for more info.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 15.50: Juggling Ensembles

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/12/13/15-50-juggling-ensembles/

Key Points: How do you manage a large cast? In outlining, include the characters who are NOT going to be in the foreground, who are going to be left out. Start with a few, and then expand out. Don't try to treat all point of view and ensemble characters equally. How do you connect multiple different POV's in different places into a cohesive narrative. Common bits, e.g., dialogue. Groupings and teams! Don't exceed the reader's threshold for people and lines. Make sure every member of your ensemble serves a purpose in the story. I use multiple POV's for different places. Make sure your story is big enough to justify multiple POV's in different places. Switch to the POV who is in the most pain. Be careful of cliffhangers. Make sure the reader can follow your narrative, don't shift too many perspectives and timelines at the same time. How can one primary viewpoint character interact and build relationships with a large ensemble? How do you develop relationships without sending all the other characters out of the room? Don't treat all characters equally. Treat your ensemble cast like a group of real people. Use shorthand and cues to remind the readers who certain characters are. Sometimes caricatures work. Give the readers space for their imagination. One or two weird idiosyncrasies of character go a long way.

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 50.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Juggling Ensembles.

[Victoria] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Victoria] I'm Victoria.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Brandon] We have questions from you guys about how to manage a large cast. This is tricky. I was not good at this early in my career. In fact, I have a story, I think I told you guys before, but when I first sat down to write the first Stormlight book, this was in 2002 before I sold any books, I failed because of the large cast. I wanted to do a big epic, like George RR Martin, like Robert Jordan, that had a large cast. I, even though this was my 13th novel, still crashed and burned trying to write this one. It didn't work until I had been handed the Wheel of Time and had to get up to speed on juggling a large cast very, very quickly. 2600 named characters in the Wheel of Time. That was like going to the gym and being like, "All right, personal trainer…"

[Howard] How many point of view characters were in the Wheel of Time?

[Brandon] 50, I think. Somewhere around there. How many main viewpoint characters? A dozen or so is what I would say. Maybe two dozen, depending on how you count main. So there were a lot.

[Howard] Using your gym metaphor,

[chuckles]

[Howard] There are people who go to the gym and overhead pressing 45 pounds, boy, that is a lot. Then there are the bodybuilders overhead pressing 450 pounds is also a lot. What you're talking about here really is the ultimate bit of heavy lifting. I don't… I haven't counted how many point of view characters there are in Schlock Mercenary, because the point of view is the camera instead of the character. But I think I realized around 2008, 2009, that my nascent outlining process needed to include which characters whose names I know, whose backstories I love, am I going to leave out of this book except for we get to see them in the background so that we know that they're not dead. Because unless I did that, my brain would latch on to the fact that oh, we haven't talked to so-and-so for a while, I should put them in a scene. That was a disaster. So, for me, large cast was about taking the huge cast, and then for an entire book, setting a different set of limits.

[Victoria] I mean, this is interesting. So, in the Shades of Magic series, I think I have four point of view characters in the first book, eight in the second, and 12 in the third. I like an expansion project. I like the idea that we can root in a few first, and then expand outward from there. I think it allows for focus. I also, though, and I think this will come up a few times, I'm a really big fan of not treating all point of view characters equally. They do not all get the same amount of pages. I have a primary cast, a secondary cast, and a tertiary cast. The primary cast always gets point of view time. But I'll throw in some secondary and some tertiary just to break it up. I don't think you have to treat all members of the ensemble equally from a perspective.

[Brandon] Do you get fan anger from that? Because I get a lot of it. From not treating my tertiary characters… People will read it and they'll write me notes and say, "I feel like I've been promised much more from this character, because my brief glimpses of them were so evocative. Why are you ignoring this character? Why do you hate this character?"

[Chuckles]

[Victoria] You know, that's one you can't win. Like, I love writing characters who are on page for maybe a page or two, and feel holistic enough, complete enough, that you can imagine that they're the protagonist of a different novel. I want all of the characters in a book to feel like they have legs in that way. But no… I mean, I get people who are like, "I want more of this person." I've been lucky in that I don't get the anger of it. Maybe when I… It's because in each subsequent book, I shift that a little bit and I give more space to the ones that I've established. I like having this almost ripple effect, where if a person is a secondary character in one book, they will have a primary status in the next book. So I'm almost seating them, letting you get accommodated to their presence in the room, so that then when I focus on them more, you already are like, "Oh, yeah, I know that dude. I'm really excited to learn more about them."

[Howard] That was the second season of Community, we're introduced… In one of the humanities classroom scenes, we're introduced to Fat Neil. Where John Oliver says, "Oh, Fat Neil." Neil says, "Neil is just fine." Then it's two or three episodes later, when we get Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, where Neil's character arc is super important, and the fact that people are calling him Fat Neil is super important. But for that episode, he's… I thought… When I first saw that episode, I thought, "Who's cameo'ing? Why is that person important? He just now showed up, we called attention to him, I don't think I've ever seen him before."

[Brandon] So, one of the questions here is how do you connect multiple vastly different POV's into a cohesive narrative, especially when some characters might be in totally different places in the world.

[Howard] Common tone modulation. It's a cheat that I use all the time, where I will take words from somebody's dialogue at the end of a scene and I will work them into someone else's dialogue. They are literally an entire galaxy away doing something different, but I have picked this tiny thread that shows that there is a similarity between the two of them and away I go.

[Victoria] I like the groupings. I like physically grouping different teams. I like to think of them as my A Team, my B team, and my C team. Because we… Like as readers, we are trained that if you start showing different teams, we're waiting for the coalescing. We are expecting that at some point in the narrative, the teams are going to begin to physically cross, or they're going to begin to come together. I think that it is… There's a threshold for reader balance, where they can hold a certain number of people and lines in their mind at a time. You have to be very careful not to exceed the threshold for reader balance. That's why there are whole sections of George RR Martin books which focus on a narrowing slice of the cast. Because to ask them to hold all of the cast in their mind for a long time… One, you're diluting the impact of any one of your cast members. So I always encourage when people want to have a large cast to make sure that every member of your ensembles are serving a purpose in the story. But I love a good physical grouping.

[Dan] See, for me, the question about how can you handle multiple POV's when they're in very different places… That's when I use multiple POV's.

[Victoria] Exactly.

[Dan] Right? Because if they're all in the same place, then I'm just going to stick with my main character, and we're going to follow her. But in the Partials series, this is how I eventually started using multiple POV's. The first book is all Kira. The second book had to have a second one because we needed to know what was going on and she was in a different part of the world. Then, by the time we got to the third, I think I have five or six POV's because that is how I can show the different parts of the world. So, for me, this is less a question of POV than it is of is your story big enough to justify having people in all these different places at once.

[Howard] One of the most important things I learned recording Writing Excuses with Brandon and Dan during season one back in 2008, was the discussion of… I can't remember whose writing book it was, but the idea that the point of view character that you want to switch to is the one who is currently in the most pain. Because I'm writing comedy, and pain is funny. That is, it is a conflict from which I can always exact a punchline.

[Brandon] Another thing that's useful here is determining just how you use cliffhangers and not, particularly if there's going to be large spaces and large gaps. Different authors do it different ways. I'm not going to say there is a right and a wrong way, but I've found as a reader that having to keep track… Like if you… If the author doesn't tie it up somewhat neatly, before leaving this character for a long time, it's going to be much harder, because you're going to feel like this is dangling over you. Now sometimes you can be neat and still have a cliffhanger. Right? You can sometimes be like, "All right. This character, this thing's happened, you only have to remember they have fallen off a cliff." But if you have to remember they have fallen off a cliff while there in a political negotiation that has not finished and their loved one is over here with… And keep track of all that, and you're going to leave them for 100,000 words and come back, then you're setting yourself up for some failure.

[Victoria] This is really interesting. I learned this lesson through timeline. I tell a lot of alinear narratives, and I also have multiple perspectives in them. So I have multiple perspectives, multiple timelines. I learned that basically my reader could tolerate shifts between perspectives or shifts between timeline. Could not tolerate a shift from perspective and timeline. So if I wanted to follow a character's present and then into the past, I needed to come back to the present for I switched to somebody else's present. It's a matter of sandwiching. It's a matter of understanding that threshold for pain that a reader has in terms of like being able to keep track of the narrative. It's the worst reason to lose your reader is that they can't actually follow your narrative. They're like, "There are too many threads here. Those quote

[Howard] That is a great exploration of the difference between prose and other mediums. Because in comics and TV, visual medium, we can make this sort of jump and take the reader with us because we have text and we have video and we have audio and all of those things can be used to cue the change.

[Victoria] And you have palletes and you have everything.

[Howard] Color palette… All of those things can be used to telegraph it. But, yeah, in books, I really like the idea that you've limited yourself. You need to switch between all of these things, you're just not going to throw all of the switches at once.

[Victoria] You have to be very careful which switches you throw in which order, or else you genuinely will end up with a very confused reader.

[Brandon] Let's talk about a book this week by one of our favorite people ever.

[Victoria] This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar, is one of the strangest, most beautiful examinations of perspective. I think it fits perfectly into this theme. It is an epistolary love story between two characters, Red and Blue, two women on opposite sides of an alinear, intergalactic, inter-spatial, interdim… Inter-everything time war. They begin leaving letters for each other. It is almost impossible to describe, and that is all right, because it is only… It is novella length. I read it on a single plane ride. I would recommend to everybody just carve out an hour or two in their evening or in their morning or in their lunch, at some point, and just sit with it and just devour it. There is something so powerful about it.

[Howard] Structurally, it's fascinating because you have two third person limited points of view and you have two epistolary points of view. So there are four POV, and they alternate very… Mechanically is the wrong word. Formulaicly. There is a formula for the delivery of these POV's. On my second iteration through that formula, in that book, I realized, "Oh. That is letting me perfectly keep track of where I am. That is brilliant." They used the pacing structure of chapter breaks to tell me who was talking and when and why and how.

[Victoria] It's a master class on a lot of the things that we discuss.

[Howard] It is so awesome.

[Brandon] So…

[Howard] This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Max Gladstone and…

[Victoria] Amal El-Mohtar.

[Howard] Amal El-Mohtar.

[Brandon] So, another question we have on POV takes this a slightly different way with these ensemble casts. One of our listeners has a character who is going to be the main viewpoint character. This character needs to interact with a lot of different people and build relationships with all of them. How do you give time to a large ensemble when you're using one primary viewpoint character and you need to characterize all these different people? One of the things this listener says is, "How can I isolate certain relationships for development without always having to send the other characters out of the room?" Which actually is a thing I think about a lot. Because I find that personally, I don't know if it's the same with you guys, if I have too many characters in the scene, I will naturally start to forget about some of them, and they just won't participate. If I get beyond about four or five people, characters start slipping, and I've realized I have to create scenes where if I have more than that, I have to use other tricks to tell the story.

[Victoria] Two things for me. Hierarchy. I don't treat all those characters in that ensemble equally, and I don't think in a relationship or any group of five or six or 10, that we all would have equal relationships and equal time. Two, one of my own personal favorites. I write characters who hate each other. The nice thing about writing characters who hate each other is that they're not terribly enthusiastic, even if they're on a spaceship or on a boat, they're not really great at being in the same room as each other at all the same times. So, remembering that in any group of 10, most of those people probably don't like each other equally and are going to gravitate into their own almost small subgroups. You have to remember to treat your ensemble cast like a group of actual people.

[Howard] I would ask our listeners to think about a time when you've been super happy that a friend of yours has fallen into a wonderful relationship. You are now the POV character for their love story. How do you write that? Because that's… If you have a single POV in your novel, and other people are falling in love, that is exactly what you're describing.

[Brandon] One of the other things here is the larger your cast gets… This isn't always the case. But the more often you're going to have to use shorthand to give readers reminders on who certain characters are. Some of these characters who don't get equal time with all the others, you're going to have to be okay the fact to just aren't going to have a lot of time to develop them. A great writer can take a short amount of time and characterize someone in a really interesting way. But then one note of that is going to stick in the reader's mind, and you have to remind them who that character is when they come back, and not violate what that note is.

[Dan] So, the novella that I wrote for Magic, the Gathering, has a fairly large cast of… By the end of it, six or seven main characters. They're… I did this trip with them. I gave them… Here's one or two identifying traits that will just be shorthand, because they're not main characters, they're there because they need to be there and they're flavor. It was really fascinating to me to read the editor's notes, because one of those, who's just a very thinly drawn character with one or two traits, that was the editor's favorite character. He's like, "I love every scene that this guy's in. His characterization is so strong." I'm like, "That's because he's a caricature." But that works. Don't feel like it doesn't work.

[Victoria] I'm going to say as well, I think that we don't always give readers enough credit or space for their imagination in these things. We feel the need to dictate all the details of characters, when the truth is, like, sometimes you really just do need a few cues and shorthand, and allow the reader to fill in, and kind of fill-in like smoke, spread out into that space. I am somebody who I'm not great with spaces, personally, and so I love the visual cues shorthand. I will use an article of clothing, I will use a color, I will use a piece of jewelry, and that will be the thing that tethers an entire primary cast in my readers minds to each of those characters. Yet, when I look at the fan art that comes in for the series, they're all identical. There's just enough there that they get the main pieces of it.

[Howard] Back in September when we talked about writing under deadlines, I mentioned the importance of falling back on craft. Dan, what you've described, that is absolutely a craft trick. You know you've done it right when your editor can't see the trick.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] You know this is a very well painted cardboard cutout. But a trick of the eye, from the reader's perspective, ah, it's fully fleshed out.

[Victoria] Also, to that, beyond the physical details, giving one or two like kind of weird like idiosyncrasies of character can go such a long way with characters that don't spend a huge amount of time on the page.

[Brandon] It really can. It can be really, really handy. Sometimes I feel bad about doing it, because I'm like, "This character deserves their own book." But these are the things you have to do, if you want to have a large cast.

[Howard] This character deserves their own book, but I deserve to be able to write The End and turn this in for money.

[Victoria] Yep.

[Brandon] So, we're out of time, and this is our last podcast with Victoria.

[What? Oh!]

[Victoria] I've had so much fun, though.

[Brandon] But we're going to give you a last homework.

[Victoria] Yeah. So. This is a good old favorite of mine. I want you to take something that you've written, preferably something with an ensemble cast. Let's say a cast of at least three. We're not… It doesn't have to be a whole gathering, a whole gaggle. Take a cast of at least three, if you have a viewpoint character, or even in your mind a main character in this group, I want you to pick one of the other two or four or six or however many you're choosing from. I want you to think of how you would tell the exact same story, and, by shifting the leadership role, shifting the primary and secondary and tertiary roles around, so that this new character, hopefully a minor character you've chosen, is now at the center of the narrative.

[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. Victoria, thank you so much.

[Victoria] Thank you.

[Brandon] You're all out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.10: Handling a Large Cast

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/03/11/13-10-handling-a-large-cast/

Key Points: The length of the story often influences the size of the cast. When you have an ensemble cast, you may need to give them all weight. Name, distinguishing characteristics, backstory, motivation? But with short stories, you often want bit players who come in, do something, and leave. With large casts, you may need spreadsheets or even a wiki to keep track. If they have a name, they need motivation, backstory, and all that. Or write one group straight through, another group straight through, then weave and blend them. Big casts often start with one character, then expand, and grow over time. You don't really start with a huge cast on page one! Small casts, characters often wear lots of hats, and you can show they are skilled in one area, but ... the story challenges them in an area where they aren't so good. You can also use the relationships between your characters more. And delve deeper into your characters, and their interactions. Think of screen time -- how do you balance and give each character enough screen time?

( How many people can fit in here, anyway? )

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses, Handling a Large Cast Versus a Small Cast.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Amal] Because you're in a hurry.

[Maurice] And we're not that smart.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Amal] I'm Amal.

[Maurice] I'm Maurice.

[Brandon] We're going to talk a little bit about nuts and bolts on this episode. We want to find out specifically from Maurice and Amal how you do your writing. How you actually physically go about doing it?

[Chuckles]

[Maurice] Okay.

[Amal] Do you want to go first?

[Laughter]

[Mary] They're both backing away from the question.

[Amal] I mean, the thing with me is that I have never written a novel. Like, not even as a kid, writing… The longest things that I wrote as a kid were role-playing character backgrounds, in like over 10 pages in nine point font. That's like the thing that I did. But… So I write a lot of short stories. Because short stories are so, to me, flexible, I've tended to have a different approach to most… Almost every one. Except for the butt in chair part. Like I just sit and write. But I've… There are some that I've outlined, some that I haven't. There are some where I've come up with the characters first, sometimes I've come up with the plot first and the characters kind of arose from it. The biggest cast of characters I think I ever had to manage was when I was actually writing an episode for Book Burners, which is a serial box serial, which is like TV but written. So I had a cast of characters handed to me, and keeping track of that was really interesting. It was a completely different challenge. Thinking about things like A plots and B plots, which I don't know if I've ever otherwise done in a short story, at least until that point…

[Brandon] Specifically about characters. What do you do? Do you do anything? Do you like free write characters or do you just see where it goes?

[Amal] I think a lot of the time, I have a scene in mind, and I have a feeling or a texture that I want to generate out of this conflict or out of this conversation or I really want to experience this thing and make other people experience it. Sometimes that feeling comes from a character I have in mind, sometimes it… The feeling dictates the characters. Yeah.

[Brandon] When do you add another character?

[Amal] Gosh.

[Brandon] Just when it feels right?

[Amal] Just when it feels right. Yeah.

[Brandon] Are you usually doing smaller casts or…

[Amal] Yeah. Usually the casts are not more than four. That's… It's really interesting to take stock of how the length of the story has tended to determine that. Although, that said, I did just recently finished a novella with Max Gladstone where there are two characters in this novella. It's epistolary, and they're time traveling spies. Fighting a time war. But… As one does. But so, there are two characters, and there are two background characters beyond that who are their… Like motivating them. That's sustained over novella length. But I think that's generally the exception to a rule of the shorter the story, the fewer the characters. Somewhere at novelette length, you start having the flexibility to like put different groups in play as opposed to just two different characters in play. But I've tended not to think that way, because I think most of the short stories I've written have tended to be structure-driven as opposed to character-driven.

[Mary] One of the things that I've found with both writing short fiction and writing novels, and also dealing with puppetry, is that at a certain point, you become very con… Trained to the constraints of the form that you're working in, and will begin to naturally gravitate and move down the decision tree to make choices that fit the length that you're supposed to be working with. Like, one of the constraints that I had when I was working with puppet theater was that there were two performers. Which meant that we were limited by the number of hands to the number of characters we could have on stage at a time.

[Amal] Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. That's like the most beautiful physical manifestation of this problem. How many hands do you have?

[Mary] Right. So I would naturally… I'd be like… I would naturally say, "Oh. Well, let's think about doing Snow Queen." Because this is a thing where she encounters a lot of different characters, but only one at a time. Whereas Aida, there's like a cast of thousands. That's not a good choice, because I just can't get that many people on stage. I feel that way, that when I am… The hardest thing for me when I am jumping back and forth between short fiction and novels is remembering which metric I'm using. Because I can… Like I'm working on a novel right now that has an ensemble cast, but it also has an ensemble cast of a lot of onlookers that… And because it's a murder mystery, I actually need to give them all weight, because you don't know which one is…

[Amal] Right.

[Mary] So, it's interesting because everybody that comes on stage, I actually have to give the same amount of weight to. Whereas normally, when I'm doing a shorter piece or something, anyone who's not important, I try not to give them a name, I try not to give them any distinguishing characteristics, I just want them to come in, say their bit, and get out again. Here, I have to make sure that everybody gets a name, that everybody seems to have a back story, that everybody seems to have a distinguishing characteristic. It's a very different metric.

[Brandon] By shorter story, you mean under 400,000 words, instead of over? Right?

[Laughter]

[Mary] Right. Yes. Yes.

[Brandon] Right. Okay. I get that.

[Mary] Yeah, yeah.

[Amal] What's the smallest cast you've ever dealt with, Brandon?

[Brandon] I've done two person casts before, but that was in my flash fiction.

[Amal] Okay.

[Brandon] Lar… Anything more than… I mean, The Wheel of Time had 2400 characters…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Stormlight's got something around eight or 900, or something like that. So…

[Amal] Wait. Wait, wait. Sorry, I'm having difficult… Sorry. Say those numbers again.

[Brandon] 2400 characters. Yeah.

[Amal] I hope you can hear the face I'm making.

[Brandon] The book I just finished was 540,000 words long. We cut it to like 460. But… Anyway…

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Let's move on to Maurice.

[Amal] So amazing.

[Brandon] Maurice. What is your…

[Amal] Like, how do you do that?

[Brandon] Sorry. We're doing this podcast and I'm thinking, "Wow, they use very different methods."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Because for me, if I'm going to track this cast, I need… I need spreadsheets for the small stories. Right? Because even the small stories, it's going to be… I'll generally do two or three about the same characters, and I'll have 60 characters in… Across the series of novellas.

[Mary] You really cannot see our mouths just hanging open.

[Brandon] But, Stormlight, it's a huge wiki with tons of characters.

[Mary] Wow.

[Brandon] And things like this. That's why I have two continuity editors.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] And whatnot. So, yeah, it's a very different experience for me. Maurice, how do you track your characters? How do you come up with them, how do you design them, how do you…

[Maurice] So, I come from a gaming background. So basically, my rule is once I bothered to give you a name, I'm going to roll you up as a character.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Do you actually do that?

[Maurice] Well, I don't roll them up, but…

[Laughter]

[Mary] I think we'd love it if you did.

[Chuckles]

[Maurice] But, yeah, once we get to the stage where I'm naming you, then I go through all the things that I would do for any character. I'm figuring out what your motivation is, I'm figuring out what your back story is, I'm doing all those things because if you have a name… Because naming… For me, naming is one of the hardest things. So if I'm going to go to the effort of giving you a name, you come with everything that comes with being a character.

[Brandon] You actually have these sheets? Like you…

[Maurice] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Amal] Oh, wow. Really? Oh, these are cool.

[Maurice] So. Well, I mean. They look a lot like these. So I have a sheet… It's basically divided into quadrants, where I just jot down information for each of my characters. So I can just track them that way.

[Mary] Can we put one of those templates on the website in the liner notes?

[Maurice] Sure.

[Mary] Great. That is so cool. Because that's… I want a copy of that.

[Amal] Like I've done that for my characters in retrospect. For, like, for my own fun sometimes. But… Come up with a character. This is also within the context of role-playing, but role-playing free-form online. And sometimes, just enjoying taking a character sheet from say World of Darkness or something like that, and just turning that character who is fully rounded and stuff into a character on a sheet.

[Maurice] Well… All that being said, what the… Probably the largest cast of characters I've had to deal with was for my urban fantasy trilogy, which I'm calling… I basically call my accidental trilogy, because I never intended to write a trilogy. But it was all based on the Arthurian saga. So in a lot of ways, that work has been done for me. I can just take all the characters and then just sort of… Well, here's how they've traditionally been portrayed. Now let me just do my tweaks and… How would they plug into the hood, basically. But that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I mean, it's not the numbers you have, but it was still a couple dozen characters per book, which is larger than I had ever done before. Tracking them was tough.

[Brandon] I throw those numbers around to be awe-inspiring, but usually there will be like 30 main characters. Right? Maximum. But… That's what gets really tricky, is remembering this character's motivations and things like this. I… usually, when I'm writing these books, I'm writing one group straight through. Then I'm writing another group straight through, and another group straight through. At least to a kind of breakpoint. And then weaving it together. Then you have to do all these passes to make sure that the different stories blend together in a way that's dramatically and pacing wise works. It gets very complicated there, but I find that if you jump each scene to the new characters, it always feels like you're stopping and starting and things like this. So…

[Amal] Brandon, can I ask you a question? Do you find that with these really large casts, that that… Like thinking back to what Mary was saying about the constraints kind of dictating what kind of story you tell. Do you find that you sort of have to tell a big… Okay…

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Amal] But that because you're choosing to tell a really big story, that you have to have a commensurate number of characters? Or can you imagine a situation where you have that number of characters for a small-scale story?

[Brandon] I have no idea how you'd do it. I suppose we can imagine it. It's certainly a challenge that you could put up before people. With me, I grew up reading epic fantasy. I wanted to write epic fantasy. I was reading these stories with these huge casts, like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I would read these books, and when I sat down to write, I just naturally started doing this. The big problem was, and I tell this to people a lot, was I jumped in, just trying to write that large cast from page 1, and I failed spectacularly my first few tries. What I realized is a lot of these casts grew organically over time. The author didn't say I'm going to have 2400 named characters in The Wheel of Time or whatever. Robert Jordan told a story about one character who interacted with a lot of people, and did some expanding on who these people were, and then started telling their stories. I think the form is very important to this. When I write a Stormlight book, which are the really big ones we joke about. Most of my books are kind of normal length. But when I write these, the 500,000 word ones, I actually plot them as a trilogy, with a short story collection included. I write them as three books and a short story collection, which I am interweaving as I go. I put together… The idea behind it is that when you pick this up, you're not just going to get a story, you're going to get a lot of stories, all woven together toward a big goal at the end.

[Mary] But you can talk about the difference between the way you are handling the stories in the short story collection versus the way you are handling the larger casts.

[Brandon] Yes. Ethnically.

[Mary] Does it… Do you go into those differently, or do you use the same…

[Brandon] Definitely. Absolutely, differently. It's the same setting. Like, the most recent one, there is a short story in it about a lighthouse keeper. His family has kept this lighthouse forever. A disaster has just struck. He is going through the town, helping people with the problems from the disaster. It just goes to the four different people. Really, he's collecting their wood so he can keep his lighthouse burning. But you interact with a ship captain whose ship is not there anymore. And help out the sailors, but end up with their wood. You go here to the woman whose farm was just completely destroyed. But their shed was broken, so I got some more wood. Then he goes up and stokes the flame to the lighthouse. That little sort of story has no connection to the big story, except for the fact that the disaster happened in the big story. The main characters, their job is they can like stop this. They can work with this disaster. He can't. He's the lighthouse keeper. So it allows me to just tell these different types of stories, all in one package. That was a huge tangent.

[Mary] No, no…

[Amal] No, I like that.

[Mary] Actually it wasn't a huge… That was exactly on point. Because this is… The thing that I like about that example is that one of the things that I find with a lot of fiction… A lot of processes, that it's a very fractal thing. That you've got something that you do on this big scale, and it looks totally different because the scale is huge. But when you start drilling down into it, on a scene-by-scene basis, you're doing exactly the same things. In this scene, I can only have this many characters, because this is how many words I have.

[Brandon] Well, it's beyond that. There's a sort of reader, at least me, maybe writer, brain space. Right? Like I can track maybe four or five characters in a conversation. If there is more people trying to participate in this conversation, I have trouble bringing them up enough to remind you that they're there. I've got to arrange these situations so there is a smaller number in each given scene.

[Mary] Yeah. It's like I totally forgot Howard is even in the room.

[Brandon] Oh, yeah. Howard, put your pants back on.

[Laughter]

[Brandon] Let's… We haven't even stopped for the book of the week yet, and we're [inaudible approaching the end, so…]

[Mary] Sorry, this is a very interesting conversation for us.

[Brandon] Let's talk about To Steal the Stars.

[Screech! Oh, my gosh!]

[Mary] So. We both want to talk about it?

[Amal] You can start.

[Mary] Okay.

[Amal] I learned about it from you.

[Mary] That's fair. So this is a podcast. It is an audio play called To Steal the Stars. It's coming from Tor Labs and Gideon Media. This is one of the best acted and best produced…

[Amal] And best directed.

[Mary] And best directed and best written pieces of audio drama that I have ever heard. I say this as someone who used to perform in it, review it. This is phenomenally good. It is hitting all of the right science fiction and character buttons for me.

[Amal] I was thoroughly unprepared for how hard I would fall for this. If you describe to me what the contents are… Like, even the genre of this audio drama, I'd be like okay, cool, that sounds interesting, but I wouldn't necessarily dive into it. People describe it in a lot of ways. People will talk about it as noir, as a noir thriller heist, as a near future noir thriller heist thing. All cool, all fine. But, it doesn't prepare you for how incredible the characters are, how tight the pacing is, how… And just all of those beautiful grace notes of the directing. Like, I can't get over the fact that there's a part where two people are having pillow talk, and it actually sounds like normal people. Like, it just… It's so hard to do that. It's hard to do that on the page, fiction wise, it's hard to… I mean, representing people in intimate situations is chancy at the best of times. But this was the best of times, and also the worst of times. It's just amazing.

[Mary] In context, I'll let us segue back in. One of the reasons that I think that it's really good for you to listen to is because as radio theater, each character has to have a completely distinct voice. It's not just the actor. It's the way that they are approaching the words, the way the script has been written. Each character has a distinct motivation, they have a distinct characterization. Some of the episodes have very small casts, some of them are quite large, with multiple voices all happening at the same time. It's a really interesting way to start thinking about an aspect of a cast which is the way characters actually speak.

[Amal] I think it was also all recorded in an actual hangar… Or not in a hangar, necessarily. But it was all recorded in one space, and they were… The actors were allowed to occupy that space and spread out.

[Mary] Oh, really?

[Amal] Yeah. So it wasn't in a studio the way we are. So the reason… Part of the reason the audio is so fantastic is that you get the sense of people's movements through a very large, echo-y space. They're evoking a top-secret hangar, basically, where secret objects are kept. You really get the feel of how these voices enter and leave the space, of how close people are, how far they are apart. And the performances have more room to breathe. So it's… Ach. It's just so good. It's so good. And it's going to be a book that comes out… I think November 7th? Of last year, from when this is airing?

[Mary] I know, it's time travel.

[Amal] So it's out now.

[Brandon] All right. So we are almost out of time. Even though we just did that. But I wanted to throw one more question at you guys. Which is, let's focus on the small casts. I've talked about the large casts. How do you make a small number of characters wear a lot of hats, if you've got a very limited cast, or a very limited space, to do so?

[Mary] So I'm doing a story right now, which is basically two characters on a heist. Normally, heist stories have a huge number of characters. So what I have them doing is that I have them each with a primary expertise. Then, I have given them each area of competence that is… They're okay at, but they're not great at. What that does is it allows me to… The nice thing about having a character who has multiple hats is that you can demonstrate how this person is really skilled, but by having them encounter things that they're not so good at, you can actually ramp up the drama significantly.

[Amal] I think the smaller the cast, the more it becomes important to take into consideration their contrasts to each other, to have one character's strength be the other's weaknesses, or to have them complement each other. Which is the same thing, actually. But, yeah, so, just to… The fewer characters there are in the story, I think the more loadbearing the relationship between the characters needs to be, and the more nuanced and encompassing it has to be. The more characters you have, the more variation you can have on those lines.

[Maurice] Yeah. When I'm dealing with smaller casts… Actually, it's a problem that I didn't realize was even a thing until I started doing the massive urban fantasy, which was the whole issue of screen time. When I have this large cast, it's like, how do I manufacture enough screen time for some of these characters, who… I've bothered to roll up and create these characters, they now need screen time. How do I balance that? But in a smaller cast, I have this space, and again, they get to occupy this space, so they do have sufficient screen time. So now, what are we going to do with that? Because you now have to occupy all of this space all on your own. So, for me, I'm thinking of my story, The Ache of Home, which is up on Uncanny Magazine. Cast of three. Each of the characters are so completely distinct. I could tell who's talking without any dialogue tags, basically, because each one is so distinct. Each one has a different role. Like, even my main character, she is… She's a single mom. She's struggling in the neighborhood. Yet, she also has this magical ability to tie in with the green. When her co-protagonist, is this gentleman, he's recently out of prison, but his tattoos tell the story of his life. He can peel the tattoos off, they become magical objects.

[Amal] Oh, that's so cool.

[Maurice] They're just… So they have all this screen time, and frankly, I just have more time to just delve deeper. I think ultimately that's what it is. I have more room to delve deeper into these characters and their interactions.

[Brandon] Awesome. You were going to give us some homework, Maurice, that's kind of along those lines?

[Maurice] Oh, yes. Very much along these lines. So, it's out of my dialogue class I teach. I call it, it's a talking heads exercise. Again, one of the roles of dialogue is… By the end of dialogue… Dialogue, you have characterized… You use dialogue to characterize… To develop characterization. So one of the goals is that by the end of… You should be able to write characters with such a distinct voice, I shouldn't need dialogue tags to tell them apart. I was thinking about that when you were talking about the audio plays. Very much… It makes you very conscious of that. How do my characters sound, distinct from one another, even in those brief interactions? So that what I… So the exercise is. So you have a married couple. They bump into each other at a coffee shop, when neither one was supposed to be there. One's supposed to be at work, one's supposed to be doing their other thing. They bump into each other at a coffee shop. So, obviously, they have an agenda and they have a secret they want to hide and the other one's trying to get that out of them. Write that scene.

[Brandon] Write that scene with no dialogue tags?

[Maurice] With no dialogue tags.

[Mary] Awesome.

[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/02/25/13-8-making-characters-distinctive/

Key points: How do you make your characters flawed? Start with the characteristics you expect, the stereotypical stuff, for your protagonist or character. Flaws, or quirks, come from things that don't match that. Think about the character's situation, how does that affect their dialogue, actions, and thinking. Give your characters something to get in their way, and add texture. Look for try-fail cycles where the protagonist fails because their competency is not what they need to succeed. What flaw can they have that is important to the story? Do you use a tragic flaw, that causes the character's downfall, or just weird flaws that the character is constantly fighting? Tragic flaws are good when you want things to go horribly wrong. Think about flaws that can go either way. Use an ensemble cast to practice and play with flaws. Distinctions are not necessarily flaws. Look at Sanderson's second law of magic, what a character can't do is more interesting than what they can do. When you are creating distinctive characters, the flaws help! Sometimes flaws are what make characters lovable. How do you avoid just stapling a quirk to a character? Look for the things that are important to that character. Look at what's behind that quirk, what's the explanation for it. Find things in the environment or setting that differentiate this person from everyone else.

( Flaws, quirks, how is this distinctive? )

[Brandon] We are out of time. This is been a great discussion. Howard has our homework.
[Howard] Okay. We are talking about distinctive, distinctiveness, failings, quirky, whatever. Make a shortlist of five of the people you know best. They can be family members, they can be friends. Include yourself in that list. Imagine them as characters in a story. Then, next to their name, start writing the attributes that make them distinct from each other. The things that might be failings, the things that might be quirky, the things that might be weird. Include the things about yourself. Don't show this list to anybody else, because they'll find it highly offensive. You now need to keep this a secret for the rest of your life.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.52: Elemental Ensemble Q&A, with Claudia Gray

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/12/24/11-52-elemental-ensemble-qa-with-claudia-gray/

Q&A Summary:
Q: Can you fit an ensemble into a short story?
A: Every character adds 500 to 1000 words. Make it concise. Use character types more than individuals. Squeeze!
Q: Is there a minimum length? Is there a perfect number?
A: Seven. Three is possible, with specific roles.
Q: How do you include a traitor in an ensemble story without knocking your reader out of it?
A: Set it up carefully. Telegraph that this story has intrigue in it. Make it part of the dynamic, that this person can't be trusted.
Q: How do I give my ensemble characters equal emotional weight if I only stay in the viewpoint of one of those characters?
A: Secret of life: you are living a first person narrative. Make the POV character aware of people around them. Don't fret too much about equal emotional weight, make sure they are represented well and get equal plot weight.
Q: How do you introduce an ensemble cast early without it coming across like an info/character dump?
A: Assembly of the team scenes and disguises (put a moustache on that infodump!)
Q: If an ensemble is about falling in love with a group of friends, how can killing a character serve an ensemble, except for the obvious example of a horror genre?
A: Funerals change dynamics, often makeing them deeper and more important. Also, someone has to fill that hole. Who will step up to it?
Q: How do you give every character a role in the climax without the scenario feeling tailored to the cast?
A: Start with a list, and match things up. Get creative when it doesn't match. Start with the ending, then tailor the cast to fit. Don't forget one archetype is here's the plan, and how it goes all wrong. Break people out of their specialties, let them adapt!
( Christmas presents behind the wrapping... )
[Mary] But the thing I'm going to talk to you about is next year's cruise and workshop.
[Whoo! Applause]
[Mary] So we have been, for the past two years, spending our time in the Caribbean, which has been lovely. Next year, we will be cruising to Europe.
[Whoo!]
[Mary] Which apparently the people here are kind of excited about. We have decided to time this with WorldCon. So for those of you who are hard-core science fiction and fantasy fans and professionals, this will be the week before WorldCon, and we will be cruising so that you can explore Europe and the Balkans and then go to Helsinki for WorldCon. We'll have a couple of add-ons if you want to have someone else arrange all of your travel. We have people who will do that. It's kind of magic. So that is the plan. The details, which I'm not going to go into right now because we're still nailing down some of the special things that we have. The details are all going to be on the website. Registration will open January 1st. I can tell you that we have three guests already lined up. That is Wesley Chu, Kim Liu, and Aliette de Bodard. We're also going to have agents, editors, and some more writers, as well. And of course, our fabulous, fabulous participants.
[WHOO!]
[Brandon] Well, this has been the elemental genres and the Writing Excuses cruise. You are all out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: questioning

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.51: Ensemble As a Sub-Genre, with Lynne M. Thomas

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/12/18/11-51-ensemble-as-a-sub-genre-with-lynne-m-thomas/

Key points: Heists are often thriller or mystery plus ensemble. Sports dramas often are ensembles. Adding ensemble as subgenre can change the solutions, often adding other approaches. Ensembles often are big. Sometimes ensembles give the main characters a rest, as we follow the rest of the ensemble. Ensembles can provide the strange to mix with familiar main characters. Ensembles also can provide a framework for many small stories of another subgenre, or as the background for a series. Horror stories may use an ensemble is a cast of characters to kill. Ensembles can help avoid polemic and Mary Sue's. When introducing the members of your ensemble, work hard at compressed, good storytelling. Don't bury the reader in back story. Ensembles work best without superpowered main characters. "Bad decision theater is how great ensembles happen." Give the ensemble an arc.( Hiding in a subgenre, we find... an ensemble! )

[Brandon] Excellent. Well, Mary, you are going to give us some homework.
[Mary] Right. Since we are talking about ensemble as a subgenre, what I want you to do is look at some of the elemental genres that we have already discussed. See what happens to them if you introduce ensemble into it. Like, if you introduce ensemble into an issue, if you introduce it into a mystery, or into a thriller? What does it do to that story if you introduce the ensemble?
[Brandon] Excellent. We'd like to thank our special guest, Lynne M. Thomas.
[Lynne] Thank you. Lovely to be here.
[Brandon] We would like to thank our Writing Excuses cruise members.
[Whoo! Applause]
[Brandon] And I'd just like to take a moment to say we have really enjoyed doing the elemental genres with you. We only have a couple more weeks left of the year. We will be doing a Q&A on ensemble, but that will be the end of the elemental genres for now. I will encourage you to get excited and get ready because we will he introducing the new season to you and a couple of weeks.
[Howard] 2017's going to be pretty cool.
[Brandon] Look forward to that. And you are out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: fiddling

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.41: The Editor's Wishlist, with Navah Wolfe

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/10/09/11-41-the-editors-wish-list-with-navah-wolfe/

Key points: On Navah's wishlist, we find character first. A good character, with a distinct, unique voice. Are the characters interesting? The characters must feel real. A trick: if your main character was a side character in someone else's story, would they still be interesting? What's the best pitch? This-meets-that, IF that captures the heart, the emotion, and not just the set dressing. Lady bromance, or friendships. Ensemble stories. Dislikable characters that you fall in love with. Aka lady bro heist with Jaime Lanister. Unreliable narrators with a good payoff. Closed room spaceship mysteries. Heists. Epic fantasy with a lady protagonist. Remember, editors and agents are people -- talk with them first. Then mention your lady bro heist from a closed room spaceship with an unreliable narrator.

( Go right to the source... )

[Brandon] All right. To bring us out, Mary's going to give us some homework.
[Mary] All right. So, Navah talked about the this-meets-that and looking for the emotional heart of those things. So I want you to write two different pitches for your work in progress. Whether that's short story or novel. One of which is basic this-meets-that. So think about the emotional heart of your piece and pick a film or book or some other touchstone that has that same emotional heart. Not the set dressing, but the heart. Then I want you to do a second pitch, but this time I want you to think about the set dressing. So, Orphan Black, people who have the same face, that is set dressing. The emotional heart is about sisters. So think about those two things. Look at those two pitches. Then see which one fits your story best, and whether or not, in fact, what you need is a third pitch which is a combination of those two.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: stained

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.3: Layering the Elemental Genres

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/01/17/11-03-layering-the-elemental-genres/

Key points: Borrow elemental genres (ideas, emotions) from other stories and inject them into your stories as subplots, character arcs, or mashups. Layer your elemental genres to create sequels that are the same, but different. Let each character's arc be a different elemental genre. You can use design elements, set dressing, to keep the story together, and mix-and-match elemental genres underneath that to tell different stories. Check your underpinnings -- what is the feeling you like? Drill down into the elemental genre behind the design elements. Turn your wall into a trench, or darkness, or... with a great unknown hidden behind it.

( Is there icing in between the layers? )
[Brandon] We're going to leave you with some homework. Mary's got the homework for us, and it relates to the homework we gave you last time.
[Mary] All right. So last time we asked you to identify the major driving emotion of the story that you are interested in working on. What I want you to do now is I want you to think of a contrasting emotion. So essentially what you're doing is you're creating a foil plot, a foil emotion for your primary emotion. Because this is going to allow you to showcase ever... Or do a contrast between the darkness of one and the happy emotions of the other. So think about not the design elements, but think about the emotional elements and think about... You don't have to worry about our proprietary vocabulary yet. I just want you to identify the emotion that you want to elicit in yourself if you were hacking your brain.
[Brandon] Now by this point, we will have all 11 of the ideas we've come up with put on our website and we will post them such... We will put them in a place that they are easy to find each week, if you want to come glance over them again. As you can tell from this episode, we're still getting used to this terminology ourselves.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Hopefully, across the course of the year, we'll all start really using the same terminology. This is the purpose...
[Howard] I'm going to put a stake in the ground and say that by the end of the season, we will have altered some of the terminology and changed the list, because it just makes more sense.
[Mary] Yep. You guys will probably be better versed in it that we will, because we just talked about it once.
[Brandon] All right. Well, this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Current Mood: let them eat cake!

mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.1: Introduction to Elemental Genre

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/01/03/writing-excuses-11-1-introduction-to-elemental-genre/

Key Points: Season 11 is going to be different! Elemental genres. Each month, expect the first week to be an elemental drill down, second week to be a wild card, third week to be using the elemental genre in subplots, and the fourth week will be Q&A. Elemental genres are the things that make you read, the emotional resonance that drives a story. Not bookshelf genres, but elemental genres. The 11 elemental genres planned are wonder, idea, adventure, horror, mystery, thriller, humor, relationship, drama, issue, and ensemble. This is a framework for talking about what makes readers turn the page and have emotional responses, not a hard-and-fast set of categories or rules. Elemental genres let you mix-and-match underneath the veneer of the bookshelf categories.
( Underneath the veneer, they found elemental genres! )
[Brandon] But I am going to give you some homework today. Your homework is actually to take some of the films and books that you love, and I want you to try and drill down to... You don't have to really define the elemental genre, because we haven't defined all of these for you yet. But what I really want you to do is start looking at what the emotional impact of that story is. What the people who made the story are doing to you. How they're hacking your brain. Try to relate... Try to strip away the veneer and dig down at it for yourself. Pick three of those, books and films that you love, and see if you can do it. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: tweet

Profile

Writing Excuses Transcripts

April 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Syndicate

Page Summary

mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.26: Hanging Separately
mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.25: Archetypes, Ensembles, and Expectations
mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.23: Are We Stronger Together?
mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.22: Establishing the Ensemble
mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.21: Casting Your Story With Character Voice
mbarker - Writing Excuses 17.20: Basics of Ensemble Characterization
mbarker - Writing Excuses 15.50: Juggling Ensembles
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.10: Handling a Large Cast
mbarker - Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 11.52: Elemental Ensemble Q&A, with Claudia Gray
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 11.51: Ensemble As a Sub-Genre, with Lynne M. Thomas
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 11.41: The Editor's Wishlist, with Navah Wolfe
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 11.3: Layering the Elemental Genres
mbarker.livejournal.com - Writing Excuses 11.1: Introduction to Elemental Genre

Style Credit

Base style: Patsy by sforzinda
Theme: Clay Deco by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Apr. 23rd, 2025 11:16 am

Navigation

Writing Excuses Transcripts

Entries tagged with ensemble

Writing Excuses 17.26: Hanging Separately

Writing Excuses 17.25: Archetypes, Ensembles, and Expectations

Writing Excuses 17.23: Are We Stronger Together?

Writing Excuses 17.22: Establishing the Ensemble

Writing Excuses 17.21: Casting Your Story With Character Voice

Writing Excuses 17.20: Basics of Ensemble Characterization

Writing Excuses 15.50: Juggling Ensembles

Writing Excuses 13.10: Handling a Large Cast

Writing Excuses 13.8: Making Characters Distinctive

Writing Excuses 11.52: Elemental Ensemble Q&A, with Claudia Gray

Writing Excuses 11.51: Ensemble As a Sub-Genre, with Lynne M. Thomas

Writing Excuses 11.41: The Editor's Wishlist, with Navah Wolfe

Writing Excuses 11.3: Layering the Elemental Genres

Writing Excuses 11.1: Introduction to Elemental Genre

Profile

April 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags