I received a comment the other day that there were too many characters in my story. My defense is, most of the earlier ones are dead, so forget them. What say you?
I think it depends on the importance of each of the characters. I find it hard to care about too many major ones. If the circumstances in which these early characters died is relevant to the story, I wouldn't mind reading their names and maybe a detail about them that's meaningful to your MC, but if they play no active role in the current story, don't give me their lengthy back story. ETA It seems that I too missed the other similar and very recent threads!
Should have searched. I read some of the other threads and feel comfortable with the amount of characters. .As my story changes location and focus, I can add and subtract characters as needed.
One piece of advice I've received is to condense some characters together if your roster seems overstuffed. I haven't actually done that very often, but I'm open to the idea. Redundant characters get absorbed into better ones.
