Comfort with the number of characters in a novel

I started the pirate story with a core Crew of 16 members, which merges with another group of about 18 to make an entire pirate crew. Only 4 of those 16 survive, along with 3 of the second group. Several Majors that don't survive are intro'd and even get POV's for a chapter or 3, but they still get the axe. (Had to kill many of the other pirate captains, as well as many pirate-hunters and captains in various navies, else my Mains would have spent the rest of thier lives running!)
For the horse-nomad work, I have several factions within the Horde, plus select members of each of the two empires at war when the Horde arrive, with a total of 2 Mains and 8 or 9 Majors. At least 5 of the Majors have to die before the end, but both Mains have to survive (or else the prologue doesn't work!)
The SF WIP has 1 Main and 1 Major, so far. I plan for the Main to survive, and I need to bring in some more Majors so it doesn't become two guys havin a confab in a room, which would make for a rather boring tale...

Hmm... well, my favourite ''story'' is eight books long, so that's about 9, 10 mains.

I end up killing 2. One is a biggie (cuz he's a baddie, but he's trying to repent and be awesomer than usual, but they don't let him. It's a weepy) and the second is a self-sacrifice, but for all the wrong reasons.

I try only to kill mains when it's necessary. I know I make it sound like everyone dies, but really there are a lot of nearly-mains who die (for example, an ex boyfriend, a nearly boyfriend, an almost-death-that-actually-isn't-and-she's-gone-to-another-time, a sleazy lieutenant, three brothers, two sets of parents, a best-friend, a computer, a whole race) in one series.

Yes, I kill a whole race. And I'm freakin' proud.

It's kind of like William Nicholson's obssession with setting places on fire or just blowing them up.

I know what you mean, DA. I'm generally nonconfrontational, and it's a big step for me to make my characters fight, let alone die, so it has to be very important to the story for me to make that happen. ("Can't we all just get along?")

The character that dies at the end of the first book there, he's just my poor unlucky, born under a bad-luck star fellow. He's vital to the plot, but so is his death, and it's a self-sacrifice sort of thing, so that the other characters can survive, sort of thing.

Also *is deviously pleased* the guy who dies at the end of book 2 dies for the same sort of reason, and in the same room! And yet...he's not entirely dead... He, too, was born under an unlucky star. His enjoys long term ill effects, though.

But book one has ten main and major characters that I track, so losing just one in the first book is no big deal. It's not an "everyone dies but the hero" style of story.

So, to stop me hogging this thread, how many main characters do you have in your favorite story?

Lemme think, how many mains have I killed?

One... two...

Okay, a lot. Time travel, magic, space travel, fantasy epic. Nobody survives.

In fact, I was thinking that maybe I should start letting some people live. That would be a nice change.

V, sounds brilliant. The only problem I have with series deaths is that if someone I really like dies in the early part of the series, I don't want to read anymore. Too many deaths can sometimes put people off. If they're right, they're right. But be careful how many extremely likable, ie favouritable characters, you kill.

Sounds perfect, V. I don't think any authors I've read in the past decade lets every single Main live to the end of a series. Funny that we all want a little more realism in our fantasy...

A major death has got to fit with the story. The story is most important. Too much tweaking to force a result will get noticed and you'll get looks like

Also, the more characters that survive, the more you'll have for a sequel!

My NaNo book is the first of a trilogy. At the end of book one, I kill off one of my main characters. At the end of book two, another's death is planned, though I introduce half a dozen new major characters in that book, so at least I'm refreshing the gene pool. Book three has an all-out magical war, so there will be lots of deaths there, and I'm not sure yet who's gonna survive, aside from my main character and her former fiancé, and the magic savant guy.

Not even the mains are safe. Nobody's safe.

Of course, not all named characters have to be important, so if you do it right (unlike Mr Jordan- who I got thoroughly fed up with- RIP, sir), then the reader doesn't have to work that hard to keep up.
I think of them this way:
Main character(s)- these are the ones you're telling the story about.
Major character(s)- these interact frequently with your Mains, and may even get a POV, briefly.
Minor character(s)- most of these should be named, interact with either of the 1st 2 categories or witness actions by same, may appear only once or have multiple small roles throughout the work. But they are not important enough for the reader to really track them, so they don't all have to be named.
Unnamed- self-expalatory: "The Imperial ship lost 37 men, and 15 were wounded." None of those guys need names.
And as the DA will tell you: none should be immune from getting whacked if it moves your story along

I recently read something with far too many characters all with very similar names...

The Magician's Guild, I think it was. I was so confused.

I think it really depends on the scope of the plot. If it's just a small band of characters, not traveling widely or meeting large groups, you can't expect to have the masses of characters, and there's no harm in naming everyone you meet.

On the other hand, if you have those epic stories, with multiple nations, political parties, magic guilds, etc etc, and each one has several players that move the plot, the characters who aren't those guys don't matter so much to me. Keep me focused on the important story, I say, if it's that big.

Robert Jordan got way out of hand, IMHO, with his character naming and plot bunnies. I wouldn't have named half those Aes Sedai, because there's about eighty of them now. Ditto with the Aiel, the Cairhienins, and the Tarens. I've read every book more than once, and I still can't keep track of them all.

I guess there's a maximum limit in my own head for how many characters I can easily track. Most stories are beneath that limit, but the WoT is definitely over it.

This is a difficult one as my writing has changed a lot over the 17 year intermission...I used to introduce three characters in three lengthy prologues and then pull them into the novel at different points. It led to some very interesting things and the style was unique. I like that. But these days, my work has gone to focus on two major characters and the others then visit the scene on a sort of drop in, drop out basis. May even try a first person one day. My initial concern would be how big is the novel? If it's going to be 1500 pages then there's scope for a lot of characters. I seem to need 40,000 to 50,000 words to do my thing with two to three characters. Blessings. :-)

So many guys with red shirts...

Nah, normally they just have very descriptive tags - such as one man who has a 'voice like a blender' who feels Onyx's wrath. So they feel a little like characters, but aren't.

Biggie here is the informant in Nebula (this part is posted in my Lobby in the main Guild, if you're interested) and the Lieutenant - Captain Jupiter's sadistic right-hand-man who is only ever named The Lieutenant... even though you know his name.

Always felt bad for the guys with the red shirts.

sci fi with characters with no names - wow! that's a typical star trek episode!

When I get annoyed with having too many characters...

I blow em up.

No, really, sometimes I do.

I had huge problems with my first series because my world was so large that I had to include factions - shapeshifters, werewolves, fairies, vampires, fire imps, water nymphs, Shadowcatchers, the Magical Council and the world and his wife in between.

So I only ever mentioned characters when I had to. I had 6 core characters - bit of a handful - and I killed off quite a few important people to make room for others.

Now, in my Space series I didn't have this problem. Firstly, anyone who didn't need a name didn't get a name. Secondly, if they appeared in one book it was unlikely that they would appear in the next, due to the nature of the series. And thirdly, it was war. Just kill everyone, frankly.

In complete agreement! I have far more named characters in my 1st book than G, so I used a trick I saw Elizabeth Moon use in her Sheepfarmer's Daughter series: I repeated some names. It seemed so obvious, but I hadn't seen that before in a fantasy novel. Think about it: how many guys named 'John' have you met? 'Zactly! I also used surnames, and repeated far more of those, not all of whom are related (How many 'Smith's are there?) Sounds confusing but it's really not.
Also, my world is violent, and I wasn't afraid to kill plenty of named characters, which really helps cut the list by the end of the book and resolves a few loose ends, to boot.

I am currently writing my second novel in the Chronicles of Evyntyde series, and this one is, for want of a better word, strongly 'urban'. City adventuring plays an important part. Several Guilds, including interaction with members, represents even a bigger part. Additionally, I have chapters take part on two separate ships, where some of the crew and officers interact with the core characters. The nett effect of this is that a lot of characters are named and play some role, be it small or large. Including a dozen or so chapters that represents a different time line, I have a total of 53 named characters by part way through chapter 36 (this is where I am up to right now), out of 53 planned chapters (coincidence).

I have paused from my writing to ponder how comfortable I am with this many characters, and my conclusion is that I am. But only because I have used several techniques to allow the reader ease of reading. I suspect what I am about to write may seem obvious to some (or some disagree), but I thought I would talk about my approach.

Firstly, I generally prescribe to the philosophy that a novel, like a movie, will generally be on a strong footing with a small number of named characters. There is more concentration of characterisation and readers are not distracted with trying to remember a character introduced 100 pages earlier. Having said this, there are some stories that need to go further...

So, assuming that we need to go with a more complex set of characters, this is what I do:

1. Core characters are generally not a problem - they appear often enough and are central enough to be reinforced in the readers' minds.
   
2. Some characters are more than 'bit' but don't need to be remembered more than at the time of their relatively brief appearance. Make them believable, give them 3 dimensionality, but they really aren't needed to be referenced again.
   
3. There is nothing wrong with reminding a reader about a character that had made an earlier appearance. If the character was pretty memorable, then a short phrase that references something about the character, or a circumstance where the character was met, is sufficient. Alternatively, if less memorable, perhaps the thoughts of a POV character referencing the earlier character/event, will suffice.
   
4. Now for a technique that helps indirectly - try not to name every character that is met, particularly the 'bit characters'. Name them when you have to, but only if you have to. Your skill in writing will assist in creating the illusion of realism of the backdrop of humanity (or elfdom etc) around the characters that matter.

These are just quick thoughts, coming from a fleeting observation of where I am at in my novel. What do others' think?