Thursday, August 30, 2007

Cast Balancing

I think most writers try to compose interesting characters, and put a lot of work into creating an appealing cast for their story. Reading a novel with boring characters is like being locked in a room filled with everyone's least favorite aunt, the sort who wants to pinch your cheek, tsk over your clothes/weight/love life, and talk about their bunion or bowel problems without stopping for breath.

(Aunt Frances, I'm not talking about you. I promise.)

One thing I do notice about characters in novels is when the cast is unbalanced. Raise your hand if you've read a story populated by the following:

All of a kind: the characters have interchangeable or sound-alike names.

Gang Bangs: the cast consists of one female and twenty males, or one male and twenty females.

Generation gappers: the entire cast is in their twenties, or thirties, or forties, etc.

Monochromatics: all of the characters are white, or black, or Hispanic, or [insert ethnic group].

Threesomes: three siblings, three friends, or three of a kind.

Tokens: one black character in an all-white cast, one white character in an all-black cast, one gay character in an all-hetero cast, etc.

West Side Stories: all the characters are split between two opposing groups, no in-betweens.

Now before anyone starts sending me hate mail, I'm not knocking every story with these type of casts. Some of them have become a tradition in genre fiction, and I don't think they're unbalanced if they serve the story. Threesomes, for example, are the time-honored foundations for romance trilogies. If you're writing a book titled "The Last Woman on Earth" you have no choice but to use a gang bang cast. Casts for epic fantasies are prone to become West Side Stories because of the good vs. evil conflicts involved.

That said, if you're tired of the same-old same-old, and want more diversity and originality in your novels, it's a good idea to balance out your cast before you start writing the book. First, make a list of all the characters in the novel by name in alphabetical order. Then:

Ages: Note the characters' ages next to their names, and compare them. If everyone in your novel is 29, and it's not titled "Logan's Run" you might want to shift around some birthdays.

Gender: Highlight the names by sex: pink for girls, blue for boys. If you end up with a huge chunk of blue or pink, you might consider switching some of the characters' genders.

Group Dynamics: mark the members of any numbered group like a threesome among your cast. Are they individuals or blurred clones of each other? Work on how you can give them more distinct personalities so they're not so dependent on their group relationship.

Loyalties: Note whose side your characters are on. See if you have a few characters who are neutral or disagree with both sides. If you don't, think about changing around some loyalties.

Naming: Look at the characters' names to see if any sound alike or start with the same letter; readers often confuse these characters with each other. Think about changing the ones that are too close.

Race: Put a letter indicating race/ethnicity next to your characters' names. If your cast is all one race or ethnicity, and you can't logically justify it, it's monochromatic. Also, use this step to see if you've cast a token character. Unless there is a valid story reason for a monochromatic cast, consider putting a bit more racial diversity in your story.

Balancing your cast through diversification makes your characters seem more alive and natural. They become people who might exist in reality. Since that's the goal of most writers, I think it's worth the effort.

17 comments:

  1. Very good ideas, all, and since I'm plotting out a new story this will be very helpful. (Of course, a large number of the cast will die in the first chapter or three, but they might as well be a balanced cast before they die, eh?)

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  2. Thank you. This is very helpful advice.

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  3. Hmmm. Sometimes I can't get away from this blog intact :).

    I'm guilty of the "names starting with the same letter" thing. For some reason, the letter is A.

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  4. Hmmm, in my latest story I have among the usual pallid types, a Will Smith look-alike, two First Nations neutrals, a Norwegian bad guy, and, oh yes, the trolls.

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  5. Nicole wrote: (Of course, a large number of the cast will die in the first chapter or three, but they might as well be a balanced cast before they die, eh?)

    (snicker) Absolutely. I always balance the red shirts in my novels. It minimizes the reader e-mails accusing you of being a man hater, woman hater, liberal hater, conservative hater, etc.

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  6. the anti-wife wrote: This is very helpful advice.

    No problem. I save the unhelpful advice for Tuesdays. :)

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  7. Buffysquirrel wrote: Hmmm. Sometimes I can't get away from this blog intact

    Oh, the images that invokes. A novel with an all-squirrel cast....

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  8. Bernita wrote: Hmmm, in my latest story I have among the usual pallid types, a Will Smith look-alike, two First Nations neutrals, a Norwegian bad guy, and, oh yes, the trolls.

    Trolls naturally balance out the usual pallid types. :)

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  9. Heh, luckily, casting is one thing I don't have a problem with. Usually. I love diversity, and I have ridiculously diverse friends which give me grist for the character mill. Woot!

    See, this is why I eat buffet, though I can't cram in more than one plate. Gotta have a little of everything.

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  10. Loved the Logan's Run reference. :)

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  11. A novel with an all-squirrel cast....

    Yes, but how many of them are red squirrels, and how many are grey squirrels?

    My own problem seems to be that while I pick my characters to be diverse, somehow that diversity doesn't seem to really show on the page. As an example, one of my novels in progress includes a character who's Japanese. But other than his name, and his physical descripion, this doesn't really seem to affect him much.

    It's kind of like original series Star Trek. I mean, there on the bridge you had one American man, one Russian man, one Japanese man, one African woman, and one Vulcan man. Yet other than Checkov's accent and Spock's emotionlessness, did this really affect them much?

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  12. I dunno, Jules. It was pretty funny to watch a very Russian Checkov asking a very '80s (read: paranoid) cop where the "noo-clee-arr...wessels" were.

    But you're right in the original series, it wasn't really an issue. I always thought it was just to point out that those racial differences weren't supposed to matter any more, that space travel and realization of life outside our own planet had united us as humans instead of as little groups of racial cliques. Who knows?

    Story-telling wise, you are spot on. Their diversity didn't affect them at all.

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  13. I'm so glad you posted this because I now realize I have a huge cast discrepancy. I've set my story in a very racially mixed town, but all of my characters are white. How in the blazes did I miss this?!?

    So...I'm off to make some character adjustments.

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  14. Gutterball - agreed re Star Trek. I always took it to mean that racial differences no longer mattered, even when they were identifiable (eg Scotty's and Chekhov's accent, Spock's ears).

    Just wondering if it's worth considering class as part of the list and trying to include characters from several walks of life. Or is that a uniquely British obsession? :-)

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  15. If everyone in your novel is 29, and it's not titled "Logan's Run" you might want to shift around some birthdays.

    That sent the morning coffee into my sinuses. Thanks.

    And if you are under the age of 40 and you understood the Logan's Run cinematic allusion, you are entitlted to an extra piece of birthday cake.

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  16. You can have both red squirrels and grey squirrels, just not in the same scenes :). Unless you want to spread Squirrel Pox!

    One thing I used to do when I was writing short stories was to alternate the genders of secondary characters. So if the first one was male, the second one was female, and so on, regardless of whether they were doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters...whatever. This approach was inspired by Isaac Asimov, in whose short stories Every Single Secondary Character is Male.

    *climbs tree*

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  17. Interesting points. I don't think that I've done it consciously, but my casts tend to be pretty monochromatic.

    I wonder though - trying to write a diverse character cast without perhaps full inside knowledge of various different cultural traits, wouldn't some of the characters come across as stereotypes rather than the well-rounded characters writers strive to create? No more than a name and a physical description as Jules said.

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