Creating an Ensemble Cast
Creating an Ensemble Cast
By Julie Tollefson
When it comes to solving crimes, Molly MacRae is a fan of the team effort. In her Highland Bookshop Mystery series, Molly has created four protagonists, each with distinctive skills and personalities, who not only are in business together but also sleuth together when the need arises in their small Scottish town. Here, Molly shares five tips for creating a believable, balanced ensemble cast.
1) Give your characters a reason to be together — Molly’s four protagonists, each for different reasons, left their lives in the American Midwest to buy Yon Bonnie Books and its tearoom and associated B&B on the west coast of Scotland. A dream come true? Yes! But also a big move, fraught with emotion and challenges.
“When I set it up, I tried to think how that situation could actually work,” Molly says. “Who would decide to move to Scotland to run this bookstore? In fact, could Americans buy this place and live there?”
After determining what restrictions would apply, Molly created her characters to fit the situation. Two of the women are retirement aged: Janet, who is recently divorced, and Christine, who has returned to her native Scotland to care for her aging parents. Their younger business partners, Janet’s daughter Tallie and friend Summer, have had successful careers but decided to make changes in their lives.
Your ensemble cast could have any number of reasons to be together, according to Molly. They could be friends or siblings. They could share a common interest or hobby. They, like Molly’s crew, could work together. A group of people tied together in some way is all you need to start your ensemble mystery.
2) Set them apart from each other — Molly, who also writes the Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery series, takes care to give each of her protagonists their own voice. “It’s not all that different from regular characters,” she says, though with four women sharing stage time, it’s essential that each personality be strong and easily differentiated for the reader.
Each woman comes alive through choice of vocabulary and how they deliver their lines (short bursts or more long-winded). They each draw on different professional backgrounds — librarian, social worker, lawyer, and journalist — to bring their own strengths and skills to their investigations. And the multigenerational nature of the cast adds layers of opportunities to distinguish their voices and, possibly, to appeal to a wider variety of readers.
“It seems that more older women read cozy mysteries than younger women,” Molly says, and some of those readers enjoy an older protagonist. Though many cozy sleuths are younger women, the Highland Bookshop series offers both.
3) Put them on equal footing — The general idea behind creating an ensemble cast is to have multiple main characters who share equally in solving the crime. Some authors achieve this by changing the point of view in different sections of the book, allowing each character to have her say. Molly opted for a different approach, telling the stories from Janet’s perspective. “But I wanted the others to be every bit the sleuth that she is. They moved to Scotland together, and they are working together. It’s definitely a team effort.”
Among the benefits of this approach is the freedom it gives Molly to direct the investigation. When one character is busy selling scones or books, another can take the lead to investigate clues. They meet frequently, both at the bookstore and at their favorite pub, to share information. And when things get dicey in the investigation? The four women can lean on each other for safety and comfort.
4) Prepare to juggle multiple narrative threads — Like the lead in a single-protagonist work, Molly’s ensemble characters grow and change from book to book. The challenge is to track the arcs of all four and balance their storylines within and across books.
“I think Summer tends to get short shrift,” Molly says. “She’s always busy. She has to be up earlier than the others to do the baking. It’s like noticing the quiet child in a class or at a birthday party. If you can, you find ways to give that child a chance to participate and, even better, a chance to shine. For Summer, I went with a couple of her strengths. She plays a mean game of darts, which is a handy skill in certain situations. I’ve also been giving her more opportunities to interact with suspects by writing human interest stories for the local paper.”
5) Like your characters, despite their flaws — The women of Yon Bonnie Books work together, play together, and sleuth together. All of that togetherness inevitably leads to friction from time to time. They become cranky. They worry about each other, and the worry can be smothering, especially to the younger women.
In other words, they have the same complicated relationships as any large group, whether family or work mates. And that suits Molly.
“You have to like all of them, if you’re going to keep them around from book to book,” she says. “You might not want to be best friends with all of them, but the author has to be able to play well with them even if they don’t play well with each other.”