I'm currently editing a novel that was submitted to me recently. I'm not publishing this particular book but trying to make ends meet if you know what I mean. Do you want to know, of all the things that I have looked over, what drives me the most crazy looking at this particular text? Too many characters. In the first thirty pages alone there were an equal amount of characters introduced.
It's just too many to have. There are a couple of characters that are introduced, named, and then never heard from again, My question to the author...why? Of all the characters that were introduced by name the author could consolidate all of them down to no more than seven, maybe eight, since the first few pages cover a lot of ground. This helps the author tell a tighter more focused story and helps the reader keep track of who does what for whom.
Look at your current character set. Do more than one character accomplish the same purpose in the story. Can you cut one and take their attributes and fold them into the other? Streamline is best. I'm not saying that a novel that contains many, many characters cannot work but you better be able to draw a picture of beautiful interwoven individuals that each bring their own gifts to the story. I, however, subscribe to the less is best theory of character numbers in a novel.
One of my writers is doing a young adult X-men themed novel that has probably 15 characters and she keeps introducing more. I groan every time a new character is brought in. They have odd names, which helps me remember them, but half the time I can't remember what powers each character has or can even see them clearly in my mind's eye. Its one of the weakest elements of her novel.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I love George R. R. Martin, who has a cast of dozens of characters. Some of them I can't remember, I'll be honest, but because of Martin's skill I do remember many more of them than I would if I were reading an amateur.
Bottom line, unless you're George R. R. Martin and have the developed skills to juggle 10-30 characters at a time, keep the main cast down to 5 max, preferably less.