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Q&A How many characters are too many?

I'm going to point out that the named casts in Peter F Hamilton's works often top the 30 character mark. Having said that those works are huge, don't commit to more characterisation work than you c...

posted 6y ago by Ash‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:24:55Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37702
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Ash‭ · 2019-12-08T09:24:55Z (almost 5 years ago)
I'm going to point out that the named casts in Peter F Hamilton's works often top the 30 character mark. Having said that those works are huge, don't commit to more characterisation work than you can actually accomplish, if you can't actually flesh out characters enough for them to do their job, without overwhelming the story, there's not a lot of point having them filling the roster. This is an issue not only of writing material for the characters but also of fitting that material into the story without the whole piece turning into a series of character introductions between minor incidents that don't feel fleshed out because of their relatively small size compared to the mass of character detail.

In summary depending how long your piece is balancing that many characters might be awkward but there's no hard-and-fast rule as to how many, or few, characters work in a piece.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-07-17T17:17:39Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 4