How many main characters do you have?

I've had anywhere up to five, each with their own subplots, etc. The trick is to making sure one doesn't suddenly and out of the blue have knowledge they otherwise would not have had, unless you explain in brief how they got it 'off-screen'.

 

That depends on what you count as a main character. Right now I have either 5 or 6

1 Protagonist
1 Sidekick (quickly becoming a co-protagonist)
1 Antagonist
1 Supportive Mentor
1 Destructive Mentor (who is later turned)

And since my cast are all TV reporters covering a bunch of news surrounding the Pope - the Pope himself is the main character of his own subplot

 

There's a few I'm working on but most only have about four characters; two or three main characters and the off shoots. I did attempt a huge behemoth novel with about twenty or so odd main characters, and like three hundred name drops, whose lives all interested ( six degrees of madness that sort of thing ) but it's really hard to juggle. I like to keep the cast small.

The trouble with going big is keeping things interesting, each having a goal so they just don't become one dimensional, plus all the complications that come with trying to achieve said goal. I'm always reminded of this movie I like -Music From another Room - it's got Jude Law and Jennifer Tilly in it - the main reason's I rented it. And it had a huge cast. And it really shows the problems of having a huge cast. The mc and his problem may become of less interest to the viewer/reader than some of the other characters. I always thought Jennifer Tilly as the shut-in, shy blind girl and her blossoming romance with a dishwasher named Jesus would've made for a better movie.

 

All of my novels so far have had a single POV character with four or five other primary characters. My next two ideas will likely have two POV characters and the same number of other primaries. I doubt I'd be able to handle more than 5-6 major characters in any given work, as I typically like my scopes to be smaller. Writing general fiction doesn't lend well to RPG-style twenty-character parties--at least, none of the ideas that I've thought of yet.

 

I have 1 main character, but I also have several constantly recurring characters, my novel is in first person and doesn't change POV though, I don't really like it when books do that too much, too confusing.

Amanda

 

I've never liked multi-character braided stories. Two of my three "I'm gonna finish it someday, really!" novels has a single POV character. For the third one, I've been debating which of two characters will be the POV, or if I might consider swapping.

That doesn't mean that they don't have plenty of other important characters, but I'm taking "main character" as meaning an ongoing POV character.

 

I have three.

 

Depends on definition. Could be anywhere between one and six. There's one character that is easily recognisable as the MC during most of the novel, but it's in the third perspective, plus a lot of other characters (girlfriend, family and colleagues) are basically treated as just as important as him a lot of the time. To complicate things further, because the last chapter that has a different character as the MC (but still in the third perspective). But it goes further tha that, because the three first chapter of the book has a third character as the MC, and in this case it's also from his POV. In some ways you could even say the narrator is the MC, because, although it's never mentioned in-story, I've given him a full na, history, appearance and reason for recording the events in the book, and he's even the adoptive father of one of the most important characters in the story. It's possible to go one step further yet and refer to the goddess that in the lore of the novel created the universe and the basis for the plot, and who herself makes a few appearances in the book, as the true MC.

 

If you define main character as POV, then I have sixteen. If you include supporting characters, around thirty to forty.

 

I've got 2 protagonists, 1 antagonist (and his many digital / robotic clones) and supporting characters for both sides (family, friends, hired henchmen, etc).

There are so few characters because it's an old clichéd story of boy meets girl, thugs break into girl's house and steal something, they chase the thugs down, get defeated by a giant robot powered by the stolen item, they go to hospital, the boy runs off to defeat the robot, get's captured, girl returns to save boy, they save the world together and live happily ever after... until book 2 is written.

 

Can never get enough of these ones.

 

I'll digress a bit to ask if anyone has noticed how female authors usually have 1-3 main characters? In case of one, the main character is an independent woman who eats men for breakfast; in case of two, it's a woman and an antagonist/bad husband/traitorous friend; in case of three, it's a woman and two men spilling each other's blood for her attention.

Zadie Smith in her "On Beauty" provides an extensive insight on the identity of black women and mulattoes, but the white husband is just an impersonal cheater. Even white women are portrayed as I-have-a-husband-who-takes-me-around-the-world-buys-me-stuff-and-everything-is-hunky-dory types.

George Eliot's (whose actual name was Mary Ann Evans) Mill on the Floss has a protagonist who is smarter than all the men in her household, and when she grows up, two men are fighting for her attention.

Also, most of you know about the unnecessary existence of Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, The Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey.

Why can't women envisage a broader scope of people? They seem to only be concentrated on writing about themselves and their dreams and desires. I'm aware of that "write about what you know", and it leads me to ask: do women only know themselves?

 

Kekec, if you only need six data points to form conclusions about half the population of this planet, you can prove whatever you like. I could conjure up any equally insulting conclusion about men and back it up with six male authors. But I know that men, like women, write in countless different ways, and that I can't form a realistic generalization about them from a few books.

I'd suggest broadening your experience with female authors.

Edited to add:

After a little research, I have gathered definitive proof that most female authors write about upper-class British men. To provide the requisite six data points:

Dorothy Sayers wrote about Lord Peter Wimsey.
Ngaio Marsh wrote about Roderick Alleyn.
Barbara Cleverly writes about Joe Sandilands.
PD James writes about Adam Dalgliesh.
Ruth Rendell writes about Reginald Wexford.
Margery Allingham wrote about Albert Campion.

I hope that this resolves the issue.

I'm now working on proof that most male authors write about cats.

 

Two from completely different periods and four of the contemporary, popular ones. I think that is enough for a reasonable person to know where I'm coming from, without needing a directory of names.

 

Good heavens, no, it's not. You seriously think that six books tell you anything at all about female authors? Would you claim that six books by male authors could similarly summarize the entire body of male-written literature?

 

I have two main POV characters, Allison and her older sister Zoe. A good 90% of m stories are written in first person with the narrating character being dependant on what I'm writing at the time.

 

One book I can think of which defies your system is Silas Marner by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans). I recall the plot revolving around a reclusive cataleptic man who suffers the loss of his accumulated wealth in a burglary and adopts a young girl after her mother dies of a drug overdose / hypothermia.

 

My book has none of those characters and it's love story, too.

 

Five or six (if you count the antagonist as a main character,) with only one PoV from one of the five big "good guys," but that's one storyline...

In my other storyline I have 2 main characters, story is told alternating between their PoV's

 

The novel I am writing at the moment has three main characters; one protagonist, one antagonist and an unreliable narrator. It is all in first person as it is written sort of like an autobiography.

I usually write more main characters but the setting of my story is quite isolated and as the story is mainly centred around the relationship between the protagonist and narrator, it would not have fit with the story.

 

Six main characters in a novella ( I suppose) is quite a go! Good luck with that.

 

Protagonist and antagonist are fine but what do you mean by one unreliable character? Sorry. Didn't get that.

 

Nitpicking is good and I agree with you in this aspect.