# Stories that add too many characters



## CroZ (May 1, 2013)

Think Lost and Game of Thrones.

Does anyone find this kind of plot advancement to be really annoying? With shows/books like the above they never really bother advancing the story through the main characters, but tend to add a new character who really isn't necessary and will likely die very quickly. I know people who love this. They say if it stays with the same characters the story can get boring pretty quickly. I say if you have deep enough main characters you don't need to keep adding more to keep things interesting. 

My theory is that the writers tend to think up some quirky character trait then transform it into a new character. Personally if I think up a new character trait I tend to see if I can mould it into one of the characters I've already created. 

When I see new characters being added in every chapter I assume the writer has run out of ideas for advancing the plot and has basically resorted to dangling a string in front of the reader to keep him busy.


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## Ariel (May 1, 2013)

I don't know about Lost but "Game of Thrones" is based on the War of the Roses, a real war over succession in England.  From what I can tell it does follow history fairly accurately though with a fantasy twist.

I personally feel it depends on the story and how long it is.  I've read books that have dozens of characters that develop and die through the course of the books and I've read books that focus on a handful of characters.  I've liked both.


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## Skodt (May 1, 2013)

Game or Thrones progresses the story with characters that are very vital to the happenings of the war. If you settled in one section of the map then how would we follow the rest of the war? Lost is another story that does well with character adding. It progresses the story, and you don't want one character with 500 traits. Instead, let other characters better suited tell their story, and watch the possibilities unfold.


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## jayelle_cochran (May 1, 2013)

I haven't seen either show or read the books based off of them.  I'm also having trouble thinking of a novel that I have read where too many characters was an issue.  I think that there could be cases where an author runs out of things to do and instead throws in other characters.  However, it would also stand to reason that sometimes there could be a reason for this.  I have read novels where there were many characters.  There was no other way to tell the story than through more than a handful of people.  Especially since the novel I'm thinking of took place over the course of 20 years.  With a war, like Skodt said, you would need to focus on a lot of different characters since it's rare that only a handful would have as huge of an impact.

That's just my opinion.  If I knew the stories you were referring to then maybe I could say more.

*hugs*
Jayelle


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## JosephB (May 1, 2013)

I agree that too many characters isn't good. I've found that right number of characters usually works best.


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## Angelicpersona (May 1, 2013)

It depends on the book I think. If you're reading a book where the main character(s) stay in one place the entire time, like in a town for instance, then yeah, there won't be too many other characters. But if you're reading a book where it involves a lot of area then there's going to be more characters to focus on. It does sometimes seem like it takes forever for those books to get somewhere, but it's necessary for the story.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 2, 2013)

If I can't connect to the characters, I'm not going to enjoy the book.  And how the heck can I connect to the characters if a new one comes up every few pages?


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## Sam (May 2, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> If I can't connect to the characters, I'm not going to enjoy the book.  And how the heck can I connect to the characters if a new one comes up every few pages?



The guy that's in your sig is renowned for multiple characters.


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## Olly Buckle (May 2, 2013)

People who do enjoy books like this might enjoy this thread,

http://www.writingforums.com/wf-challenges/138579-so-many-many-people.html


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## GonneLights (May 2, 2013)

It takes a skillful author to do it, but. It's been done well. For example 'The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy, Gentlemen' which gets to about Volume III before the main character is even introduced. Or, Heller's Catch-22, Sartre's Reprieve, etc.


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## JosephB (May 2, 2013)

“Too many” also has something to do with the reader tastes. I usually don’t like epic novels with multilayered plots and multiple characters. And I have a hard time keeping a lot of characters straight – I’m bad with names when I read and in real life, so I find myself doing a lot of backtracking when people are throwing names around. But that’s not the author’s problem.

Otherwise, it depends. (Notice how often that word comes up in these discussions?) And yes, the author has to be "skillful" enough to make it work. Of course. You can say that about anything that has to do with writing.


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## GonneLights (May 2, 2013)

Yeah you're quite right. The tastefulness depending on the taste, the skillfulness depending on the skill. All discussions of a single part of taste or skill are rendered sort of trivial. Perhaps we should all be Aesthetic Philosophers instead!


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## JosephB (May 2, 2013)

They are trivial. No two ways about it. Doesn't mean a discussion about something as subjective and arbitrary as "too many characters" can't be amusing or mildly interesting on some level. There just isn't much practical value in it. If you cut out all the discussions about things that "depend" or that should be fairly obvious to anyone with an iota of writing talent -- you'd have to shut this section of the site down.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 2, 2013)

Sam said:


> The guy that's in your sig is renowned for multiple characters.



The only Tom Clancy stuff I'm familiar with is the Splinter Cell video game series. =P  Though I like the quote, I haven't actually read any of his books.


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## jayelle_cochran (May 2, 2013)

JosephB said:


> They are trivial. No two ways about it. Doesn't mean a discussion about something as subjective and arbitrary as "too many characters" can't be amusing or mildly interesting on some level. There just isn't much practical value in it. If you cut out all the discussions about things that "depend" or that should be fairly obvious to anyone with an iota of writing talent -- you'd have to shut this section of the site down.



This made me lol  How many forums can you say the same on?  The thing is, what's obvious to you may not be obvious to others.  Also, some people may just want a discussion.  "I thought about this and want to know what others think."  Now, since I don't want this section of the site to become useless...bring on the banter! lol

*hugs*
Jayelle


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## JosephB (May 2, 2013)

jayelle_cochran said:


> This made me lol  How many forums can you  say the same on?  The thing is, what's obvious to you may not be  obvious to others.  Also, some people may just want a discussion.  "I  thought about this and want to know what others think."  Now, since I  don't want this section of the site to become useless...bring on the  banter! lol



Well, I said it could be amusing or interesting -- and here I am yammering along with everyone else.

As far as what's obvious goes -- I'm actually giving people some credit and the benefit of the doubt. I think most of the time people who come here with issues or questions could figure things out on their own if they gave it a little effort, picked up a few books or just thought things through. But I like to solve problems -- and usually ask for help only when I reach the point where I can't figure something out on my own -- or if I've looked into something thoroughly and still can't find an answer. I think it's a way of doing things that has benefited me in the grand scheme of things, and it's made me more self-sufficient. But everyone learns in his own way, I suppose.


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## Olly Buckle (May 2, 2013)

> But I like to solve problems -- and usually ask for help only when I reach the point where I can't figure something out on my own -- or if I've looked into something thoroughly and still can't find an answer.


 I can go along with this Joe, but when I post my stuff here what I am really looking for are the things that can take me further and the problems I did not know I had, problems you do not realise exist are impossible to solve on your own.


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## JosephB (May 2, 2013)

Right. I can't ask about problems I don't know I have. That's why I post in the Workshop. And actually I post there to get feedback on the problems I know I have too -- or think I have -- although I don't necessarily bring them to anyone's attention beforehand. But most issues and topics related to writing can really only be considered in context. This thread is a good example of that. That's why general discussion is usually of limited practical value. I'm not trying to stop anyone -- so whatever. I'm here too -- and sometimes I pick up a nugget useful of information or see a different way of looking at things -- although it doesn't seem to happen all that often.


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## Staff Deployment (May 4, 2013)

I just like reading what people have to say. I think it's great that everyone's on the same page.

2¢: I think the Central Limit Theorem of characters sample size is that at around 20-30 it starts to become ridiculous.

I started out one project by filling up space with tons and tons of characters but then realized a good chunk of them had the exact same personality and even occupied the same space (they were all soldiers). So I smooshed them all into one guy. He's pretty cool; he acts like a one-man army. Which makes sense. Because that's literally what he is. He is an army that literally became one man.


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## JosephB (May 4, 2013)

There is some satisfaction and comfort that comes from banal conversation with people who have similar interests or who are like-minded. Sometimes when I'm at a party with neighbors etc., and the men are talking about the best time to seed fescue or charcoal vs. gas grilling, I'm happy to join in. Sometimes I'll just head to the kitchen and talk with the women about day care and potty training. Other times, I just want to run screaming for the door. I guess it depends on what kind of mood I'm in.


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## Altan (May 6, 2013)

I don't like an excess of characters either, but sometimes it's necessary to introduce minor, even one-shot characters to flesh out the world/situation a little more.

Besides, as noted before, "too many characters" is largely a matter of personal taste, but I like to have them at a number that I can keep track of.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 6, 2013)

Altan said:


> I don't like an excess of characters either, but sometimes it's necessary to introduce minor, even one-shot characters to flesh out the world/situation a little more.



I used to think that, but now I don't.  Upon going back to edit my story, I was surprised by how many one-shot characters added to "flesh out the situation" could easily be replaced by regulars.  I'm pretty sure that in my 195,000 word story, I'm left with only two one-shot characters, and the novel is a lot stronger for it.


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## Dictarium (May 6, 2013)

Is it naive for me to assert that children seem to have more of an affinity for remembering and keeping track of multiple (read: numerous, many, a poop-ton of) characters in a story than adults do? When I read Harry Potter as a kid (and still to this day... still as a kid but an older one) I could list off all of the main characters, secondary characters, and tertiary characters, their first and last names, and a quick synopsis of their character and history without a moment's hesitation. Yet I know adults who've read the series (as adults) who wouldn't even be able to fill out the secondary character list and may possibly be able to stagger through bios for the main characters.

Anyway, on topic, I find that, as long as characters are neither presented in an overwhelming fashion nor explained very little and given one character trait to define them (for example, the Seven Dwarves) there's really no problem with it. People obviously follow A Song of Fire and Ice perfectly well (for the most part) as long as they feel engaged, which is the real key to having so many characters, and part of the reason why it's so easy (in my opinion) to keep track of all the ones in Harry Potter. Tertiary characters are characterized to a fairly significant degree despite not having any chunk of a chapter devoted to them and thus are able to be related to, identified with, and understood.

But, this is all pure conjecture as I've no idea of the actual academic practice of characterization or storytelling and so am making this all up so take this post with at least sixty-two very big grains of salt.


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## Dictarium (May 6, 2013)

Staff Deployment said:


> 2¢: I think the Central Limit Theorem of characters sample size is that at around 20-30 it starts to become ridiculous.


What constitutes a "character"? A person with a name? Do off-handed references to people who happened to be named add to the character count?


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 6, 2013)

Dictarium said:


> What constitutes a "character"? A person with a name? Do off-handed references to people who happened to be named add to the character count?



If the name appears more than once, it's a "character."  Or, to put it another way, if I read a name and think, "Now who the heck was that?", the story has too many characters.


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## Dictarium (May 6, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> If the name appears more than once, it's a "character."  Or, to put it another way, if I read a name and think, "Now who the heck was that?", the story has too many characters.


Makes sense, I just don't see a reason to set the Monkey-Sphere at such concrete range so as to say that series like Harry Potter, Redwall, Lord of the Rings, and SoFaI are "ridiculous", IMO.

e: For the record, I know you're not the person who suggested it. In case that was ambiguous.


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## Staff Deployment (May 7, 2013)

I make a conscious effort not to introduce any new characters after maybe the halfway or two-thirds point. When I'm reading, and a new vitally important character is introduced late, I always wonder why they didn't introduce him/her sooner, and—to me—it suggests a kind of 'making it up as you go along' approach (obviously this only applies on a case-by-case basis). I feel this way mostly because I subscribe to the "set 'em up and knock 'em down" approach, which doesn't really work if you start stacking more Jenga blocks after they've already started to fall.

This happens a lot in Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and Star Trek and such – anything with a huge cast of characters.


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## Jeko (May 7, 2013)

> I make a conscious effort not to introduce any new characters after maybe the halfway or two-thirds point.



Good advice; it's what ruined I Am Number Four.

What do you mean, you're _Six? _​You just appeared out of nowhere! Right at the end! It's like the author ran out of ideas and just popped you in suddenly to sort out the rest of the novel!


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

There's no set point where it becomes _okay _to introduce a new character. I've read hundreds of books with over a dozen characters in them and I've never forgotten a single one of them during the read, or stopped to ask their purpose. 

It seems to me that "too many characters!" is just an euphemism for "I don't want to have to do any work". I shudder to think how some of you would tackle Clancy's _Executive Orders _in which there are no fewer than thirty characters.


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

Funny how people always try to put measures on something like this or suggest bogus guidelines. This is mostly about opinion and preference -- and of course, what works for a given story.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> It seems to me that "too many characters!" is just an euphemism for "I don't want to have to do any work". I shudder to think how some of you would tackle Clancy's _Executive Orders _in which there are no fewer than thirty characters.



Something wrong with your novel? No problem - Just blame the readers!


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

Well, it certainly is possible that for the type of book Sam writes -- thrillers --  multiple characters are a convention. It's not his fault if some readers can't keep up.


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> Something wrong with your novel? No problem - Just blame the readers!



We live in a era where everyone wants to be spoon-fed information instead of figuring things out on their own. I use multiple characters and none of my readers have ever mentioned it being a problem. But when it's posited on a writing forum as being wrong, that standpoint suddenly becomes truth and law. 

There's _nothing _wrong with multiple characters_. _What's wrong is that nobody is interested in reading something that might actually require the use of brain cells.


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

I agree with that to a point. I have trouble keeping up with multiple characters, remembering names and bits of back-story etc. Just the way my brain works. I have no trouble retaining lots of relatively complex or layered information.  For example, I can learn about a new client or industry in short order and hold onto all that. It's just something about that type of learning, I guess. But it doesn't have much to with laziness. 

I also don't discount that some people want to read to relax and simply don't want to work that hard at it. My wife reads some pretty heavy stuff -- but she also has her less taxing beach books -- and some of them are fairly well written and not too bad. Like I said, this is mostly about preference -- unless it's about bad writing. It's possible to throw in too many characters for no good reason -- but it's impossible to qualify that out of context and beforehand. Not that some people won't try.


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

Fair point. 

The standpoint I'm seeing here, though, is that multiple characters is a bad move all round. It's just not true. I agree that people like to read books that are simple and not taxing on the brain, but to suggest that there's a set time to introduce a new character and a number of characters an author is limited to -- that's just patently ridiculous. Epic novels tend to employ a great number of characters. Thrillers, likewise. Moderan might correct me on this, but I'd venture that science-fiction is the same. 

I know one thing for sure: Reading a story based around a single character would, for me, become boring pretty fast. Likewise for writing one. One of the reasons why I find the will to continue writing long novels is that I use multiple characters to keep things fresh. For instance, if my MC is racing against time to save a high-ranking government official, maybe I'll switch to the assassin hired to kill him. Or maybe even switch to the target. One does not have to name every character. There were extras in _24 _that nobody knew anything about. 

In the end, it's what you've said: Use whatever works for the story/genre. And thrillers lend themselves to multiple characters.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> We live in a era where everyone wants to be spoon-fed information instead of figuring things out on their own.



Then isn't it our duty as writers to accept that and make it work within our pieces? One hundred years ago, writing was all about heavy prose and masterful use of the language.  Today, things are much different.  Books are no longer an experience to be enjoyed for the sake of the experience alone.  People want coherence.  People want tight plots and character arcs.  People want to be given a work whose author has an eye for efficiency, not style.  And frankly, a piece with dozens and dozens of characters doesn't fit the bill.



Sam said:


> I know one thing for sure: Reading a story based around a single character would, for me, become boring pretty fast.



If a character is sufficiently designed and developed, he (or she) can certainly hold the reader's attention.  My 195,000 word sci-fi novel only follows one character and one viewpoint (obviously there are secondary characters as well), but it remains interesting due to the development of that character.  The character you see in Chapter 1 is very different from the one you see in Chapter 7, which is different from the one in Chapter 11, Chapter 17, Chapter 23, and so on.

Of course things will become stale if no character development occurs; that's a given.  But it's hardly an absolute rule that a single character is boring.  Everything is boring if done poorly, but that's no reason to discount the technique done right.


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## Terry D (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> Then isn't it our duty as writers to accept that and make it work within our pieces? One hundred years ago, writing was all about heavy prose and masterful use of the language.  Today, things are much different.  Books are no longer an experience to be enjoyed for the sake of the experience alone.  People want coherence.  People want tight plots and character arcs.  People want to be given a work whose author has an eye for efficiency, not style.  And frankly, a piece with dozens and dozens of characters doesn't fit the bill.



That's painting with an awfully broad brush. And the bit about people wanting efficiency rather than style is not the case at all, IMO. Stephen King's books are loaded with characters and the reading public seems to buy into his work OK. 

You need whatever number of characters it takes to tell your story.  Characters walk in and out of my books at will.  Some stick around and become major players, others just take a seat on the sideline and provide color, but I never worry about how many there are. I won't turn anybody away from the party because I never know who is going to end up being the life of it. In my current book, a character came in out of the blue and now will, very likely, become the protagonist in my next book. If I'd worried about having 'too many characters' he would have been discarded. Life is full of characters, to restrict our writing of them is unrealistic.

The only book I've ever read in which I felt inundated by characters was _The Bourne Objective _by Eric van Lustbader. And that wasn't because of the number of characters, but because of van Lustbader's poor way of introducing and using them.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

Terry D said:


> You need whatever number of characters it takes to tell your story.  Characters walk in and out of my books at will.  Some stick around and become major players, others just take a seat on the sideline and provide color, but I never worry about how many there are. I won't turn anybody away from the party because I never know who is going to end up being the life of it. In my current book, a character came in out of the blue and now will, very likely, become the protagonist in my next book. If I'd worried about having 'too many characters' he would have been discarded. Life is full of characters, to restrict our writing of them is unrealistic.



"Too many characters" is a concept you should be worried about when editing, not writing.  When you're working on the first draft, it's fine to grab whatever jumps out at you and run with it.  However, once that's done and you're looking over your work, it's time to figure out who adds value and who doesn't.  Sometimes that means a supposed main character gets axed, and sometimes that means an intended extra gets the spotlight.  There's nothing wrong with either, as long as only the necessary characters remain in the finished product.


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

Only the necessary characters, huh? Gosh, thanks for the tip.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

JosephB said:


> Only the necessary characters, huh? Gosh, thanks for the tip.



If it was as obvious to most authors as it is to you and me (and many of the other fine members of this forum), this topic wouldn't exist.

Theory is simple.  Execution is where things get tricky.


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> If it was as obvious to most authors as it is to you and me (and many of the other fine members of this forum), this topic wouldn't exist.



When you meet any number of authors who've used multiple characters, be sure to tell them you think they were wrong to do so.


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> If it was as obvious to most authors as it is  to you and me (and many of the other fine members of this forum), this  topic wouldn't exist.
> 
> Theory is simple.  Execution is where things get tricky.



I've looked back over the thread -- and I can't see that there is a need for this topic to exist. Has there been some kind of avalanche of novels that are overloaded with characters that I don't know about?


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> When you meet any number of authors who've used multiple characters, be sure to tell them you think they were wrong to do so.



Don't confuse "multiple" with "too many."  It's an important distinction.


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## Srand-us (May 7, 2013)

I don't believe it is a matter of how many characters there are, but how many are introduced in the first few pages, or even the first chapter, and how distinctive they are. I try to make my characters so distinctive, so interesting, that the reader remembers them all.


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> Don't confuse "multiple" with "too many."  It's an important distinction.



You should go ahead and promote yourself champion of too many characters. 

Is five too many than four? Seventeen too many than sixteen? On what criteria is this strange phenomena based?


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

I take back what I said about this thread. 

Not only have we learned you need eliminate characters that aren’t necessary -- we’ve also learned exactly how and when to do it.

This stuff is pure gold.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> You should go ahead and promote yourself champion of too many characters.
> 
> Is five too many than four? Seventeen too many than sixteen? On what criteria is this strange phenomena based?



The criteria that JosephB so snidely dismisses: whether or not a character is truly necessary for the book.  There's no absolute number, and I've never said there's an absolute number.  If a character is unnecessary (indicated sometimes, as I mentioned above, by whether or not a reader remembers who said character is), he's one more character than you should have.

If you think (and by your own admission, indisputably so) that one character is too few for a story, then surely there's a maximum as well? If you have a criteria for too few characters, why is it so unbelievable that too many characters might be a shortcoming as well?


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> The criteria that JosephB so snidely dismisses: whether or not a character is truly necessary for the book.



I’m not dismissing the idea that you should eliminate unnecessary characters. I just think it’s a pointless, no-brainer thing to say when there isn’t any context.


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## Dictarium (May 7, 2013)

While I think it's highly irrational to dislike a book because of its number of characters, and falls into the realm of "not wanting to use brain cells" to an extent, it is not easy to balance that many characters before they all become one-note, boring, or stereotyped. I alsodisagree with the notion that any majority of the reason people dislike many characters is because they want to be spoon-fed. One just has to make the reader care about and be interested in the characters.

Again, to Harry Potter as an example. By the seventh book there are so many legions of characters that I dare say it approaches yet may not touch the Fifty mark. Even still, these children who apparently want everything spoon fed to them read the book en masse and I don't recall ever having somebody heard somebody complain about the wealth of characters in the series. This is, in my humble opinion, because a book with many characters works when one does not necessarily realize that it has many characters until charged with the task of listing them all. A Song of Fire and Ice seems to only be receiving this criticism from the unwashed masses struggling to keep track with the show's presentation of the characters. Again, I've not heard someone talk about how many characters are in ASoFaI until they examine the series critically.

Otra vez: just my two cents.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

JosephB said:


> I’m not dismissing the idea that you should eliminate unnecessary characters. I just think it’s a pointless, no-brainer thing to say when there isn’t any context.



Alright, I'll provide some examples.  My novel chronicles a war and its effect on the people drafted to fight in it.  In one of the opening chapters, I introduced four separate characters working at the base - an officer in charge of operations, a trainer, a messenger, and a liaison between the new recruits and the people they'd be working under.  I realized during editing that I only needed two of those - the officer and the trainer.  The other two were redundant, so I removed them.  Prior to the removal, my story had "too many characters."

Similarly, there were two secondary characters at the protagonist's school - one who initially bullied him but mellowed as the story went on, and one who began as an acquaintance and ended the story as a close friend.  Again, I realized there were redundancies - as the former lost prominence in the story, the other gained it.  Why shouldn't they just be a single character? Until I merged the two, again, my story had "too many characters."

My problem (and this is directed specifically at Sam) has never been with "multiple" characters.  I don't think that's ever been anyone's problem in this thread, and it certainly wasn't a core issue in the original post.  If you can make multiple protagonists and multiple viewpoints work, more power to you.  But don't confuse that with the original issue, which was:


CroZ said:


> With shows/books like the above they never really bother advancing the story through the main characters, but tend to add a new character who really isn't necessary and will likely die very quickly.



Here, "too many characters" is defined as "having characters whose inclusion detracts from the significance of the main characters."  Can't we all agree that a tighter story is a stronger one, and adding one-shots who steal thunder from the regulars is a bad idea?


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## Folcro (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> You should go ahead and promote yourself champion of too many characters.
> 
> Is five too many than four? Seventeen too many than sixteen? On what criteria is this strange phenomena based?



I think the point Gamer is making is that it becomes too many when you have characters that simply don't matter. If all the characters matter, it is not too many. It's not about the numbers.


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> Alright, I'll provide some examples.  My novel chronicles a war and its effect on the people drafted to fight in it.  In one of the opening chapters, I introduced four separate characters working at the base - an officer in charge of operations, a trainer, a messenger, and a liaison between the new recruits and the people they'd be working under.  I realized during editing that I only needed two of those - the officer and the trainer.  The other two were redundant, so I removed them.  Prior to the removal, my story had "too many characters."
> 
> Similarly, there were two secondary characters at the protagonist's school - one who initially bullied him but mellowed as the story went on, and one who began as an acquaintance and ended the story as a close friend.  Again, I realized there were redundancies - as the former lost prominence in the story, the other gained it.  Why shouldn't they just be a single character? Until I merged the two, again, my story had "too many characters."
> 
> ...



I see. You identified that some of your characters were unnecessary, and leaving them in the story would have meant that there were "too many characters." And "too many characters" isn't good because they detract from the story in some way. Yes -- it's all clear now.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

On the topic of unnecessary things, is it really necessary to make continuous posts containing little more than "I have nothing to contribute to this thread"? If you don't have anything to add and you think the topic is pointless, that's fine - you're entitled to your opinion.  But what's the use in proclaiming that multiple times per page in a four-page thread? Why not go contribute to a thread that DOES have value to you?


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## JosephB (May 7, 2013)

It has entertainment value -- does that count?


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

Here's an idea: Let's see if we can get through one whole thread without a member of staff having to post a little red message.

Back on topic: Is the OP suggesting that an author should spend 200 pages fleshing out a character just to have them meet their inevitable demise? It certainly seems that way. Characters die. It's a sad fact of literature. Some die sooner than others. But their deaths are seldom meaningless.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> Is the OP suggesting that an author should spend 200 pages fleshing out a character just to have them meet their inevitable demise? It certainly seems that way. Characters die. It's a sad fact of literature. Some die sooner than others. But their deaths are seldom meaningless.



But where does the meaning come from? It certainly can't be from a sense of loss, as the reader has barely connected with the character.  Wasting words "developing" that character (that is, setting him up to die) is solving the problem, but it's solving it in the wrong direction.  It's a much better use of your time and effort to simply remove the character entirely.

I ran into this exact problem while editing my novel.  There was originally a character that was introduced by name as a battle began and died in the same battle.  Was the death necessary? I think so.  Did I need to create a new character for its sake? Not at all.  The death's meaning came not from who died, but from the fear and anxiety it prompted in the main character.  By only mentioning the death, instead of building a character around it, I kept the focus and the meaning where it should have been - solely centered on the protagonist.


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## Kyle R (May 7, 2013)

Hi all. Interesting topic.

I'd like to introduce a "measuring stick" for character usage and necessity, if you will, that I've used ever since reading Jerry Cleaver's book on creative writing, _Immediate Fiction_.

In it, Jerry promotes the involvement of characters through _scenes_. Specifically, he advocates that every character have at least one scene with every other character.

So, let's say you have three characters: A, B, and C.

If you were to follow Jerry's approach, you would have three "necessary" scenes that should be there, among all the other scenes of your story:

A scene with character A interacting with character B,
A scene with character A interacting with character C,
and a scene with character B interacting with character C.


I don't personally follow that advise to the letter, but I do believe it offers a good vantage point to gauge if characters are useful, or extraneous, in a story.


Allow me to use _The Matrix_ film as a story example, since it's the first thing that popped into my head and I know many people here have likely seen it.

I think the story is great, though I also think it had some characters that could have been either A) removed, or B) improved.

Let's look at the characters. I've organized them by descending order, in relation to the number of scenes each character has, or is directly involved in:

Neo,
Trinity,
Morpheus,
Agent Smith,
Cypher,
The Oracle,
Tank,

Mouse,

Dozer,
_
Switch,
Apoc,

Agent Brown,
Agent Jones_

For those who have seen the movie, they might notice an interesting correlation: that order also reflects how memorable each character is.

I sure remember Neo, but which one was Agent Jones? Who was Apoc, again?


The number of scenes the character has directly affects how significant the character becomes in the reader's mind.


Going off that, I believe that every character that you consider relevant should be given at least one scene where they are the star in it, or at least play a major role. Without it, those characters become forgettable and, if not paid attention to, they can become weak links in your story. 

That doesn't mean you can't have "throw-away" characters just for the heck of it, or nameless henchmen for your protagonist to dispatch. But characters become more powerful, and more memorable, the more scenes they take the starring role in.

It's a guideline that I like to keep in the back of my mind when writing. :encouragement:


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## bazz cargo (May 7, 2013)

This is highly relevant to me. Since I am trying my hand at writing a book (and going nowhere at the moment) I was wondering how many characters I could keep track of. How many would I need to make it all work? I'm doing the recommended thing by working out back-stories for each and it has produced more writing than the  book. I'm beginning to think Snow White should have stuck to three dwarfs. :drinkcoffee:


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

KyleColorado said:


> It's a guideline that I like to keep in the back of my mind when writing. :encouragement:



You keep _all of that _in mind when you write? Seriously?


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## Staff Deployment (May 7, 2013)

Okay, this thread started spiralling while I was asleep.

I like fewer characters because it means we can explore each one in more detail. But to be hypocritical, I've got over 20 major characters in one project. I feed most of them to giant lizards. So I guess by the end I've really only got 5.

Point being, you can only evaluate these things on a case-by-case basis.


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## Dictarium (May 7, 2013)

Sam said:


> You keep _all of that _in mind when you write? Seriously?


You seem to be a real proponent of a very classic writing style (i.e. writing in a manner that does not involve copious amounts of pre-writing, outlining, character bio making, books-on-how-to-write-things-reading). Because of this, and your seemingly equal level of proponency for a multitude of characters in your stories, do you ever have trouble of keeping track of them or making sure that they're all relevant to the story or, rather, do they often lend themselves to relevancy by being well-built characters rather than you having to work at making them relevant?


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## Sam (May 7, 2013)

Dictarium said:


> You seem to be a real proponent of a very classic writing style (i.e. writing in a manner that does not involve copious amounts of pre-writing, outlining, character bio making, books-on-how-to-write-things-reading). Because of this, and your seemingly equal level of proponency for a multitude of characters in your stories, do you ever have trouble of keeping track of them or making sure that they're all relevant to the story or, rather, do they often lend themselves to relevancy by being well-built characters rather than you having to work at making them relevant?



Let me preface this by saying that I am in no way suggesting that my way of approaching writing should ever be considered by someone else. Whatever works for the writer is what should be adhered to. That said, there's a tendency to over-think every little detail as it pertains to the telling of a story. I'm a proponent of minimalism. It's hard enough trying to keep track of characters and scenes without forcing yourself to subscribe to a formula espoused by a how-to guide. 

To answer your question: I don't outline, pre-write, create character bios, or read anything other than quality fiction (sometimes non-fiction to broaden the horizons). That's a lot of time that could be spent writing the story. When I create a character and his/her back-story, I never forget it. It's difficult to explain. It's a trait that has gotten me into heated arguments with a variety of academics. If I can recall the first sentence of an essay I wrote a year ago, I'll reconstruct about three-quarters of it from memory. Sometimes more, sometimes less, dependant upon the complexity of the piece. This ability does not transfer to something I read, unfortunately_, _but serves as an invaluable tool for writing. It's not a photographic or eidetic memory: it's something I've acquired through years of developing an affinity for words. 

That's why I don't bog myself down in extraneous detail. Everything I need is nestled safely in my brain. I don't need white noise pushing it to a place where it can't be accessed.


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## alanmt (May 7, 2013)

I like an ensemble cast.


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## Terry D (May 7, 2013)

Characters are like the brush strokes in a painting.  Not every single one may seem necessary, but every one adds depth and texture to the entirety of the work. Some painters can't paint with that level of detail and excel at sketching, or with the broad flat sweeps of wstercolor. If you aren't comfortable with a large cast, that's fine, but many writers thrive on a large cast, and their readers agree.

Many movies made from good books are flat, miserable failures because the screenplay will condense and combine chracters, costing the story much of its depth.  You can't, in my opinion, have too many characters--just poorly written ones.


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## Dictarium (May 7, 2013)

> Characters are like the brush strokes in a painting. Not every single one may seem necessary, but every one adds depth and texture to the entirety of the work.


Agreed. Not every character in a story must greatly advance or be crucial to the plot or inform the central theme of the book or something like that. That's more for short stories where there's a (theoretically) limited amount of time to convey a message or idea and so wasting time talking about things that don't matter is detrimental to the piece overall. In a novel, having a character here or there who does no more than provide an example of the type of person who resides in this world you've created isn't necessarily a bad thing and, in my opinion, doesn't mean that said novel has "too many" characters.


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## Lewdog (May 8, 2013)

I really like watching Supernatural, which I never watched until I started watching re-runs on TNT.  Sometimes though, it seems like they have too many active characters.


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## Sam (May 8, 2013)

Not really. If you can't keep up with _Supernatural, _I don't know what to say. The only recurring characters are Dean, Sam, Castiel, and Bobby. You should try _24_ if you want to have a hard time keeping up with characters. _Prison Break _has even more.


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## Lewdog (May 8, 2013)

Sam said:


> Not really. If you can't keep up with _Supernatural, _I don't know what to say. The only recurring characters are Dean, Sam, Castiel, and Bobby. You should try _24_ if you want to have a hard time keeping up with characters.



Oh I can keep up with it, but then you have Crowley, some of the Angels that make appearances at random times, the demons including the one that gets Sam to drink her blood, some of the other hunters that make several re-occurring appearances...there is just a lot of moving pieces.


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## Sam (May 8, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> Oh I can keep up with it, but then you have Crowley, some of the Angels that make appearances at random times, the demons including the one that gets Sam to drink her blood, some of the other hunters that make several re-occurring appearances...there is just a lot of moving pieces.



In _Prison Break _you have Schofield, Burrows, Sucre, T-Bag, C-Note, Abruzzi, Haywire, Tweener, Westmoreland, Bellick, Tancredi, Pope, Kellerman, Mahone, The General, Morgan, Donovan, Stolte, Kim, Geary, Whistler, Lechero, Sammy, Governor Tancredi, Self, Patterson, Savrinn -- and I never forgot the name or purpose of _any_ of them when I watched it.


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## Lewdog (May 8, 2013)

There were certain shows I never got into.  I never watched Prison Break, Lost, or 24.


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## Sam (May 8, 2013)

The point I'm making isn't predicated on whether you watched the shows. I'm saying that when it's done well, there isn't the issue with multiple characters that seems to be a recurring theme throughout this thread.


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## Lewdog (May 8, 2013)

Sam said:


> The point I'm making isn't predicated on whether you watched the shows. I'm saying that when it's done well, there isn't the issue with multiple characters that seems to be a recurring theme throughout this thread.



Whether I watched the shows does make a difference, because without watching them, I can't agree or disagree with your opinion.  It has definitely become a fad that there is a large supporting cast.  This isn't the day of Dragnet anymore where you have one or two main characters and the rest are pretty much role guys.


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## Gamer_2k4 (May 8, 2013)

Sam said:


> The point I'm making isn't predicated on whether you watched the shows. I'm saying that when it's done well, there isn't the issue with multiple characters that seems to be a recurring theme throughout this thread.



The issue has never been with multiple characters.  Ever.  The issue has always been with doing multiple characters poorly.  Obviously if you can keep track of all the characters, there aren't too many of them, but we've been discussing that particular criteria for pages now.

I'll say it again, because you somehow keep missing it: *No one here* has a problem with multiple characters existing in a work.  Your supposed "recurring theme" is nothing more than a strawman.


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## Staff Deployment (May 9, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> I really like watching Supernatural, which I never watched until I started watching re-runs on TNT.  Sometimes though, it seems like they have too many active characters.



That's because they can't get any of the actors to come back to the show so they keep hiring new ones.
Or so I surmise. Because the writing is mediocre and melodramatic at best.

Crowley is a breath of fresh air, except the writers seem to know this, so they keep making him say weird things like "I was born to direct" as if they're attempting meta-humor.

Dean is a great character too... at least until he starts his inspirational speeches or starts going on about brotherly love and familial obligations and then I sort of tune out and start wondering what kind of exercises Mr. Ackles does to keep up his jawline, or what kind of gravel he gargles.

Perhaps you have picked up on the fact that Supernatural is a guilty pleasure of mine.


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