Hello, I've six main characters (male and female) in my story - which is 246 pages long - and takes place in London and Boston. The characters come and go in various chapters and in the end, they all come together in a grand finale to safe the world (or end it). All the characters are written in third person only, but sometimes I write about their inner thoughts too... I'm just wondering how many main characters do you have?
Well, a story can have a handful of main characters usually only a few protagonists (at most) though--from my experience. The thing about main characters is that they play important roles in carrying and driving the story. They have significant "screen time" and are important to the plot or how the readers perceive the plot. However, some of those "main" may naturally take on a supporting role. Whether it works or not depends on how you write it. From what you've said here, I can imagine this working. It's not unheard of. Just look at Marvel's The Avengers. It was largely successful and was split between a host of main characters. I have been unsuccessful at telling a good story, so I've been unsuccessful at balancing multiple main characters.
I have six main characters but it focuses around two in particular. One is the antagonist and the other is a secondary protagonist.
I have about three main characters that I'm rolling with at the moment, two of them are protagonists with acts in their own POV. Having a big cast can certainly work, look at @Andrae Smith 's example.
I think War and Peace has something like 550 characters. It's complete madness. To answer the OP's question, I have as many characters as I need. That may sound like a vague answer, but it's the truth.
Just one. And she tells the story in first person. She interacts with many characters (it might grow into the hundreds), but the purpose of the story is to examine the world from her eyes.
I have four although I don't know if I'd really count two of them are kind of borderline main characters. The story is written in the first person POV of only one of these characters, one of her friends is pretty much always with her but the other two come and go and fade from the story half way through. The two characters who vanish/die are still very important to the story and driving it forwards but it doesn't look like they'll be getting enough screen time to be called main characters. Wasn't the OP's question how many main characters?
Technically, one, but her love interest is also very developed so he's an MC too. This may change depending on what I do to the manuscript.
Personally I'd say somewhere before you have several hundred main characters but you're right it's very open ended.
I have to nitpick and say there's nothing "but" about this--it's perfectly legitimate to write about a character's inner thoughts when you're writing in third person.
That puzzles me. I have trouble thinking of novels that don't include those thoughts. Maybe we're not agreeing on what "thoughts" are? I don't mean specific, word-for-word, thoughts in quotes or italics.
I mostly referred to word-for-word thoughts. I elaborate on it more in my post on first person vs. third person.
My "big" novel has two main characters (meaning that they alternate as POV characters - third person, but still POV characters). There's a fair sized supporting cast. My "small" novel has one main character and a dozen or so significant supporting characters. My short stories and novelettes all have one main character.
I think a few other people on this thread have mentioned this, but I'll put in my two cents' worth as well. There is nothing about a third person POV that excludes thoughts. The danger is that the writer can become dictatorial when writing in Third Person, and start telling the reader what every thought means. It's better to show the reader exactly what the characters' thoughts are, and let the reader decide for themselves about the meaning. The trick is to make these thoughts interesting, and to allow the reader to interpret them. If you write that your character thinks her teacher looks like Bugs Bunny, that's interesting—and open to interpretation. If you write that your character thinks her teacher looks silly, then that doesn't leave much to the imagination. It's the difference between showing (Bugs), which allows us to draw our own conclusions, and telling (silly), which orders us to interpret the teacher's appearance in a specific way. That doesn't mean you can't use telling on occasion. But when you create visuals or other effects for the reader to interpret their own way, you have drawn them into the process. The reader can then decide whether to agree with your character or not, and what your character's thought might mean. This trick works well in Third Person POV. It works equally well in First Person. There is really no difference.
Yes, you're absolutely right jannert. When I was referring to inner thoughts, I meant that I use it to display their deepest fear and emotions during an event. Indeed, something like your Bugs Bunny example
I've had twenty main characters in one story before... I do try to stick to one or two main, up to ten major supporting, and then the hundreds upon hundreds of incidentals you kind of need when you're writing a story set in a busy city.
