How Do I Handle Many Characters At Once?

You can start sub plots and end them midway to make way for new sub plots about new characters.

Like one scout dreams to get married and live in an island. In third chapter make him fall in love with a new crew member and in the fifth chapter have this crew member kill this scout. Then in sixth chapter this crew member(girl) seduces a pirate but a storm comes and kills washes the pirate off the ship.

The sub plots needn't stretch all along the length of the novel.

One rule I've come across is to make sure their names aren't too similar - even those whose names start with the same letter can get conflated in readers' minds. Robert and Richard, for example. Give them unusual names, but not difficult to pronounce (Leoghaire, for instance, just becomes 'that L girl'). Give them unique characteristics, easy for pirates - missing an eye, the mute, tattoos on his bald head, etc.

Also, try to introduce them slowly, and in a memorable scene. Sort of like gently folding in an ingredient while cooking. If you add them all at once, you get lumps!

Are these all POV characters?

I find loads of sub plots and characters are easy to handle when there is only on with the POV.

That was my question, too. How many of them have an actual POV?

Just because you introduce a character to fill a plot need, that doesn't mean you have to give them a back story, a story goal and subplot. My novel is full of walk on parts I never even name: the sergeant, the Amorite captain, the laundry maid... even a fairly important character who plays a pivotal role in several scenes is only ever known by his title. And he doesn't have his own story. He exists to further the main plot. Make sure you aren't making your story too wide and losing focus. There should only be enough characters to tell the story, not enough story to spread among your characters.

I always find a way to split them up. In my Galactic Seven series, I of course have the seven mcs and then I usually have two or three additional characters that they meet during the course of the particular novel. I may have 4 members of the Galactic Seven explore an alien city and the rest might have to contend with fixing the ship or searching for some raw material. Then I alternate between them until the end of the novel when they get back together. This also helps define any sub-plots and sub-characters better--or at least easier.

If these are all POV characters, a good approach is one similar to how George RR Martin handles them in Game of Thrones. In the first book, Ned Stark is closest to the action and holds the main plot thread, so he gets the most chapters dedicated to his perspective. Whereas while his daughters, Sansa and Arya, both are POV characters, they are furthest from the mass of intrigue and plotting at King's Landing, being kids and all, so they get the fewest chapters from their perspective.

But most of the time, basically you play it by ear, figuring out who needs to speak next. That's one of the problems I was having with my sequel. Got all these characters whose perspectives shape the story and generally I feel like a juggler trying to keep a bunch of balls or plates in the air. For now, I've put the sequel aside because sometimes walking away from a project helps, but also because I know a publisher isn't going to take a chance on a sequel if the first book isn't any good.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Make of it what you will.

Why has no one noted that her MC is named charity case? That's hilarious and needed to be said/written. We collectively request some of this writing in SYW when you're ready.

Emermouse said:

If these are all POV characters, a good approach is

Click to expand...

. . . to make some of them not POV characters


caw

I'm having this issue with my current WIP set 40,000 years ago. The MC lives in a tribe of about 80-100 people, and would know the name of everyone in the tribe. Then there are eleven characters from another tribe, most of whom need to be named (because they're important to the story), and characters from a tribe of neanderthals who don't need to be named because the MC can't understand their language so doesn't remember their names.

Then there's the additional complication that all the names have to be things that people would have been familiar with 40,000 years ago, so lots of animal, bird and tree names (can be a bit of a challenge thinking them up). On the plus side, there were no surnames, so everyone just has one name, and there are no tribal names (just "my tribe" "the other tribe" "(name)'s tribe", and the neanderthals are "the mountain people" and the Homo sapiens are "the plains people").

I'm not naming most of the people in the MC's tribe. I'm just referring to the ones I need to refer to by name as he interacts with them, and he's a bit of a loner so that limits the number of people he regularly interacts with. But I can't refer to individuals as "some guy" or similar - he'd know their name.

What I'm doing is keeping a list of who each person is, and with minor characters, if I haven't referred to them in a long time I'll put in a reminder (like you might do when speaking to someone) about who that person is, to make it easier to follow, same as I would the first time I mention a character.

Regards character backstory - only the major characters have a backstory. The MC's mother has an interesting backstory (the MC is half neanderthal so a backstory is inevitable). The main antagnoist and characters from the other Homo sapiens tribe have a backstory, but it's one that involves events going on in their tribe rather than individual character backstories. Another antagonist, a boy from the MC's tribe, has a backstory. I think that's it. Maybe a few other characters have a vague backstory, but not using more than a phrase or sentence to describe it.

I'd say for backstory, stick to backstories that you'd reasonably expect your main character(s) to pay attention to, or who they interact with the most and would know well. Just refer to other characters by who they are in relation to the main character(s), or by what their role is on the ship. Minor characters don't need to be particularly interesting, in fact if they're too interesting then they draw attention away from your main characters and confuse the whole story. They're there to make your world make sense. Some backstory could be a single phrase or sentence, just to give an idea of their character, but even that's not needed for most minor characters. Just stick to what the main character(s) would pay attention to.

Extra characters who make small contributions to the unfolding tale may well be a 'character' in relation to their personal attributes or how they come across but they don't all need to have sub-plots, or a POV, or even make a reappearance.

Easy answer-- characters should only be present if they are doing something. Otherwise there is no need to focus on them.

Darth Vader probably has thousands of people working on his Star Destroyer but I can get the idea by seeing a couple guys working the background. That leaves me time to focus on him killing Captain Needa-- and I only know Captain Needa's name because Darth Vader kills him.

Introduce the characters and make use of them WHEN THEY IMPACT THE STORY.

Edit: Since it is also nautical, see how this is handled in books like TREASURE ISLAND, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, and MOBY DICK. How do they handle the many people who would appear on a ship?

I read your post about how quite a few are walk-ons. One of the things you'll discover as a writer is that you'll come up with tons of backstory/material that will help you as you write but never actually make it into the story. In my latest, I sketched out a backstory for a villain, but given that my story is told in third-person limited and the villain isn't one of the POV characters, very little of the backstory I've made for him actually appears in the story, because that's how it works sometimes.

I've always enjoyed stories with many characters, and if executed properly, I don't think you can ever really have too many. The Harry Potter series apparently has 772 characters, but at no point did I feel overwhelmed or bombarded. As long as they are interesting characters, the reader will want to know more about them, even if it is through subplots and filler.

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Emermouse said:

If these are all POV characters, a good approach is one similar to how George RR Martin handles them in Game of Thrones.

Click to expand...

Just to add to the Martin approach, he included character appendixes in his books which the reader could use as an aid to keep track of character names, and bits of information about them. I'm not sure as to how useful a character appendix/reference list is for the reader since I personally haven't read the books, but it might be something to consider.

Also, put yourself in a real-life situation where there are a lot of 'characters,' like a day at school or work. Lots of people about, but few have relevant speaking roles. They move in and out of your orbit, but you interact with only a few.

Well, that's how I do it.