How many characters is too many?

Choose your characters like you would cast a movie. Every character you add costs a bundle. Make sure each contributes enough to justify the expense.

 

I cannot agree enough with this statement.

 

I also love this.

 

Thank you for the clarification. This makes sense.

It sounds to me you're talking about fleshed out characters, not main characters. A brief character appearance can be a very fleshed out unforgettable character, but it doesn't make it a main character.

When you do this, you're promoting a secondary character to main character in that story.
I'm not saying, in no way, that a story can only revolve around one single character. (But be warned that the more the characters and their stories, the longer the book. A lesson I've learned the hard way and will not make again.) But readers want a beginning, a middle and an end. It's usually called the character's arc but I'll just call it "I want to know what happens to this person in the end". You can only tell so many stories in one book. Because of word count, if nothing else. The stories you choose to tell have protagonists. Those are the main characters in that story.
Unless you want to go "One Thousand and One Nights", but that never ends. And still, in "One Thousand and One Nights" each story has only a couple of main characters before they move to the next story.
There's also the question of point of view but I won't even go into that now.

I might just do that. I have in interest in POV. The way I see it, it's all good as long as it works.

 

It seems to be omniscient with zooming in into third person limited for each separate chapter.

 

I suppose the nice thing about our medium is there are no rules. I'm telling a story with a main plot and many sub-plots, with characters who are essential not only to their city or homeland but to Rainne himself as he journies through Archaea. I'm world building with no concern for the reader essentially, as Miyazaki does in Dark Souls which I can say is my biggest influence with how my writing has evolved over 14 years. A story can take five minutes to tell, or five chapters to write and I don't believe, unless you're writing an adventure novel, that fantasy should be kinetic. It should slow down and observe its surroundings every now and then, focus on something seemingly insignificant and give the reader something new, if only for a paragraph or interlude. If it's in the story, it's meant to be there, so I stand by having so many characters, though I totally appreciate all the advice!

 

I think you shouldn't worry about having too many characters. Worry about whether your story is fun to read.

 

This sounds like POV characters, not "main" characters.

 

It does, but I ensure you that that isn't the case. I could have hundreds upon hundreds of named but essentially faceless characters doing this and that, but I've chosen to flesh out everyone who appears in the first novel over the next two or three, so they each get a proper ending to their own stories. I consider them main characters and while others might not see them in that light, they will by the time this current sequence of novels is finished. I consider giving weight to small details very important and in that regard, I don't include characters just for the sake of having more characters; I consider that story-telling method as counter-productive.

 

I don't think anybody does that.