I'm currently doing a rewrite of the first half of my novel. It's a high fantasy adventure type and as I go, more and more characters keep presenting themselves to me. I've even been pausing in my writing and writing up character profiles for each of them, even if they may only appear one time. I'm getting quite a pile of them now and it's started to worry me. I've read different articles of advice saying that having too many characters can get confusing, which I understand. Most of those articles are about mysterys or general adult fiction; not fantasy. I've read Tolkien, Sanderson, Rowling (just to name a few) and each of them seem to have a large cast of characters, even if they have small parts. Not to mention the Game of Thrones series! Like Game of Thrones, I do plan on killing off some of these characters, so maybe that will help with confusion? What do you think, I guess I'm asking? How many characters are in your novels? Just looking for a bit of insight.
How many is too many is very dependent on the scope of your story, I think. High fantasy adventure type stuff is pretty prone to having larger casts, so there's something to be said about reader expectation. There's also to what degree someone is a main-ish character to consider. My non-high fantasy wip has two main characters, four secondary, and nine others who're named but bit players, so fifteen total but we only ever really deal with maybe five at a time (I can only think of one scene where it's over four), so I don't think that's too much. On the other hand, my big sci-fi project has about a hundred named characters, because it's planned to span at least nine books and fifty-odd years, while the fantasy thing is one novel and about a week's worth of time. Scope! But still, while the sf thing has a broader focus and there might be eight characters being dealt with at once, I'm not asking the reader to keep a hundred people in their head at once. My thing is just asking myself "is this character needed?" - and if they're not, consider cutting them / combining them with another character. Are they really adding anything, or do you just think they're cool? Are they serving the same purpose / filling the same role as another character? Everyone should be distinct enough that we won't forget who they are and what their deal is by the time we get back to them.
My story is going to span over three (maybe four) books and around thirty to forty years. You're definitely right that scope helps. I never thought about it like that. And like you, I don't have any scenes with more than five people. Most of them are with three or fewer, so hopefully that will help. I think this is another thing I'm struggling with, but more of because I feel the need to fill each race with distinctive characters and maybe that's not needed absolutely everywhere...
Your question is in reverse! You should ask yourself: "How many characters do I need to get my protagonist to reach his story goal?"
How many is too many? It depends on the story, and how they're introduced to the reader. If there is an anchor or connection to the main character or plot, that will make it easier for the reader to recall, keep track of (with a friendly reminder if a character has been 'off screen' for some time). But, having as few characters as possible, only those necessary, is fine. Re-read your favorite novels/authors which are close to what you're trying to attempt. How many do they have? How do they introduce them to the reader, and how do they refer/remind when the characters appear again within the storyline?
There's a difference between MCs and random, non-essential characters. If you need a character for a scene, then by all means add somebody. For my novel, I have 7 characters that are story essential, three of them are the primary protagonists, two are antagonists, and the other two are protagonists that are not primary, but still important. I have maybe twenty or more other characters that are non-essential, supporting roles, and they come and go as necessary, and some will only appear once. Don't bother filling out a character's profile if they're only used a couple times and not that important overall. Make them believable, and give them personality, but that's about it. Focus on your MCs, they need to be fully developed in a profile document so you don't forget important details and risk plot holes or other oddities.
I think what others have said are all pretty much good tips. I think it would also depend on if your cast of characters are recurring and if so, how often. Groups of characters (5-10 depends) may only be valid be for a part of the overall story then disappear for good. Maybe 1-2 of them will be back in the future but that really means you are only "picking up" a few characters at a time. Alternatively thinking, if you keep recruiting characters into the story and attempt to write something for them consistently, not only will you get a bloated cast but each character will be unnecessary and detail-less. On the other hand, if you have one-time use characters or ones that will only stay for a bit, I think having a large OVERALL cast is acceptable. Not all characters have to be memorable and characters may only exist to perform a single task before disappearing.
Unless if the attributes of individual characters are really distinct and diametrically opposed to each other you could try combining two characters who seem like redundant regurgitations of each other. Of course this would interfere with the narrative's structure but it might be beneficial in the long run, there's nothing worse then having introduction after introduction after introduction mercilessly pummel your face to the ER
As long as they all serve a good purpose it should be fine. In regard to 'filling each race with distinctive characters' you probably don't need to do this so much, as it sound like you're doing it just for the sake of doing it. It's fine to have your more main characters for each race but I don't think you'd need to go into huge detail for each person. Rowling didn't go into huge detail with every student in each house group (hufflepuff, ravenclaw etc).
I had this issue with my first novel, a big cast of primary characters, i did have a core set of characters, about four.. when i looked at it, i could not really pull any out. so what was meant to be a trilogy of novels, became a series of six or may be more. For my story is still evolving. For i looked at my main core characters, knew there back story.. so i went and wrote part of it up, which is now Book one and two, so what was book one is now book three. Mainly book one concentrates on the core characters getting them established and the relationships between them. plus it meant i could explore more of the back story of the different establishments. Tell the political story side sooner, plus it meant i could fix a big problem in book five, by introducing a character and organisation, in book one, that will solve my headache.. So having a large cast of characters, is not a problem, as long as they all have a significant role, and pushes to story forward..having recurring characters are good.. setting up characters to die. Having organisations headed by a one or two characters, keep the numbers down.. but having a large cast is not an issue.. depends how you approach it. Having a bio for each character is good thing, even if you dont use that character too much, it helps to keep the writing flowing, you have something to refer to.. Its like writing an Non Fiction, story.. you do your research first.. so you got your bio's, plot points written out, etc.. its a sign of a good writer i say, being prepared if you need it..
Yes, the scope of the story matters very much. Take War and Peace (one of the best novels ever written, in my opinion; my only regret about it is that it wasn't written in English), for example: huge cast of characters, but it is a huge, sprawling novel, spanning a number of years, with several sub-plots and a huge range of themes.
I think what George R.R Martain does to maintain so many characters is to not have them be involved in the plot all the time. For example, the hound really isn't an important character until later on in the series. You can't make every character driving the plot all at once, that's too much. Focus on a few characters, then save other characters for later.
I don't think there's a limit to how many characters you can have in a single story. The important thing is that you flesh these character's out and that they have a purpose that progresses the story. If they don't, but are still intersting characters, i might try to combine a few of my secondary characters. But there is no limit to how many you can have. ( Just look at game of thrones)
The references to War and Peace and A Song of Ice and Fire are interesting and revealing, and can make a helpful contribution to answering the original question. One of the big differences between these two huge, epic multi-character works is that War and Peace is incredibly tightly plotted and character-developed, despite its great length. Tolstoy clearly did a lot of editing, reworking and paring down after his marathon five-year writing effort, whereas Martin still hasn't finished, and it shows. Martin's first book in the series has nine point-of-view characters, going up to about 36 by the most recent one, and this is noticeably too many. It really does sprawl, and readers get bogged down. In contrast to this, War and Peace most certainly does not sprawl. It has four clear main characters, Natasha, Nikolai, Andrei and Pierre, all introduced strongly in the opening chapters, a larger but still manageable group of secondary characters (Maria, Sonya, Helene, the Rostov parents, Kutuzov and others), diverse plot-driving antagonists such as Dolohov, and two big life-changing bullies, Napoleon on the big scale and Old Prince Bolkonsky on the family scale. This is much tighter than Martin's often very directionless sprawl. And this is where the comparison gets interesting, because in the television series Game of Thrones, the writers have decided to do the reworking and editing that Martin didn't, and have given the story four clear main characters, Tirion, John, Arya and Daenerys. Everyone else, including their family members and friends, are important secondary characters, not main protagonists, and what they do always impacts on the stories of the main four. There's a lot going on in the episode of the sea assault on King's Landing, but the main character is Tirion all the way through. This is much more like Tolstoy than like Martin's originals and as story writing the television series is better than the books, because it has done the necessary editing, including paring down the character focus to four main threads. So there you have your answer. To the question 'How many characters is too many?' the answer is five. Five main ones, that is, four is a great number for a big epic work, fewer for something more compact. Then the other characters can be antagonists, family members with conflicting goals, lovers, etc, all of whose actions impact on the four or fewer main story arcs, which should, of course, criss-cross and impact on each other. So there you have it. I hope this isn't too long for a first post! I don't have any opinions that can be said quickly.
I didn't read all the comments, but I'll give my take on the original question. To me, it's not a strict number question. It's a question of purpose. Well, what do you need to tell the story? For example, most stories don't need a lot of POV characters. Sure we tell ourselves we do because we think of these neat and interesting things that happen to particular characters in our head, but most of the time we don't actually need them. Many times narratives can be condensed. When someone suggested I condense my story, I wisely took the advise and never looked back at all the deleted scenes. While fun to write, they weren't necessary. Alistair suggested no more than five. I personally think that's even too many for most stories. Do any characters seem redundant? All those minor characters? Some of them you might be able to condense into one character. Especially if they have similar personalities. You might want to consider moving some of the characters around. Have them serve different parts in the story.
The only genre I can think of where you need superfluous characters is the classic "whodunit" mystery story, because if there's a character that doesn't seem to be necessary to the plot, that character is almost always the one who did the crime. So the trick is to have a couple of them there and let the reader try to figure out which one is the villain. In most of the fiction that I admire, every character pulls his or her weight in the plot, in the sense that they put some sort of influence on the progression of the story or illustrates some aspect of the story's setting. I'm sure that many other characters ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, during a rigorous editorial review.
Several excellent recent comments (and welcome to the forum, @Alistair Crazy Diamond, with such a thoughtful and helpful post.) I'd like to add that HOW you introduce your characters really matters as well. If you pile ten or twelve of them into a first chapter, people may struggle to keep them straight, unless you are very skillful in making their names, personalities, and relationships with others stick in the reader's mind. I'm an advocate of only introducing one or two at a time. Give those one or two some fairly noteworthy things to do. Then bring in another couple, and give THEM something to do that the reader will remember. Keep on with this approach till all the main characters are on board. However, don't stretch it out too far either, All the important characters should be on board quite early in the story, in most cases. The key isn't really the number of characters. It's introducing them so the readers will remember them and keep them straight.
The issue will be as someone has pointed out, how tightly plotted your story is. Plus how much time you plan on spending on each character. A few lines spent on one and then off with his/her head won't harm the reader's ability to keep track of things because they won't actually have to keep track of everything. Some characters thread through the entire story, others fade in and out, and some burn bright and die fast. The reader will automatically discard extraneous information as they go. Characters that burn bright will not stay in the readers mind very long. I think you do have to give the reader some credit here. I've been reading a novel by Peter Hamilton called The Great North Road. It's long, 1100 pages, and has a huge number of characters (he even has a list of the most used ones at the beginning). He does seem to manage to keep things balanced, although perhaps could have tightened things a little. But apart from the odd time looking at the list I didn't worry about it too much. The story kept me in the pages. His skill as a writer was keeping my attention long enough on each character to keep his story moving. Give the reader some credit, they will discard and pick up, but the story will continue and so will the reader. Just focus on keeping the story moving and fit the characters in.
If you have characters mentioned and detailed but that don't do anything, then you have too many. I counted all of mine and it comes to around 35 main characters and a supporting cast of 52. They all have a purpose, a reason for being mentioned by name and a reason for existing in place of a main character for a scene. I did get rid of some others because they didn't serve any purpose and replacing them with main characters just worked better. For the 87 I kept, they cannot be changed out, they can't be removed and they can't have their scenes removed. If you plan to write a sequel, keep in mind the stories you wish to tell later on, so that you can keep seemingly unnecessary characters for future stories.
35 main characters? I'm sorry, I'm intrigued. Are you talking about several books or are they all in the same story? But surely you have a couple of characters that are more important than the others, no? Do you write in first person, third limited, omniscient? That matters a lot in this case.
Oooohhh... a great question, Amanda! My mind immediately flashes to another one: How much money is too much? It all depends on how you spend it.
OP - Game of Thrones was far too many storylines and main characters for me. I have a terrible memory and each time the storyline changed I struggled to remember the character for it - or what had happened. I gave up on book three. Rgds Mike
Currently only the one novel but they will appear throughout several trilogies already mapped out. Basically as I've gone about reading the works of various writers, I've come to really detest having only one main character, upon which the story either thrives or falls on it's arse. I much prefer the work of Stephen Hunt, an author I've only come across in the last couple of years, because he takes what should be insignificant characters and he gives them purpose, not only to the main characters as they should have but also to the plot OR the world at large, setting up future novels. This approach can be seen in film and videogames and is so much more interesting to me. Initially my story only had a single main character and everyone else who appeared only did so insignificantly. When I really looked at it, I had a story that was set across several countries and the characters who appeared, I thought at least, shouldn't just appear to forward the plot, but contribute to the lore and backstory of the world as well. So I went about reinventing them all and came to the conclusion that I had promoted nearly three dozen to main character status. What I consider a main character to be is someone who forwards the plot, or contributes significantly to a plot twist, and 35 of my characters do so. The rest help out, provide comic relief, contribute to backstory or lore or simply engage in conversation to pass on information to the reader or between main characters. In my story, only a particular magic grants on the ability to travel from country to country, so a lot of my main characters are location based, each with a significant cast of supporting characters. So one of my cities has 6 main characters with a mentioned supporting cast of around 15. Each location has around the same kind of numbers, though some are higher than others. It's basically the Dark Souls approach to world building; everyone and everything is significant, even if you don't believe it right away. And I feel that... if you're going to mention somebody by name and describe their appearance, they should be used to the fullest of their capacity and not just disappear once a story is resolved. Maybe they reappear as a much older version of themselves in a future novel? Maybe they change profession and go to live somewhere else, reappearing in a much more useful capacity to a new hero? That's why I have so many characters, because I intend to tell all their stories. In terms of the voice I write in, I rarely concern myself with that. I write what makes to me and I couldn't tell you if it's any one style or not, or a hybrid style. If you head over to my profile you can click through to my novel on Kindle. If you check out the preview, I'd be interested to know what voice I'm writing in.
