For you, what do you think is too many characters?

[Steve Harrison]

As others have said, as many as are needed to tell the story. I used 26 POV characters in my first novel and many more non-POV characters, simply because this was the best way to cover the sweeping action story involving multiple story threads. There were six main characters, another dozen supporting and the rest were like 'cameras' covering action the others couldn't. The challenge was to make each one connect with the reader and bring something unique to the story, whether their 'bit' was ten pages or one.

While I mostly still use multiple POVs, none of my other novels have required so many characters and I'm not sure I would want to include so many again. Ignorance can be bliss when writing your first novel

 

[paranoid marvin]

That's interesting. I could tell you all the characters in Alien, which has 7 human characters, but not The Thing, which I think has about 12.

I think it can depend on how memorable they are. I think that many could name the 9 members of the Fellowship in LOTR for example.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Forty characters does seem like an awful lot, but I suppose it partly depends upon over how many books they will be introduced.

I think one of the issues with having too many characters is that there is a danger that none will get sufficient 'screen time' , so it will be hard for the reader to grow any affinity towards them (if they are able to keep up with so many characters in the first place.

I think you also have to ask yourself if this number of characters is what is needed to create the story, or if it is what you would like. If it's a case that you have managed to create lots of great characters and that you don't want them to 'go to waste' , then consider that there will be other stories and other book that you could use them in. Rather than 'wasting' characters with an inadequate amount of screen time, consider saving them for another book and for their own adventures where their characters can be fully explored.

 

[Toby Frost]

I could name all the Fellowship, but I'd find it hard to tell Merry and Pippin apart (no doubt there are differences). It might be slightly different where you've got non-human races who have a built-in look and personality.

 

[sknox]

A good example of how to handle a large cast can be found in The Expanse series (book more than the show). But you can go back to 19thc novels like War and Peace for exemplars as well.

 

[Astro Pen]

I usually end up with the protagonist plus about half a dozen complex 3D characters and maybe ten 2D 'functional' characters.
Half a dozen is quite enough inter personal chemistry/conflict to juggle.
I always stick with my protagonist's POV and a linear chronology. If you go omniscient and cover societal rather than individual I guess things are different and all bets are off.
So it all depends, they say.

 

[The Big Peat]

Overall, however many are needed to tell a long story. It is a story that can't be concluded in just one book and although finishing it in two might be possible, it depends on how much I'm able to cover by the time I reach that point with other ideas I have in mind. As for the characters, I suppose I plan on trying to use all of those that I introduce to what could be their fullest so as to not waste a character. The story is told from a third-person point of view and while it mainly focuses around the MC herself it would occasionally shift to another character depending on their importance to the plot at hand in terms of telling this story. The new characters, who I am still on the fence of introducing, are more meant to introduce greater variety in the world as well as to create a more unpredictable sense of danger while they fill antagonistic roles.

They would expand upon a certain idea introduced in the first book through their own unique ways and would give readers more of an insight into said idea and the possibilities of it.

With 40 characters, the bolded seems a good way to get out of hand depending on what exactly you mean by it.

I think there's two ways forwards in situations like this.

One is to just follow your gut and wing it and find out later if you did okay.

The other is to look at good books that remind you of what you want to achieve, and do what they do with modifications as suitable.

A good example of a story that couldn't be told in one book is Lord of the Rings. That has the following number of discernible meaningful characters:

The Fellowship - 9
Hobbits of Note (Bilbo, Fatty Bolger, Farmer Cottan, Lobelia, Farmer Maggot, Gaffer Gamgee) - 6
Barliman Butterbur, Bill Ferny, Tom Bombadil - 3
Elrond, Arwen, Galadriel - 3
The Rohirrim (Eomer, Eowyn, Theoden, Wormtongue) - 4
Treebeard, Saruman - 2
Gondor (Denethor, Faramir, Imrahil, Beregond, Bergil, Ioreth) - 6
Herald of Sauron, Lord of the Nazgul - 2
Gollum - 1

That gives you 36 characters of some note, give or take how you might feel about my count of who's important or not (there's a great many omitted).

But not all of these characters are given a great amount of rope. Some are there for a couple of chapters only with little known about their history.

So. If you have a little over 40 characters, some major and some minor, many seen only for a few chapters, and a story of roughly LotR length, that's probably okay. If you want to have 40 characters where most of them matter for most of the story, then you might be running into issues.

 

[W Collier]

Happened to read Salem's Lot recently. Worth examining for character management. 5 protagonists on the hunter team, 2 on the antagonist team, but then a host--indeed, an entire village's worth--of other named villagers, each with little story threads which get twisted into their vampire motivations. Honestly? Probably a little excessive, even as it was.

 

[The Bluestocking]

My current WIP seems to have one protagonist, about 5 - 6 supporting characters, and an ever-growing revolving cast of peripheral characters.

Works for me since the single protagonist, written in the close 3rd POV, provides the focus, her interactions with the supporting characters sparks the humour and drama and banter, and the revolving peripheral characters keep things interesting and they make my massive story world come alive.

If anyone considered all of them together as a group, it would be a really sprawling cast though...

YMMV.

 

[Thiswriterinme]

I think it is important to include all the characters in your story that drive the story and tell it completely. If that puts you in the 40s, and it is manageable to both you as the author and readers, then that's great! I would caution against using "excess" characters to fill in scenes of POVs on the periphery of the story.

I've been reading this fantasy series that is classified as a romance and fantasy adventure. There are probably 5 main characters that I could name, and chapters are written from all of their POVs. The POV generally focuses on the two main romance interest characters, and several of the aforementioned main characters seem to serve mostly as a second POV to rotate around one of the two main characters without their own plot or arc developing too much. It is like the author just wanted two write from different perspectives without veering too far away from the main romance.

Then, over the course of the 3 books that have been completed, there are probably 5-6 additional characters that only get 1-2 chapters of screen time per novel. Now, maybe they will have a bigger role further along in the series, but mostly they just seem to be conveniently located where the action is as a way to periodically remind the reader that there is a bigger plot outside of the central romance.

While that isn't necessarily a bad thing, those books would be fine without the randomly scattered POVs, at least what I've read so far. They also don't give enough attention to the characters in a way that the reader can become attached to them or form any kind of interest in those characters beyond the sporadic scenes that they show up in. Most of their scenes don't drive the overall plot forward either, which makes them kind of boring, in my opinion.

That series is a good example of how having multiple main characters and support characters aren't done very well. However, a lot of other people have listed books that have done it well.

I tend to air on the side of high character counts. I classify them as minor characters or major characters. My major characters drive the story and their arcs are complete. Minor characters show up when and as needed, and while I do make complete profiles and histories for them, most of that is just for my own ability to write them in a 3D way.

Most of my books turn into series, so often a character I consider "minor" in one installment could develop into a "major" character later on, but they don't get their own POV tellings until that happens. I also like to play with different ways to write multiple POVs in my books, like using different styling methods and whatnot, so that gives me a little more flexibility in writing multiple characters and large casts. For example, one of the books I'm writing now is primarily told from one character's POV, but she's not the main character of the story. The MCs thoughts and POV are incorporated differently. The second book in the series is going to be written differently though, each chapter being from a different POV.

So, as long as your characters have substance, their involvement moves the story along, they are given time for their arcs to develop (and for anyone reading to feel connected to them in some way), then I think you can tell the story with as many characters as you need.

Another concept I've toyed with is having characters be mentioned in the main series, but then if I really like them or get invested in their story, I will write a spinoff series centered around them rather than expand the main series to include them. That is fun and can really flesh out your story and world, even if it is just for yourself.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I've read stories based upon true events that have done both these: either changed character names because it is too confusing for the reader to have two characters with the forename (even though that often happens in real life), or else combined several minor characters together into one fictional person.

This happens all the time (for very good reason) in films when multiple characters are often condensed into one, or events which took place months apart are played out as happening simultaneously. If you are going to have that many people running around your pages, OP, give the readers a Dramatis Personae at the start of the book so if we get lost as to who is who we can go remind ourselves. Nothing elaborate: Chinhunk Armstrong - Captain of the USS Insufferable, Clunck McIntyre - ship's doctor. etc.