Would a research team of this size be too small or too big? [closed]
Closed by System on Jul 24, 2018 at 07:00
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I'm working on a story that revolves around a research team in a remote setting. They would have supplies so they don't have to leave the area they have to research for about a year. So far, I am planing on the team to be composed of both scientists and people they need for support. By this, I mean someone who is in charge of security, someone who is responsible for health monitoring, and so on. The thing is, I am not sure if this would make the team too large. At the moment I am considering a group of 8, 4 being the scientists and 4 being these support people (a member of the military, a doctor, a computer tech, and a communications official). Would this be too much? Too little?
Note: The group would be isolated for the year, in a very cold setting where they would spend most of their time indoors. Food and supplies all provided so no need for survival skills.
Editing to answer some points I have in the answers:
Would it being a science fiction setting change the amount you would suggest, @Amadeus and @Keith Morrison?
@DPT yes I have thought of that. The idea started as something being discussed with a friend so I had been a bit hesitant to change some of the characters but I could drop or merge a few (as you mention the doctor I always felt could be merged with one of the main members of the research group)
Considering it's a scifi setting, would rotation of the team done from a station or from maybe a cycling of people in stasis be viable?
Still trying to work this out and as I said it was originally done with someone else and now I am working on it on my own. So maybe the best idea is to scrap most of it and starting over on the character pool? So far only the main character is someone I really would not scrap and mainly change the people around him.Thanks for the advice so far!
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I am a research scientist, and I have worked on teams ranging from two (I suppose the smallest group that could be called a team, although I have done solo research as well), to fifty six, if you include support personnel; and that included a few dozen PhDs. The team at the Large Hadron Collider has literally hundreds of PhDs on board.
For the purposes of realism, your group size can be anything. As far as for fictional purposes, many stories are set in large companies, it is okay if your MC does not have much personal interaction with everybody on the team.
In a way, you might want a "more is better" approach, if there are only eight people in your story, you will be expected to provide details, interactions and personality for all of them. If there are twenty-eight, you have variety when you need it, but the reader doesn't expect a full character profile for all twenty-eight of them, and you can have "circles" of interactions. Innermost, medium, distant from MC, but then your innermost circle can be perhaps four or five people the MC works with every day, the mid-range circle is people he works with once a week, the outermost circle is people the MC knows but converses or interacts with less than once a week, the computer technician, communications, security, supplies, transportation, etc.
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