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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37731
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37731
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### Six or seven is not too many on a team, for a story.

The problem is making sure you can make them distinct and don't have two or more people doing basically the same job in the plot.

The problem with big teams is _writing_ them; it is a lot of people to introduce and make unique and that puts a lot of pressure on the author to make that happen and NOT seem like an info-dump.

To me, Stephen King in The Stand has the best way of introducing a large team (in a long book), his "leader" starts alone, undertakes a quest (due to a dream), and meets his team one by one on this quest, a scene for each of them. It makes sense, they are all having the **same** dream quest and headed to the same place, etc.

That way, the reader is 'naturally' introduced to each character doing something (meeting the team-so-far for one) and this provides tension or conflict in coming to trust each other (you never know when you might be meeting a murderous gang or bad guy), etc.

But those are all story mechanics. The answer is, your team isn't too large, but definitely avoid early info-dumps trying to introduce that many people at once. It demands far too much telling and thus demands too much memorization from the reader; which they absolutely **will not do.** That means they will become confused by who-is-who on the team, that leads to boredom and putting down the book.

The antidote to that is _slow_ introduction, lengthening the first ACT of the novel.

Original score: 5