Hello guys, On my second novel, I decided to have lots of characters for my plot. And as Yankoo said: "a larger cast would allow for the plot to be more dynamic, more fun as long as you don't overdo it." My question is therefore : when do you overdo it ? To be more precise, I have 12-15 characters for 4-5 side stories which are merging after 70 pages. Do you think it is too much ? Is there a high risk of loosing readers ? Thanks in advance Than
War and Peace has 559 individual characters, worked for the author. To me as a reader, the number of characters doesn't truly matter as long as they are different enough and detailed enough. You can have 5 characters without development / differentiation and they'll be boring, and you can have 25 characters where each is a unique individual with goals, traits, development and an arc - that will read well. It also greatly depends on the plot and setting. Certain settings (especially political / intrigue ones) will feel off without a larger-than-usual cast of characters. Other plots/settings might feel weird with 10+ (Whodunit? can get tedious to follow, castaway/survival stories can also get tedious).
There is no hard limit to the number of characters in general, but there might be for your particular story. You can ask: Is every character memorable, unique, and necessary? Or could some be merged or relegated to minor unnamed characters? Since you say you have 5 different stories/plot threads in the first 70 pages, does your reader have time to get attached to the most important characters/storyline, or is the rapid switching preventing them from delving into any one story or caring about any specific character? Is there enough 'screen-time' (or page-time I suppose) to flesh out your main cast? Go ahead and write the draft, it can be fun to experiment with things like intertwining storylines and large casts, and you can learn something from the experience. Then if you're still not sure if it works or not, you can get feedback from critique partners and beta readers on if it's confusing or overwhelming.
That depends entirely on your skill as a writer. As someone already said, Tolstoy got away with having a lot of characters and writers like George R.R. Martin have tons, but they've got the skill to do it well. The question has to be: do you?
Your more than welcome to have as many as you want and like Cephus said, do you have the skill to pull it off?
does it really? I find that hard to grasp. I never had any trouble recollecting the important ones at least. I think it's a question of giving your readers reason to care about the characters you include, not about their number. The more the merrier, if they are interesting, and if the scope of your novel can handle all of them. It sounds as if yours might be able to.
That's too many for me. generally i like to keep my cast limited. easier to keep the stories manageable that way.
There's no number of characters where you automatically just suddenly crossed that line. But there are a few things that show you might have too many. 1) Characters are the same. When characters start to talk the same, act the same, make virtually the same kind of decisions, and carry pretty much the same role in the story, you have too many. Characters should all have a unique voice and show something of the themes in the story. In other words, they should be contributing to the whole experience and not distracting from it. 2) You're not having fun anymore. Characters you have to shoehorn just to give meaning, are not fun characters to write. Characters should all just feel naturally set in the world and their involvement should flow naturally throughout the plot. This character speaks here, because that makes the most sense for that character to speak there in that situation. Sure, you will have to tweak a character here and there to make them consistent with the theme, but you shouldn't have to force the characters to make an appearance for its own sake. If you find yourself saying, "Well haven't seen John in four hundred pages, I better make a scene for him," then John is too many. 3) You find yourself repeating information. This is especially true in stories that adopt multiple POVs. Each POV needs to say something new about the situation. No one wants to read about an event from Fred's POV and then read about it again where it's exactly the same, but this time from John's POV. No one cares. Unless John POV adds information that Fred could not possibly know and the only way to relay it is through John's POV, John needs to shut it!
If I were you, I would focus more on your readers. I mean the real world has millions of people in it. However, in your lifetime, you are only going to know comparatively few of them. The more people you know and interact with, the more complicated your life gets, and the less amount of time you get to spend with each person. And the less you see them, the less you start to care about them. Too many characters and subplots are likely to have that same effect on your readers. I know Game of Thrones gets cited as an example of an author handling tons of characters well—but for me, presenting too many characters is the factor that made me stop reading halfway through the series. It's not so much that I lost track of who was who ...I didn't, as GRR Martin is a very skilled writer, and I never got confused. What I did get was overwhelmed. I passed the point where I cared about any of the characters, and that meant I passed the point of caring what happened in the story at all. And, as I said, he's an extremely good writer (I really like some of the other stories he's written ...just not GoT.) Of course if you do have quite a few characters—and many successful books DO have quite a few characters—it's not a good idea to throw them all at the reader in the same opening scene. Let your reader get to know them a few at a time. Try to make each one unique, with their own perspectives and purposes. Avoid list-making, when it comes to character introductions. The fact that you've mentioned a character by name and one or two 'characteristics' does NOT mean these names and characteristics are going to stick with the reader. Give the character something to do ...something that catches the eye or the imagination ...and they will stick.
It's the total number of named characters; looking only at those that have development & a story arc you'll still have 40ish.
I wrote like 2-3 short chapters (around 1 page each) for 1 bigger (3 pages). So I am really into a back and forth between characters, trying to have the focus moment each time on a different one but well, some seems to be more important than other and I am perfectly okay with that. And I am probably the worst people on this planet to answer to that question... Who am I to judge myself ? Well, I deeply believe the plot is strong enough for that, knowing that stories merge after 70 pages, then flow away before the big final. Let say I will go with my guts on this one and thanks for the point of view I totally agree on this point !
Actually, I had exactly the same problem as... the writer. I wanted to focus more on some characters but on the other hand I still need a pack of them for story purposes. I volontarily pass rapidly on some but for the final, I need 7-8 main characters because it requires the same amount of different pov. What do you think ? Should I stay that way ? Rethink my final to get something lighter ?
I would say to just get writing. Lots of these kinds of issues sort themselves out as you write. You may find yourself heading towards fewer POV characters anyway. Or you may discover that 7-8 POV characters works really well, because each has a well-developed personality and a perspective that none of the other characters share. Lots of very successful authors use only one POV character, while some use more. Write the story, and see what you get. There will be lots of ways to 'fix' issues, if they do arise. In my very long novel, I use four POV characters. Two main characters, whose story it basically 'is,' and two others to provide a perspective that the story must have, for plot purposes, but can't be provided by either of the two mains.
A good number of them are one-off characters, such as the freemason, or the young boy in the Moscow war (near the end) who wants to be a soldier but is soon killed off, and the Bezukhov family members (besides Pierre). The main cast are the Rostovs and the Bolkonskis who interact throughout the whole story. Most of the politicians, monarchs and highest officers (who are all real historical people) almost never interact with the fictional characters.
Well, it's a third pov novel where the final is a twisted version of the apocalypse (like a funnier one than the actual one). I just want to show the 7-8 different approaches people will get if they were there (nihilism, solo based, team based...). But yeah, I should probably just write it as it goes and see down the line if adjustements are necessary or not. Hope you are right
It seems to me that a large number of characters is only appropriate when it is a very large work with a large number of pages. This allows you to reveal as much as possible each character and show even the most insignificant stories meaningful and beautiful. For me, an example of an author who was able to do this ideally is Leo Tolstoy, who in his epic novel "War and Peace" revealed a huge number of characters and made them memorable.
My favorite number of characters is two, with just a handful of minor characters to interact with them.
Not all characters have to interact with each others, as is the case in War and Peace where there's a large number of officers and politicians who never interact with the fictional characters.
