Ensemble cast

I've been thinking so much about ensemble casts and what that means, versus I suppose a book or show that's about one or two main characters with the rest as supporting or less prominent characters.

I'm not really sure I understand the difference, especially in a novel. But I can talk about the one I just wrote, which had three truly main characters and a lot of important but secondary characters, plus a bunch of tertiary characters without whom it would have seemed like an empty environment. 

The Esker Road has Becca, Zeke, and Owen as main characters. Shea is more of an inciting incident of a person and someone who knows secrets. He's sort of a bonehead and not really interesting to me or anyone else. He plays a role, an important role, but he's not someone whose head we get inside. So he's not 1 or 2 but more 1.5.

Secondary characters go on for days. Erica, the roommate. Aaron. Pax or Paz. (Must decide.) Eleanor though she's so underdeveloped. Harriet and Finn. Jasmine and Nate. The actors on the show, also underdeveloped. There's a lot more. 

Tertiary would include the professors, the other students in classes, and so on. 

If I have an ensemble cast like I want for Current Draft, I can still have a main POV character but I have to have a group of more or less equally important characters. Somehow I'm finding this a huge challenge.

Ensemble shows are my favorite shows, no joke. DS9, Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar, Leverage, Agents of SHIELD. Or you could look at shows with a core group of four like Stargate. 

I don't have to set up shots, so who cares if there's a lot of characters? 

The only down side is it's a little harder to keep track of everyone and make sure you don't lose someone.

I LITERALLY used to use action figures when writing DS9 specs and other Star Trek specs so that I wouldn't forget about people. 

I just watched Murderbot and season one of Ted Lasso so I have thoughts about ensemble casts from there. Why do I think books are less likely to have ensemble casts? Is that true? I think it is. Even something like Murder on the Orient Express is more of a bunch of suspects than a true ensemble. They aren't working together. Well, okay, they did, but not that we see. 

Ted Lasso has a really good set of characters as an ensemble. Ted, Rebecca, Coach Beard, Nathan, Keeley, Roy, Jamie, and the Smithers guy, who seems almost unnecessary to me, like more functional than playing a role. Of course there's the rest of the team but that's secondary players who fill in around them. And the pub people. 

So seven. Firefly is nine though, Mal, Zoe, Wash, Inara, Kaylee, Book, Jayne, River, Simon. Battlestar? Roslin, Adama, Tigh, Gaeta, Starbuck, Apollo, Sharon, Helo, Chief, Baltar, Six, Helo. That's a lot. Farscape? Crichton, Aeryn, D'Argo, Zhaan, Rygel, Pilot, Chiana. Seven. DS9? Sisko, Dax, Bashir, Kira, Odo, Quark, Worf. Arguably Jake, Rom, and Nog. Morn! No, they're all secondary. So seven.    

Seven to nine characters.

I have to develop them to the point where I can see who's who and feel strongly about their stories. And it's not how I ever work. I start with one character and build the story around them as we go. At this point, I've only imagined the main character and one other. 

You can see why this is a problem. Like I know the roles. It's a space station, though near future, not sci-fi tropes, but the roles kind of overlap. Except I have a hotel and a university in an uneasy truce under the control of a megalomaniac bazillionaire. So who are our people?

If the facilty is owned or run by a third group, that's even better. Who are those people? 

Because I've worked for universities forever. There are clear distinctions in roles. Administration, facilities, faculty, office, students. I've been four of those! It's something I know well. So maybe the University should own the space station and lease half of it to the lunatic with all the money, who thinks the rules don't apply to him. 

Okay, one way to decide who you get is who you need to perform the major jobs of the place, whatever that might be. Someone to fly the ship. A doctor/healer. Someone in charge of fixing the things. And so on.

Another way is to break a human person's personality down into elements. Decision-making. Feelings and relationships. Food and survival. Communications. Fighting back. Thinking about cool things. Keeping track of stuff. Making stuff and fixing things. I would swear this is how they did Star Trek: The Next Generations. 

This project has to be a series as well as an ensemble so I want to develop an engine that will keep on running. I'm asking a lot. So it's okay it's taking a while to put together. 

Seriously, maybe I should get my action figures out. There are one zillion. They are right handy in this sea chest. They're useful shorthand for roles that characters play. Granted it would be weird to have, say, Chief O'Brien next to Roslin or Ahsoka. I don't even know if I have Roslin. Or Adama. I don't know who's in that sea chest! Could be anyone! Maybe I can glue Apollo's foot back on, though. 

I have all these Rogue One action figures. They're so good. 

Ensembles! It's a lot of work! I want this team of seven important main characters who are all interesting and different and driven in certain directions that don't mesh with what other people want!

We will figure this out. 

There should be nine people in this photo, I think.