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The late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series has approximately 10,000 named characters and 500 story arcs*. You may take this either as evidence that it can work or cautionary tale. Or perhaps bot...
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36568 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/