The Ensemble Piece
May. 12th, 2008 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranThere's a certain class of writing that I'd like to master one day, but which is basically still a mystery to me.
It's what I'd describe as the ensemble piece, and it usually revolves around a fixed cast of characters in a particular setting. Instead of being driven by any one character's development, the story is propelled simply by the different characters reactions and interactions starting from the initial premise.
The beauty of this type of story is that once you have the right cast, you can get new stories just by adding new stimuli. Or at least that's how it looks from the outside - I've no idea how they actually get written internally. Now that I've got my comic village set up, what would happen if someone starts a cycling craze? What if someone discovers a gold mine nearby? What would each character do and how would the other characters react to them?
I would guess that the key is having a strong enough web of relationships that every action starts a chain reaction - taken to the extreme, like the house of Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. There's also the appeal of having the same characters turning up again and again in new situations, like the way the Tompson Twins and Bianca Castafiore keep showing in Tintin stories, or the way the same inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork deal with the latest topic of the month in the later Discworld books.
It's what I'd describe as the ensemble piece, and it usually revolves around a fixed cast of characters in a particular setting. Instead of being driven by any one character's development, the story is propelled simply by the different characters reactions and interactions starting from the initial premise.
The beauty of this type of story is that once you have the right cast, you can get new stories just by adding new stimuli. Or at least that's how it looks from the outside - I've no idea how they actually get written internally. Now that I've got my comic village set up, what would happen if someone starts a cycling craze? What if someone discovers a gold mine nearby? What would each character do and how would the other characters react to them?
I would guess that the key is having a strong enough web of relationships that every action starts a chain reaction - taken to the extreme, like the house of Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. There's also the appeal of having the same characters turning up again and again in new situations, like the way the Tompson Twins and Bianca Castafiore keep showing in Tintin stories, or the way the same inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork deal with the latest topic of the month in the later Discworld books.
