These are notes I took from a wonderful writing symposium called Life, the Universe and Everything. We have a lot of talented people in Utah and visitors with a great deal of knowledge. Any Misinformation is the fault of the note taker.

Ensemble examples:
– The Lord of the rings is an example
– Some epics fantasy with 3-5 point of view.
– Some characters who each have unique skills or different opinions. Like movie heist.
– If you only have one character the world will not feel big.
– Endor’s game is an example of an ensemble cast.
– How to deal with group dynamics? Pick the one who might have a good punch line for humor.
– Tend to balance characters that are balanced with screen time. Try to connect the other characters around a certain middle person and revolving around that central character. That center person acts as the eye of the hurricane.
– When writing a bunch of characters I try to make them distinct. If you remove all the dialog tabs can the reader tell who is speaking?
– A way to make characters different. They have different goals and different characters. Helps their respond differently from one another.
– When you reach a point in your writing, that you don’t care what happens to a character, something is wrong.
– Game of Thrones: the characters seem to continue to transform themselves.
– In a story, the characters are moving as a group for a certain goal in a scene. But they are also running mini directions as individuals keep the reader engaged.
– One author will use a word in one scene that illustrates one character’s point of view and then uses the same word in the first paragraph of the next sense that illustrates from a completely different point of view.
– Robert Craze author has a reoccurring detective. The detective chapters are in the first person and the other character chapters are in the third person.
– The more point of view characters the more difficult assignments you give yourself and it can become unwieldy. Need to make all the characters are interesting
– As writers, be careful in projecting ourselves into our writing i.e.: an angry white male.
– Guardian of the galaxy: rocket and Grut stand out with no other characters that are furry and a tree. Snappy bits odd dialog that define them.
– Rocket and Grut are already buddies and they are invested in the same goal.
– They are all working tougher to escape. Epic fantasy usually has multiple characters.

Want to add to the list? Please do so in the comment section of this blog.