Tips for Writing an "Ensemble" Novel??

jhill said:

I don't want to lose the reader. I realize if it's all poignant, and interesting, and done right it could work.
...I guess, does anyone have any examples? Know of any books that work like that? Any tips??
Thanks!

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Is there anything else to provide cohesion, like a common plotline, a common goal, a common setting? Do the characters interact regularly?

It's really, really hard to do that and maintain cohesion. If this is your first novel, I recommend writing one with just one or two povs before tackling this. You might be surprised how easily you can make mulitple characters sparkle despite using just one point of view.

jhill said:

The book has a lot of "isolation" type scenes that would make that difficult...hmm...

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That makes it tricky, but you can report a lot of what happened "off screen" with dialog. Also helps you practice slow reveals and giving minimal information for maximum impact.

James Ellroy does this well. He'll alternate between multiple MCs and each may have a subplot, but they all have a unifying goal or motive. It can be done well. My current WIP is kind of like this, it alternates between characters and locations in their common goal, but from different perspectives.

Winesburg, Ohio is a masterful example of several POVs working together to tell a central story (though it could be argued, and I'd agree, that while George Willard's plot line is prominent, each story truly has its own meaning and feel)

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman features a bunch of separate characters who never meet until the end (and in some cases don't really interact even then), though they're all dealing with the same problem, one way or another.

Carl Hiaasen does this effortlessly as well. As a style I love it when multiple story lines all end up tying into each other at the end.

Someone mentioned it in another thread, but it actually applies here very well too! It's a YA (not sure if you read that), kind of Caper/Heist/fictional/semi fantasy series called Artemis Fowl and the author Eoin Colfer does an excellent job of writing an ensemble cast and tying multiple plotlines all together.

One thing I did to make sure I didn't hop all over the place with POV when I wrote a novel with a bunch of characters was to split the cast into ranked groups and then give the 3rd person limited POV to the highest ranked person in the scene.

So the hero was in a group of one. If she was in a scene then, barring her being unconscious or something, or some other very good reason, she got the POV.

The next group had the villain, the hero's sidekick and the love interest.

Next group was people like the villain's main lieutenants, the love interest's best friend and friends/allies of the sidekick. Basically characters who didn't interact with the hero a lot, but were important parts of sub-plots supporting the main one, and usually interacted a lot with the second rank characters. All people who did important things in the story without being main characters.

After that there was everyone else who had a name and something to do in the story, rather than being a walk on. They only got the POV very rarely. Though a couple of them were great fun when they did.

It was very useful. Of course if there were two equal ranked characters in the scene they had to fight it out for who got POV.

And it let me do some sneaky things. For example the sidekick character had a secret agenda that wasn't revealed until later in the story, though there were hints she was up to something. So it suited me to stay out of her POV as much as possible, to keep her secret. Since most of her scenes were with the hero, then that meant she was usually outranked, so didn't get much POV for the first 2/3 of the story without it being too obvious that I was hiding what she had going on.

Brickcommajason said:

It's really, really hard to do that and maintain cohesion. If this is your first novel, I recommend writing one with just one or two povs before tackling this. You might be surprised how easily you can make mulitple characters sparkle despite using just one point of view.

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A lot of people have made some good points thus far. I do agree with Brick(about how hard it is to maintain that cohesion in a story with multiple POVs) and I'll add my own experience(with isn't much thus far.)

In my current WIP, I have three characters that are vital to the story as a whole. I've been kicking around the idea of making it a three POV story through each of these characters(one per chapter/scene, etc) but for now I'm going to just concentrate on the character I feel is the most important(in moving the story forward.) Yes, the other two characters are vital to his story and they both have their own story arcs as well(which connect and persuade his own journey) but personally, I don't feel comfortable in where I'm at in my writing yet to pull off the multiple POV. Perhaps I'll finish the draft, let it sit, and then edit it into a multiple POV arc but one step at a time.

For me, this is only my 2nd attempt at writing a novel -- my 1st attempt produced a 40-45K draft that still needs a lot of work -- so I'm kind of new to this. If you're more comfortable in your writing perhaps you could pull off the multiple POV easier.

Doesn't GRRM do this too? In my WIP the characters have an overarching goal, but since some may have more resources than others or be in different locations the story follows each group differently.