Writing Writers. Your preferred characters quantity and focus

[DekuKurohi]

More writings stuff for you to talk about. This time let's talk characters.

Specifically on how you like to create and introduce characters and how do you divide your attention for each.
More specifically is how many characters do you like to put in a story, and how many you want to focus on.

There are a lot of dilemma when it comes to writing a story in terms of establishing characters and their usage.
Any story is gonna have more and more characters as they keep going in word counts. Some writers don't make a lot of characters, some do, for many different reasons.
You're gonna want more characters to shake up the status quo if you feel like there isn't enough reasons for your main characters and friends to do anything interesting, or maybe to show the scale of the current conflict they're in if it warrant more named characters, or because it's a long-running story and not showing new characters is gonna be impossible not to do since longer series means escalation in scope, or many other different reasons.
Some story setting like a school, tournament, war, etc. also needs a lot of characters too, and if you don't at least included a few names outside of the core cast it's gonna feel jarring that there's only a single small group the story is focused on.

When it comes to focus. Obviously you'll make your main character the one who got the most screen(text?)time, but with more characters you need to divert that attention. Either perspective flip, makes your pov character interact with them, etc.
Without focusing on other characters you're gonna risk either making the story rather dull with just one perspective to rely on, or make the stakes/tension next to non-existant if you don't give the newly introduced characters that are obviously gonna be important to the story feel, well, important.

There is also a problem of introducing too many characters too quickly. Probably the most transparent writings hiccup readers are gonna notice. Gonna have a hard time knowing who will be important if you crammed everyone's introduction into the same chapter, and chances are gonna make the readers lose the plot, like a story being way too fast to follow. Think most people know not to do this already, at least after writing/reading a few stories out. Hopefully. Maybe not.

There's also how to establish your characters but that's gonna make this topic already overly complicated/broad and wordy, and that's also something that many should already heard about thousand of times over already.


I'm keen on having very few or even just one perspective going on in a story, very protagonist-centered story. The kind that doesn't rely on too many characters since the mcs are the one driving the plot usually. In terms of focus it's basically mostly them and the side characters for a particular arc getting a few words in and getting pretty personal with the mc so they can show their dirty laundry without having to shift perspective, which doing too much can be confusing for a few people I would've imagined. In terms of introducing characters I keep them pretty low unless it's a very specific setting I'm going for. Drip feeding characters over many chapters.

 

[Deleted member 113259]

I don't.

 

[owotrucked]

3-4 new characters (or lumped group of character) per 1000 words sounds reasonable maybe? Especially if you can put a picture to match the name with faces. At least, that's roughly the quantity I see in webcomics.

About focus, always the main character. Side characters are like punctual bonus chapter, you might expect people to skip

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

1-3 Core Main character
-> The focus of the chapter, arc, or volume. They play vital role as their interaction with Protagonist is important to the plot until the next chapter/arc/volume.

Then 3-5 more Side Main character, in which they play as the lesser important main characters, but they still have some effect on the plot.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

More writings stuff for you to talk about. This time let's talk characters.

Specifically on how you like to create and introduce characters and how do you divide your attention for each.
More specifically is how many characters do you like to put in a story, and how many you want to focus on.

There are a lot of dilemma when it comes to writing a story in terms of establishing characters and their usage.
Any story is gonna have more and more characters as they keep going in word counts. Some writers don't make a lot of characters, some do, for many different reasons.
You're gonna want more characters to shake up the status quo if you feel like there isn't enough reasons for your main characters and friends to do anything interesting, or maybe to show the scale of the current conflict they're in if it warrant more named characters, or because it's a long-running story and not showing new characters is gonna be impossible not to do since longer series means escalation in scope, or many other different reasons.
Some story setting like a school, tournament, war, etc. also needs a lot of characters too, and if you don't at least included a few names outside of the core cast it's gonna feel jarring that there's only a single small group the story is focused on.

When it comes to focus. Obviously you'll make your main character the one who got the most screen(text?)time, but with more characters you need to divert that attention. Either perspective flip, makes your pov character interact with them, etc.
Without focusing on other characters you're gonna risk either making the story rather dull with just one perspective to rely on, or make the stakes/tension next to non-existant if you don't give the newly introduced characters that are obviously gonna be important to the story feel, well, important.

There is also a problem of introducing too many characters too quickly. Probably the most transparent writings hiccup readers are gonna notice. Gonna have a hard time knowing who will be important if you crammed everyone's introduction into the same chapter, and chances are gonna make the readers lose the plot, like a story being way too fast to follow. Think most people know not to do this already, at least after writing/reading a few stories out. Hopefully. Maybe not.

There's also how to establish your characters but that's gonna make this topic already overly complicated/broad and wordy, and that's also something that many should already heard about thousand of times over already.


I'm keen on having very few or even just one perspective going on in a story, very protagonist-centered story. The kind that doesn't rely on too many characters since the mcs are the one driving the plot usually. In terms of focus it's basically mostly them and the side characters for a particular arc getting a few words in and getting pretty personal with the mc so they can show their dirty laundry without having to shift perspective, which doing too much can be confusing for a few people I would've imagined. In terms of introducing characters I keep them pretty low unless it's a very specific setting I'm going for. Drip feeding characters over many chapters.

I pretty much do the same as you...
Sorry that I don't have much to contribute.

 

[groudonvert]

3-4 new characters (or lumped group of character) per 1000 words sounds reasonable maybe? Especially if you can put a picture to match the name with faces. At least, that's roughly the quantity I see in webcomics.

About focus, always the main character. Side characters are like punctual bonus chapter, you might expect people to skip

In my opinion, there's no side chapters. If the authors decided to put a chapter focused on "side characters" there's a reason. If the reader skips a chapter focused on them he can lose important informations for later. So when I write chapters that are less focused on MC, I find a way to connect them to the main story.

To answer the question, I work with a few characters in the main cast and sometimes create a few on the fly because I need them at some point and will go away after that.

 

[laccoff_mawning]

I like many characters. Many, many characters.

 

[APieceOfRock]

Honestly, as little as possible. Or I introduce a bunch of them only to kill them off.

As for main characters, it's best that there's only 1. But I will only go up to 3 or 4. Any more than that and the story loses focus.

 

[owotrucked]

In my opinion, there's no side chapters. If the authors decided to put a chapter focused on "side characters" there's a reason. If the reader skips a chapter focused on them he can lose important informations for later. So when I write chapters that are less focused on MC, I find a way to connect them to the main story.

You're obviously right from the writer's perspective, but readers don't give a shit. It depends on engagement, and how much they trust the author, and how bothered they are by reading outside mc's perspective.

About missing crucial informations, that's not a great deal. Readers can sometimes connect the dots and still enjoy a story even though they're hallucinating half of the plot due to missing chapters. think of it as self inflicted plot twist lool

if people are able to read MTL, they're able to skip every two sentences and still make sense of it

 

[groudonvert]

You're obviously right from the writer's perspective, but readers don't give a shit. It depends on engagement, and how much they trust the author, and how bothered they are by reading outside mc's perspective.

About missing crucial informations, that's not a great deal. Readers can sometimes connect the dots and still enjoy a story even though they're hallucinating half of the plot due to missing chapters. think of it as self inflicted plot twist lool

if people are able to read MTL, they're able to skip every two sentences and still make sense of it

Well it also depends if the author knows where he's going and how he knows where his story goes. If he knows where it goes from A to Z, it's easier to introduce side characters that will have importance later, even if they're barely (or not at all) related to the Main Character. One of the best example of this is So I'm a Spider so What. You can skip side chapters (that's what the manga does lol), but you'll most certainly lose interest in the story after MC exits the Labyrinth.

 

[MintiLime]

3-4 new characters (or lumped group of character) per 1000 words sounds reasonable maybe? Especially if you can put a picture to match the name with faces. At least, that's roughly the quantity I see in webcomics.

About missing crucial informations, that's not a great deal. Readers can sometimes connect the dots and still enjoy a story even though they're hallucinating half of the plot due to missing chapters. think of it as self inflicted plot twist lool

This made me feel relieved lol. I’ve been introducing “factions” but they’ve only been maybe 4-6 named characters at most.

I’ve definitely had readers skip chapters with my character side character Magpie in them. Little do they know that’s

Spoiler

one of the main villains

of the novel. Guess they’ll figure it out eventually lol.

 

[dummycake]

Fuck. People don't like a lot of main characters but what do I do if I have more stories I want to tell about them? It's not the length of a whole novel but I think it could be a separate story that doesn't necessarily need the main story but it would be weird and too short if it was a separate novel, do you know what I mean?

Like, let's say the main main character is Anthony
and there's Banthony and Canthony, they already have a story with each other and with Danthony and Enthony.
But Danthony has a story with Anthony before the BCDE story.
And then comes Fanthony, Ganthony and Hanthony, they're in the main ABCDEFGH story and have their own stories I want to tell.

I want POVs for each of them, to see what they're thinking and how they perceive the others but people complain about too many POVs and how it messes with their brains, so it's 3rd Person all the way in????

 

[owotrucked]

I’ve definitely had readers skip chapters with my character side character Magpie in them. Little do they know that’s

Spoiler

one of the main villains

of the novel. Guess they’ll figure it out eventually lol.

When they appear as such, you can leave in author notes or appendix the references to the chapters where it was foreshadowed. The scantrad group of dungeon meshi leaves a glossary at the end of chapters that helps a lot when you forgot about the shit that happened 50 chapters ago.

Preferrably avoid materials that readers would skip but don't worry too much if they do, it's your story.

Fuck. People don't like a lot of main characters but what do I do if I have more stories I want to tell about them? It's not the length of a whole novel but I think it could be a separate story that doesn't necessarily need the main story but it would be weird and too short if it was a separate novel, do you know what I mean?

Like, let's say the main main character is Anthony
and there's Banthony and Canthony, they already have a story with each other and with Danthony and Enthony.
But Danthony has a story with Anthony before the BCDE story.
And then comes Fanthony, Ganthony and Hanthony, they're in the main ABCDEFGH story and have their own stories I want to tell.

I want POVs for each of them, to see what they're thinking and how they perceive the others but people complain about too many POVs and how it messes with their brains, so it's 3rd Person all the way in????

Nothing you can do, either write the story because you need to tell it and disregard all engagement, or design another story that compromises your personal goals for the sake of audience.

In the first case, you can foreshadow the POV fiesta as early as possible, instead of starting the story like any classic story and then switch off midway. That way, readers already know their in for a wild ride, instead of taken by surprise.

 

[Rhaps]

For the story I am writing, I do introduce new characters, usually 3-4 per Arc. I do get a little into them when I write, but only in small snippets of the story.

My story isn't about the world, it is about how the MC deals with the work. Plus, since I gave my MC +2000 to her Insight, I can tell their story through the MC.

 

[dummycake]

In the first case, you can foreshadow the POV fiesta as early as possible, instead of starting the story like any classic story and then switch off midway. That way, readers already know their in for a wild ride, instead of taken by surprise.

Thank you, I think that would be the best way for now.

 

[groudonvert]

I'm currently not writing a story on this site (and I don't know if I will since my English kinda sucks lol), but I have that kind of story where there's multiple PoV and 1 main character that is the story's focus (I mean, practically everything is about her and how she influences the world and the other characters). Even if she's not the main focus of the chapter or doesn't have a PoV for a while, she's linked to every thing.

 

[SummerSweetTea]

I have a clear main character and 3-4 secondary mains.

However, I have many named characters that have varying relevance to the story. Most are needed for specific reasons and then move out of the story once their part is done. Perhaps 20 or so that will be introduced as needed and several more that technically exist but may or may not ever actually appear in the story.