1. Lea`Brooks

    Lea`Brooks Contributor Contributor

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    How many characters is too many?

    Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Lea`Brooks, Apr 7, 2018.

    In my fantasy WIP, I have a shit ton of characters.

    Essentially a bunch of women are kidnapped and put through a series of trials orchestrated by demons. One woman is eliminated after every trial until there is only one winner. There are seven demons and fifteen women. The idea was to write a chapter or two in the perspective of most of the women, that way the reader doesn't really know who the main character is and who is going to win. Four of them will be eliminated very early (within the first five chapters) so I'm not too worried about building up their characters for the reader. Three others are eliminated fairly quickly after that. Then the rest of the story will focus on the remaining eight.

    My concern is that the reader will get confused with too many people thrown at them too quickly. I could make only four or five of the women actual POV characters to avoid too much head hopping.. But there's still a lot of people to introduce. Even though some of them will be more in the background than others (I only consider five of them really important), I don't want to confuse the reader too much with too many names and personalities.

    Any suggestions on the best way to go about this? Or should I just cut my character down significantly? I can cut the number of women down, but the demons HAVE to stay at seven. It's essential to the story.

    Thanks!
     
  2. TWErvin2

    TWErvin2 Contributor Contributor

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    If you ask me, 15 or so POVs, especially reserving them for characters that will be zapped out early in the book, might be too much. How will the reader differentiate who is who, and end up caring? Does it have to be a mystery which woman will survive? That doesn't mean it cannot be accomplished.

    I guess it depends on the POV used. Harry Turtledove, in his alternate history World War series has a load of characters, but their situations and stations are different. Each one isn't either a demon or a female prisoner. Maybe read and take notes on books with a large cast of central characters, and see how those authors deal with them.

    Actions and who they are can make a notable impression, helping readers keep things straight. Also, the relationship of one female to others can help. If the demons were 'rooting' for one to win or lose, that might help as well.

    The thing is, introducing in any depth, and using a POV, only in a way that advances the pot, I think, is what to focus on. Not giving equal time to the final eight.

    That's my two cents, but maybe really only worth a quarter of that.
     
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  3. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    Five is still a lot less than fifteen. I'd cut it down to just them -- for POVs, I mean. I think having the larger group of disposable non-POV characters is fine.
     
  4. cherrya

    cherrya Active Member

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    It's just a feeling you get when you notice you've been focusing too much on trying to place yet another backstory into the story instead of focusing on the plot. Trust your instincts, characters are arguably as important of the plot, but it needs to be balanced.

    Obviously to not be too chaotic some will have to be less important than others, so I would put more emphases on the active ones (those that move the plot the most) than some others. We don't need to know everything about every character, we don't even need to know all of their names.

    That being said, there is one thing I can think of that managed to pull of multiple characters, each with equal importance to story, masterfully. It's a japanese novel named Baccano, which was also been adapted into an anime.

    I think the reason why we have no difficulty figuring out who is who is because they each have different aspects to their personalities that makes all of them interesting in a very different way. The only reason why I think it didn't turn into a complete mess is that none of it was pushed into the reader. It was slowly and cleverly added into the story as the plot moved forward. I don't know how to explain this well... For example, they're all on a train and one of them is a child. He's described as a plain looking kid talking to a rich lady, which peaks out curiosity (so the next time we see him we remember him) and the story moves forwards. We see him again and he's smiling politely, we assume he's a nice kid, but the story moves forward again and we learn that he's a massive liar. From there, we now know that he's manipulative, more mature than he looks and unpredictable. What's interesting about that is that the author not only managed to get us to know his character without needing to use the boring "He had brown hair and blue eyes", but to remember him and want to know more about him by not revealing everything right away.

    I think I let myself go a little bit. I'll be honest I'm procrastinating on a paper, but I still hope this helps somehow. English isn't my first language so this might not be perfectly clear.
     
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  5. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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  6. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    It really depends on the length of your story, it's scope, it's genre and the POV style that you use. I generally think the more intimate the POV the less characters should have it. I use a third-person that is sort of filtered through various character viewpoints which allows perspective but also makes it feel more natural to switch fluidly because it's not nominally tied to any characters and was never too closely wedded to them. It also means I can have elements of things beyond their opinion or knowledge that expand the sense it more looking into their perspective than being tired to it.
     
  7. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    I've said this before. I think this entire thing is a solid idea. Given the premise, and given movies with a similar broad theme (bunch of people trying to survive together until the remaining one), anywhere between ten and twenty sounds reasonable. The nice part is you can still develop the final eight even in the first few chapters through the other POVs. In line with this, you can try to partition characters. Like, Sam, Nicole, and Beth are all in bed with the flu, so we're not really paying attention to them. Or, Sam, Nicole, and Beth are known collectively as the losers, and treated as a unit. Something like that.
     
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  8. Lea`Brooks

    Lea`Brooks Contributor Contributor

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    Thank you! Honestly, you've been the big driving force for why I keep moving forward with this story. And, you'll be happy to hear, it's no longer a dating game! I've changed it so that the demons just get bored, so they pick two people each (sometimes it's girls, sometimes it's boys) to play these games. And if their person wins, they gets to choose which demon gets replaced (and killed). I'm also playing with the seven deadly sins and how everyone has the potential to become a villain.

    Anyway! Yes. I have clusters of women that stick together. A few are the "mean girls," a few are the nice ones, but most of them stay quiet and out of the way. Out of the final five I focus on, two are mean, two are nice, and one we know barely anything about because she's so quiet.

    Most girls get very little attention before they are eliminated. But writing from the different perspectives will give other insight into these mean or quiet girls that just one character wouldn't see, since she sticks to get own group.

    This change in my story has forced me to do some major rewriting and outlining changes, but... I think it'll be worth it. The story will be much stronger because of it.
     
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  9. RaitR_Grl

    RaitR_Grl Member

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    I agree. Take a look at what George R.R. Martin did, especially in the first three ASOIAF books. In the first one alone he had 8 POV characters. By the next he introduced us to a few more and even more in the third. Sure, he had quite a few one-time POV characters in books 4 and 5, but when it comes to studying the use of multiple POVs, I'd recommend looking at the first 2 or 3, specifically focusing on how often each character's POV comes up and which POV character features the most action sequences.

    Good luck!
     
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  10. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    I love a large cast of characters. And I don't think you have too many from what you've said. I do wonder why you're not writing in omniscient instead of from multiple POVs. I wrote a short story with a good ten or so characters given equal weight and the only way I was able to do it was by using an omniscient narrator so it wouldn't get confusing.
     
  11. Odile_Blud

    Odile_Blud Active Member

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    Odd. I just started an idea very similar to yours, but mine is a battle royale and all of the characters are male. I have sixteen, but I am comfortable with what I have going on as I've made sure each character plays a role and has their own history and part in the battle both on an emotional and action level, so there are no red shirts. I make sure everyone has an equal amount of "screen time" so that characters are not forgotten. For this one, I decided to write in omniscient third. I personally am not of fan of writing this way, but the reason I have chosen this is because it will allow me some distance so I can get a good glimpse at all the characters without the worry of head hopping. It also makes it easier to have multiple main characters, and I think it creates more suspense as far as who is going to win. So you might consider omniscient third if you are willing to write that way.

    I don't think you have too many characters, I just think it depends on what you're doing with them and how you handle them. With the kind of story it sounds like you are writing, I think that multiple characters like that are necessary.

    Don't know if you are into anime, but I would suggest Juni Taisen. It's a battle royale anime, not a book, but it does a great job juggling 12 different characters as well as developing them, and there are multiple main characters.
     
  12. Lawless

    Lawless Active Member

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    If you need a large number of characters, one trick that might be helpful is to make characters occasionally reminisce on other characters. Like, A mentions Jane and B asks: "Jane? Was she the one who looked/did so-and-so? I have already forgotten." And A says: no, she's the one who... Or someone gossips about someone. Things like that. It'll help the reader remember who is who. And it is perfectly plausible for the characters to occasionally fail to remember something.
     
  13. grimshawl

    grimshawl Member

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    I would suggest reading some well done horror/slasher books/stories because they deal with similar delimas. You might find some clues/techniques there.
     
  14. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    I had about 15 major characters in E&D, of whom five made it all the way to the end. Three were killed off, appropriately for two, but one generated some angst. Nobody expected his demise, and all the readers were getting to really like him, wondering what his new life would be like... then we killed him off and gave him a funeral, as best one can when on the run on the road. the others played major roles in the story, but then were dropped off at some destination or remained where they were. This was a 17,000 mile trek 2,000 years ago, so they met a LOT of interesting people.

    The answer is that you can have as many characters in the story as you need, if you introduce them a few at a time, and make sure they play active roles.
     
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  15. LastMindToSanity

    LastMindToSanity Contributor Contributor

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    Well, Twitter says it's anything over 140, but I think it's changed to anything over 280.

    Hope this helps!
     
  16. TwistedHelix

    TwistedHelix Member

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    Surely it is more about filler/memory of the reader?

    Too many POV characters leads to two outcomes;
    1. undeveloped and nobody cares for them.
    2. Developed properly but has a 500k word count, which not many wish to read.

    In terms of memory, think about when you start a job at a new place, and someone walks you into the office and says "Here's Jeff, Sarah, James, Tony, Mark, Lisa, Tina, Bob, Harry, Anna, Gemma, Jon and Mike" you just think "shit, I remember Lisa and Bob, was that Mark? No that was Tony...." That someone has been working with these people for years and can ream off their names. You have not been working with them - so you cannot recount anywhere near as fluidly.

    Same principle. If you switch POV too often the reader will get confused. It is incredibly difficult backing off from your own story, but it is imperative that you do. You have a perfect minds eye as the author, the reader does not. You have spent weeks/months/years thinking of your characters, and know their future, and their ordeals, and usually you have drawn these characters from your own trials and tribulations, giving them huge subjective emotional value.

    The reader has not.

    Due to this, it can be easy to write multiple POV's with your extensive knowledge of the characters, and reading the sentences with that knowledge, and it feels good, you feel the character is inviting.
    A new pair of eyes without that knowledge just thinks "what the hell is happening here?"

    It can be quite destroying, but is normal. My first edit was filled with them saying "So what is that? This bit here explains X, why?" and I realised I had the knowledge of those blanks but never wrote it into the story.

    Technically 15 could be done, but to get a perfect mix of properly developed and not 500k words you will have to be extremely proficient at concise writing where a sentence is structured in a way it gives the reader a paragraph of perspective and understanding. Some truly great work is out there that has done this, however is dependent on the readers capability at that point.
     
  17. Leishua

    Leishua Member

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    I have a lot of characters for mine as well, right now what i'm doing is i'm spending the first 3 chapters with only a few characters as i build up the setting to the readers and from there i'll expand it out. I did the world building first and selected a protagonist which best described the world and the story and try to keep the POV in his view and the view of a few other characters. The rest are there but they aren't really focused but they contribute when they need to the story
     
  18. Moon

    Moon Contributor Contributor

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    Always thought that anymore than 3 povs would make one less invested in the story. At least, that's how it is for me. Too many points of view make me lose any caring for the story/characters.
     
  19. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    E&D got two awards that say 15 characters can be done, and done well, and my reviews give high marks to characterization. But it has to be done with either skill or luck. Since this was my first book, with no formal schooling in the art, it had to be the latter. But you make a good point, @TwistedHelix, you have to introduce them a few at a time, relevant to the settings. Changes to the POV should always be accompanied by a change of scene to somewhere else, where the previous POV cannot see what is going on and is totally unaware of those events.

    A number of successful authors deal well with multiple characters: David Poyer's naval fiction has about as many as mine, if not more so: maybe 30, though most are minor players. Nevertheless, the reader gets to know them as well as the lead characters, and many of them i.e., "Terror" Terranova, the female radar operator on the USS Savo Island in Tipping Point and Onslaught, was in the last two books and will probably be in the third. He changes POV about as often, and in the same way, as I do. And 40 books in as many years are pretty good credentials.

    Diane Gabaldon also has a lot of characters in the Outlander series, though her first person POV is almost always Claire. She does shift POV to someone else on occasion to a close third, but only when Claire is not around. And George R. R. Martin and GOT, Tolkien and LOTR ... enough said.
     
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  20. cutecat22

    cutecat22 The Strange One Contributor

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    Hmmm.
    I think it's more important to tell the story, and tell it well.

    For instance, you say that at least four of the women will be dispatched rather quickly, so instead of writing from their point of view, write "their" story from the POV of one of the other women who's watching all this happen. You can use that to portray her sense of fear for her own life as it grows nearer to her turn. Doing this will make your reader concentrate on fewer characters and the probability that they will find an emotional attachment to that character.

    But that doesn't mean you have to go straight to the main character, or the overall winner/survivor. You could concentrate on writing from the POV of maybe three of the women, then the reader won't necessarily know which one will survive.

    In my first fiction, I wrote from two POVs. They were both main characters. The female, I wrote in first person present while the male was written in third person omni, which gave me the chance to explore a few of the other characters. But, my readers always knew which POV they were reading from as I told them. I've seen this done (after me) by another author who wrote their book without the POV indicator, and with the characters having same tense/person - it didn't always work.

    When I wrote the second fiction, I knew I wanted to incorporate more characters. Again, I wrote the female mc in first person present, and all the others, in third person omni, with indicators for the changes in POV. It works.

    In the second book, I have around 20 named characters, 6 of which, have prominent POV's.
     
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  21. Andrejs Brivulis

    Andrejs Brivulis New Member

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    You could help the reader tell appart the POVs by telling a new POV in a new chapter and name that chapter in the name of the character.
    George R.R Martin in Game of Thrones names each chapter the name of the character it’s about and it can help a lot.
     
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  22. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    I feel like in this story it might be interesting to do POVs, at least close third-person, of some of the characters who die so it's less obvious they will die. Make them like decoy protagonists even. That's always fun.
     
  23. Samunderthelights

    Samunderthelights Active Member

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    I see a few people mentioning Game of Thrones, but I haven't read it. I did try to watch it, but there were too many people being introduced all at once, and I struggled to keep up with who belonged to which family and all that, and eventually I gave up. Too many characters can turn people off your story, whether it's a tv-show or a book.
    I did read the Percy Jackson / Heroes of Olympus series, and there's a lot of characters in there. And it's written from different characters POV's. But in those books, I did manage to keep up, because they didn't all get thrown in all at once. They got introduced slowly, or through one character's POV. So you got to know the characters first, before you had to read through their POV. So what I'm trying to say is, if you are going to write that many different characters, and a lot of different POV's, don't throw them at your readers all at once, because it can just get very confusing and turn them off your story very quickly.
     
  24. Dracon

    Dracon Contributor Contributor

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    On number of POVs: what's challenging is that they all have to be of an equivalent quality. Game of Thrones is a good example, since there are some character arcs that I find more compelling than others, and I find myself skimming some less interesting chapters to get to what really grabs my interesting.

    Perhaps this is down to personal taste rather than poor writing as I know some people really enjoy those chapters/character arcs that I don't, but it's still something worth bearing in mind. I only had 2 POVs for my project and even I couldn't handle that. I saw my FMC's story was really starting to outshine my MMC, so I slashed him. And I think the story is the better for it.

    Think about character networks too. Three POVs, all in their own location, with their own set of characters, own plots... That is a much less interconnected than a three-POV story in which all the characters are intertwined.

    A simplistic example: consider the three character relationships A-B, C-D and E-F. That is going to take more words to develop to an equivalent quality than the character relationships of A-B, B-C and A-C.
     
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  25. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I think what's important is not the number of characters, in a multi-character story, but how they are introduced. If you start your story with seven demons and fifteen women (22 characters, all with names) that you drop into Chapter One, your reader is going to struggle a bit to remember them individually. Start slowly with only a couple of them at a time, and build up. Try to ensure each important, named character makes a strong impression before you leave them to move on to somebody else.
     

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