15.50: Juggling Ensembles

Your Hosts: Brandon, Victoria, Dan, and Howard

Our listeners have asked about how we handle managing a large cast of characters. This is something we’ve all struggled with, and sometimes we’ve failed at it pretty spectacularly. In this episode we talk about how we turned our failures into learning, and what we do today to keep our ensembles in line and our stories on track.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Take something you’ve written, something with a cast of at least three characters, and change the point-of-view and/or main character.

This is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

4 thoughts on “15.50: Juggling Ensembles”

  1. This episode will be so useful when I finish editing my outline. I plan on having several main characters but two POV characters.

    Also, do any of y’all know of any good horror, mystery, and/or suspense stories that are novella length or shorter and can stand alone? I am trying to write a suspense mystery with horror as a subgenre, but I do not know where to begin.

  2. This week, Brandon, Dan, and Howard met for the last time with Victoria, to talk about how to manage large casts, ensemble casts. Decide who you are going to ignore? Grow your cast in stages? Use those cues and shorthand tricks? Sometimes, a caricature is just fine! Let readers imagine things… Lots of ideas and suggestions, available now in the transcript in the archives.

  3. Noooo not the last episode with Victoria!!! I learned so many new things from the episodes with her and I loved Addie LaRue, my favorite book I’ve read this year. Appreciate the time you all put into these podcasts, thank you!

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