What are the risks of having too many characters in a story?

To make a long story short, I am writing a parody of teen dramas, but when I introduced a more serious plot, the characters became less flanderized and the genre shifted from a comedy to a dramedy. I was thinking of introducing more main characters to the usual four to further emphasize the comedy aspect, but what are the repercussions of having more characters than originally intended?

The obvious? The readers will latch on to favorite characters, and will probably be disappointed when some of those characters get less screentime than others.

(Also, if your cast really gets huge, the readers may have a hard time keeping track of who's doing what and why.)

edited 10th Sep '11 6:52:11 PM by feotakahari

1.Same thing as Feo. 2.Sometimes, you'll forget about a character because you have so many.

For me, the big problem with a large cast is keeping track of them all. It's harder to connect a name with a character than in a visual medium, so unless you make your characters distinctive and you don't introduce a lot of them at once, your readers may not be able to remember all the important characters and they will be flipping back to see whose that character again—which you don't want. It's one of the reasons why I stopped reader The Wheel Of Time. Too much thinking.

^ So I guess the fact that it is only a screenplay should help.

Not really. Even then, there are pitfalls to look out for.

For instance, First Law of Metafictional Thermodynamics. More characters in the story at the same time bogs down the pacing. So one way to help against that is to keep the casts rotating. A second solution are Cast Herds. Keeping groups of characters from mingling helps keep the relationship web nice and tidy.

Oh, and an outline really helps.

edited 10th Sep '11 7:27:54 PM by chihuahua0

Reader confusion. Repeating plotlines/character traits. Author confusion. Irrelevant characters. Dropped plotlines. Trying to find things for everyone in the cast to do. Four Lines, All Waiting.

First Law of Metafictional Thermodynamics comes to mind. Also, if you're really going to develop your characters deeply, you run a risk of overcomplicating your plot, making it very difficult for either you or a reader to keep track of what's going on.

edited 10th Sep '11 7:29:04 PM by tropetown

Adding to the latter, keep most of the deepness and layers for the core and supporting characters, and color up the rest of the recurring cast with justified quirks. Both deepness and quirks are interesting in their own way, and most characters should have both, but not all of them should have a lot of it.

...depends. There is no such thing as "too many characters." There are only too many when you can no longer write them as unique and likeable (or in the case of villains, at least threatening and interesting)...

That's right. It has more to do with your writing style and level of skill, however, depending on how many perspectives you're planning on having, and the type of story, you might want to limit just how many you go in-depth with.

A more useful question IMO would be, "what are the risks of having too few characters in a story".

Too little characters? Same thing.

There is no hard-and-fast rule on numbers. Have as many or as few as you need to tell the story well, and are capable of writing effectively.

Situation when there is not enough space to have everybody come as three-dimensional characters. There is also risk of situations where two characters are talking and others just stand there, completely quiet.

Lack of focus.

Drifting focus. You can't write about everyone at once and unless your story is set up for that you'll probably end up having characters drift in and out of the spotlight. I'm still coming to grips with how to combat this myself.

Confusing the living hell out of your audience. Too many people not organised into convenient little herds and you're almost guaranteed to bring forth at least one cry of, "Who the heck is this?!"

Or, of course, "Why should I care anymore?" Which one should avoid.

edited 11th Sep '11 1:44:39 PM by JHM

The key to having a lot of characters is to know how to divide focus. Obviously the main protagonists, or those that contribute most to the plot would be the ones getting more screen time. If you think a minor character deserves a brief spotlight, then by all means give him one. However, if you spend too much time giving relatively useless characters a lot of focus then it's going to really piss off your readers.

I am a bit worried myself.

My story, New Dawn, has...quite a lot of characters. Is this really bad? One of my friends said she'd have trouble keeping up.

• The Heroes
  • Matthew Streika
  • Shuuji Muzoku
  • Decium "Dex" Anthem

• The Heroines
  • Angie Melcroft
  • Sorata Eisenbern
  • Samantha Hout

• The Student Council
  • Student Council President
  • Student Council Vide President Rudiger Abend
  • Sangou and Kasuga
  • Richard Ignius
  • Jake Wistinzki
  • William Nantz

• Ephas Abjuration
  • Nebiros
  • Vauran
  • Elkorg
  • Baugor
  • Baldot
  • Ilka
  • Aelka

• Phantom Claw
  • Professor Jacob
  • Jay Williams
  • Garth Reveretz
  • Leo

• Carmiglion Mantra
  • Wesley Carmiglion
  • Suzuki Harima
  • Theo Fermi
  • Sister June

• Queen Anathema's Forces
  • The Seer
  • Queen Anathema
  • Metatron
  • Michion
  • Sandalphon
  • The Heavenly Blades.

There are others, but I cannot remember them right now.

edited 12th Sep '11 9:53:00 PM by NickTheSwing

Having to break your book into two parts because it was too long and putting everyone's favorite characters in the second one.

Not in and of itself. Like so many other aspects of writing, it all comes down to the execution.

Incidentally, that doesn't seem like that many characters to me, unless they're all treated as protagonists or at least POV characters.

The trouble with Loads And Loads Of Characters is that eventually you start to lose focus. With every new character you make that's more time you have to split and share with all these other characters. If you're intending to do characters that are mostly broad stroke archetypes then it's not so much of a problem (though there's still the danger of the story feeling stretched too thin a la Bleach) if you want detailed and extremely nuanced characters it's hard to hold that without the characters feeling unbalanced.

Hell, I have 6 main characters and I can't even give all of them screentime easily in the expostion, mostly because the leader hogs all of it since he's the one doing all the damn talking. need to fix that the next time through and fix it actually.

just realize which ones are important and which ones arnt and make it somewhat clear, i guess is all the advice i can give

If that's too many... I'm probably screwed.

Some people can write large, others can't.