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dearwriters · 1 year

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Hi there.

I was wondering if you have any advice on balancing an ensemble cast? As in, how do you manage having, say, 6 pov characters without the reader getting bored, impatient, or forgetting a character until it's a chapter of theirs again?

Thank you for the work you do :)

How to Balance an Ensemble Cast

Hey, thank you for your question! While I personally do not have a lot of experience writing ensemble casts, I think the following points would be helpful to consider when planning/writing one:

Getting into the characters Point of View: Lenses and Distinct Voices

One of the most important things about Multi-POV-narratives is to give each character a distinct voice so they don't just bleed into each other. This concerns:

a) the content of their narration: Ask yourself: What is this characters "lense", their specific frame of reference through which they see the events? This can depend on their background, their interests, knowledge, viewpoint etc. How do they see the world differently than the others? Try to imprint the narration of the POVs with the characters personality, especially if you are writing in first person. A very sarcastic character would view the same events quite differently as a very optimistic, bubbly character. Different characters would notice different things. This can be established by something as simple as focus points: maybe an artistic character narrates a lot about the colours around them and a detective character is very perceptive about peoples body language or stuff like that. Maybe the soldier is focused on battle strategies and the details of their surroundings, all while their love-interest is focused on them.

b) the form of their narration: Best case szenario, you would be able to identify who is talking, just based on their voice. This should be noticable in dialouge but also in narration. A very academic character would maybe use a slightly different vocabulary than a character who's more about street smarts. How do their speech patterns correlate to their person and background? Another example: In the popular contemporary novel "The Flatshare" one of the POV characters isn't really talkative. The author chose to reflect that in their narration via a fragmented narration style, using as little adjectives and full sentences as possible, while still keeping things readable. You can find more information about Character Voice in this post.

Overall, when it comes to differentiating between POVs, ask yourself: How can the personality, believes and expertise of a character affect the way they see the world and thus the way they narrate?

Anchoring your Scene

This is a little tip I picked up from the YouTube channel of author Sacha Black (great writing advice, check her out!). Multiple POVs can be quite challenging, especially if there are time/place jumps between the POVS. Thus, to not confuse your reader, it is important to quickly establish who is talking, where they are and when they are. Person, place, time. This needs to be clear so the reader isn't lost (unless it's your goal to confuse your reader, which would certainly be a valid goal). In some books the chapter header indicates POV, which is a very quick and easy way to establish at least one of those factors, but there are other ways to do this.

Making every POV count

If you want to avoid your readers being bored or even skipping POVs it's important to actually have a distinct reason of evers POV to exist. Thus, everybody needs a piece of the puzzle for the plot. Just like in the point about lenses and voices, you can use the differnt personalities, backgrounds and knowledges of your characters to let them uncover and drive different pieces of the story. Every POV character needs a reason to be here and a way to contribute.

Having multiple POVs is actually a great way to create tension, because the reader will know a lot of information not every character knows. It's the old Hitchcock-principle of letting the reader know about a bomb under the table the characters don't know anything about. Use the distribution and retention of information to your advantage.

Furthermore, everyone needs their own character arcs. A compelling character is all abouts goals, motivations and conflicts (more about the whole "GMC"-concept in this post) that tie them to the bigger story as well as having their own wants and needs (check out this post if you like) plus having flaws and the corresponding concequences (more about that in this post).

Those are just some of the big things I'd recommend you to think about. I hope this helped!

Have fun writing!

#dearwriters #writing advice #writing help #writing tips #writblr #multi pov #ensamble cast

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abramsicon · 4 months

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ooi, faz pack model selfie e mirror selfie + header de the flatshare, the cruel prince? por favor, l obrigada

💌; pack the cruel prince, the flatshare farei em breve.

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maddiesflame · 2 years

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