Reading is Joy: The challenge of ensemble casts

A close look at Ann Napolitano's DEAR EDWARD and Tommy Orange's THERE THERE

Hello and happy Friday, friends! I have some deep thoughts on a few books for you today, but before that a few announcements:

• The storytelling performance was absolutely amazing. I’m grateful to all the storytellers who shared and the members of the community to came to witness. There is some audio of this wonderful evening I can’t wait to share with you. And stay tuned for info on more storytelling classes and performances!

• If you’d like to spend a summer Saturday in a writing class, I’m offering flash fiction and memoir at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro. There is always financial aid available for my offerings—for more information, contact Rachel Pottern Nunn.

Speaking of story, I’d like to share with you two amazing athletic moments from recent weeks.

The first is Rafael Nadal’s first round loss at the French Open. Rafa has won the French Open 14 times, and this was the first time ever he’d lost in the first round. Rafa’s career is winding down—he said explicitly he wasn’t sure if he’d be back next year—and although I expected his speech after to be incredibly sad, he told a different story, one about all the glory and joy he’d experienced at Roland Garros and how grateful he was for that. There are so many ways to shape a story.

The second extraordinary moment I’d like to share with you is Bruhat Soma’s spell-off performance, which clinched him the win of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. For 90 seconds, Bruhat embodied near perfection, at least when it comes to spelling. I insist you watch, and live in the story of a 12-year-old boy absolutely triumphing.

I also want to shout out 2nd place speller Faizan Zaki, who asked to take a few deep breaths before his turn at spell-off and did just that on national television. A big hell yeah to asking for and taking what we need—that’s a story too.

Sports are so appealing because they offer a story we are hungry for, that of human excellence. Competitors’ extraordinariness encourages us to believe in our own. I won’t ever spell 29 words in 90 seconds or qualify for the French Open, but if a human can do that, what can I do? Maybe finish this novel I’m writing?!

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Today I want to dig into novels with ensemble casts, but before I do that, I want to offer a little reading morsel to those of you who don’t have much time or attention. I’m subscribed to a newsletter called Enthusiasms that each week features a beautifully written snapshot of a moment (nonfiction). Recently, it was about a neighbor named Mario. Well worth 2 minutes of your time.

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Now, let’s talk about ensemble casts and how to handle them. We’ll start by getting clear on what the hell I mean by “ensemble cast.”

Ensemble casts give us a bunch of characters with almost equal airtime. Instead of having one or two main characters we follow closely, we get to know four or six or twelve individuals and get caught up in their respective narrative arcs—what they want, what’s in their way, how it all turns out for them.

I’m a little bit obsessed with ensemble casts because I think they’re really hard to do well. I’m having enough of a time with fully imagining and conveying two main characters and making the side characters three-dimensional. The authors who take on a lot more than that always impress me.

Accordingly, I was recently very impressed by Ann Napolitano’s Dear Edward, which is beautifully written, incredibly economical, and yet rife with emotion. I was hooked on the thing almost instantly.

In the first four pages, Napolitano introduces Edward, his parents Bruce and Jane, and his brother Jordan, going through the very mundane task of airport security. We watch 15-year-old Jordan resist the scanner (“‘There are four reasons I’m not going through this machine. Would you like to hear them?’”) and the accompanying discomfort it creates in Edward, Dad, and Mom. In this short intro, we also learn about the deep connection between the brothers, that Bruce’s hair went white the year he became a dad, that Edward hasn’t held his mother’s hand in a year, that the family is moving from NYC to LA, and that this is a post 9/11 world, the mention of which is heavier given that this is a book about a plane crash. Napolitano crams the pages with information that grounds us, builds tension, and incites emotion, all without feeling unwieldy.

Then, while Jordan is being patted down, we meet Crispin Cox, one of the ensemble cast of passengers. After a line break, Napolitano shoots us over to the gate, where — in the space of three and a half more pages — we meet five more characters who are the rest of the ensemble cast, the individuals whose backstory and emotions we will regularly visit with as the book unfolds.

We meet Linda Stollen, who has a pregnancy test in her purse (drama, anyone?). Over the next two pages, we learn that Bruce was denied tenure at Columbia and the move to LA is for Jane’s job at a movie studio. Woah, feelings—disappointment, hope, possibility, uncertainty. Then Napolitano whips us through the rest of the ensemble cast:

Her bells chime with each step. She is tall, Filipino, and solidly built. Tiny beads decorate her dark hair. She’s singing to herself. The words are fair…Glory, Grace, Hallelujah, Love…

A black solder in uniform…six foot five and as wide as a chest of drawers…his grandmother will see…the fight with Gavin…the bullet that punctured his side two weeks later, and the colostomy bag that blocks that hole now…Benjamin…has spent his entire life hiding truths from everyone, including himself…

These quick descriptions are both informative and create a lot of curiosity in the reader.

Then, in the next two paragraphs, we meet a flight attendant with red lipstick, and a successful businessman named Mark Lassio. This plane is chockablock with humanity. At this point, we are ten pages into the book.

There’s something clever happening in the way Napolitano stages her info delivery. The first mention of each of these characters is small, with just enough information for us to start to hang onto the character and develop some curiosity. She skips drowning us immediately in info that we won’t absorb.

Instead, she lets the first chapter go on for another ten pages, in which she loops back to each of these characters and doles out a few more little bites of information:

In first class, Mark Lassio has arranged his seat area with precision…He’s on his way to California to close a major deal…His nickname at the office is the Hammer.

Linda…plans to introduce herself to strangers in California as Belinda. It’s part of her fresh beginning: an improved version of herself, with an improved name.

By the end of the first chapter, we know all the major characters (though the least about Veronica the flight attendant) and we are told what each character is anticipating and struggling with. Aka tension. The pages are as packed as, well, the overhead bins on a commercial flight.

So how exactly — on a line level — does Napolitano pull this off? She starts by seguing from the family to the passengers with this line:

“Look at that woman over there,” Jane says. “There are bells sewn into the hem of her skirt. Can you imagine wearing something that makes a jingly sound every time you move?”

This is almost a forehead smack moment from the writer perspective. How do you pivot from one character to another quickly, efficiently, without it feeling obtrusive? You make the first character notice the second character and say something about them.

From there, she uses the paragraph breaks. We go from a paragraph that starts “Crispin’s nurse fusses over him” to the next paragraph, which starts “Benjamin boards the plane with his head down” to the next paragraph, which starts with “The Adler family unknots near the door.” The camera simply hopping from person to person, without explanation or complication—it feels natural, the way you might scan the passengers at a gate when you arrive.

A few pages later we have the same thing. Here are the first lines of three successive paragraphs:
“Bruce Adler looks at his boys”
“Benjamin shifts in his cramped seat”
“Linda finds herself engaged in a strange and exhausting abdominal exercise”

In some places, Napolitano lingers, giving us a few paragraphs on whoever she is landing on. But when she wants to move on, she just…jumps to the next person.

Transitions are a thing that flummox many of my students and my (sometimes infuriating) advice is if you’re having trouble going from one place to the next just…go there. Don’t write a transition. Just start right in on the next thing you want to talk about.

(Like this:)

I also recently read Tommy Orange’s masterful debut There There, which approaches the ensemble cast a little bit differently. There are a total of twelve characters in this book, and Orange writes from each of their POVs.

I think it’s worth listing these characters’ names, which give you a sense of their diversity, as well as the fact that this text is centered on Native characters:

Tony Loneman, Dene Oxendene, Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, Edwin Black, Bill Davis, Calvin Johnson, Jacquie Red Feather, Orvil Red Feather, Octavio Gomez, Daniel Gonzales, Blue, and Thomas Frank.

Mechanically, this book works differently than Dear Edward. Where Napolitano is head-hopping from paragraph to paragraph, Orange does it more simply: each chapter starts with the name of the character it follows. He doesn’t have to worry about the transitions or movements from one character to the next.

I will make a guess that this somewhat simpler format gave Orange more time and energy to focus on developing and differentiating these voices. Most writers have had the experience in an early draft of having a few characters sound the same—it takes time and effort to distinguish and deepen. I’ll also guess that Orange may have found this easier than some of us might.

Either way, the outcome is pretty astonishing. These characters are different ages, genders, and backgrounds, and have different longings and ways to fulfill those longings. They have fully realized backstories, forward arcs, and completely distinct voices that are thick and deep and sound really fucking real:

Dene Oxendene takes the dead escalator two steps at a time at the Fruitvale Station. When he makes it up to the platform, the train he thought he was missing comes to a stop on the opposite side. A single drop of sweat drips down the side of his face from out of his beanie…He wants a cigarette that invigorates. He wants a drug that works. He refuses to drink. Smokes too much weed. Nothing works.

Orange also pulls the ensemble together differently. In Dear Edward, the characters start assembled—they show up for a flight at the appointed time and are soon in a controlled environment for a fixed journey. In There There, Orange introduces us to all these characters separately, and over the course of the book their connections to one another are slowly revealed. We don’t see them all in the same place until the climax of the book, when they converge at a powwow taking place at the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum.

The climax is pretty technically astonishing—the choreography of all these characters in that space is elegant (and heartbreaking). Again, I find ensemble casts really hard to tackle and Orange does it seemingly effortlessly.

I’m guessing most of you read There There (if not, put it on your list) and probably are aware that Orange recently published a sequel of sorts called Wandering Stars that is getting rave reviews. I also have heard great things about Napolitano’s latest Hello Beautiful.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any of these books or other examples of ensemble casts you’ve encountered (there are so many), so please share in the comments. Happy reading, friends.