Is 100 characters too much?

Pretty simple question, my writings (which I intend to develop into a Webcomic later on), there are exactly one-hundred characters, each being important in their own way. Question being, is it such a large number, that developing all of them would, each with their own importance, be so tedious that I should reduce the number to a significant degree.

Theoretically, it'd be possible.

It would take forever though.

Yes.

Pales in comparison to The Wheel Of Time, but if you do some clever work with Cast Herds, and keep sub-plots from mingling too much, you may be able to pull it off with a webcomic.

Okay, then what number do you recommend to reduce it to. With each character having their own significance in the story as a whole, it's somewhat difficult to figure out both the number to reduce it to and who to cut out.

That actually works pretty well, thank you.

edited 22nd Oct '11 2:16:48 PM by draconiansuperior

Combine characters.

Are we talking 100 main characters, or are a lot of these people side characters? Because you'll never successfully get the audience to follow 100 main characters, but 10 mains and 90 sides sounds slightly more reasonable.

I mean, it's still ridiculous, but it's slightly more reasonable. You'll need a long-ass webcomic to develop them all.

Characters should be both visually and developmentally distinctive. Giving 100 unique characters, each with their own character arcs, would not only be extremely difficult, but might cause you to fall victim to webcomic scheduling slips and may be tedious to your readers who pick their favorites early.

I would say cut it down to fifty at least.

Eight of them are the most important, fifty-two of them are very important, but not as important as the eight main, and forty of them are important in their own way, but not as important as the rest.

The would be a significant cut.

edited 22nd Oct '11 2:39:31 PM by draconiansuperior

Yes, well, sometimes significant cuts need to be made.

100 characters? That's barely twenty words!

Seriously, combine characters. There's no way that important occurrences, plot points and character traits couldn't be taken from minor characters and given to other minor characters, or even to other more important characters.

What do you mean by "combine characters?"

Do 140 and call it Twitter.

Like, instead of having a wanderer and a doctor, have a wandering doctor. Instead of having a group of five cultists, make them two or three.

never mind i dont have anything useful to say everyone has better advice

edited 22nd Oct '11 5:13:51 PM by jasonwill2

I'd say that unless you are either Naoki Urasawa or a writer for The Simpsons, 100 characters is way too many.

Ask yourself why your plot is so complex in the first place that you need that many.

Long Runner? Kudzu Plot?

Wait — there's one thing you didn't make clear in your post. Are you finished writing this work of. 100 characters?

Yes.

However, you should try and make it work anyway, just because if it's meticulously planned out enough and well-done it just might be ridiculously awesome.

If you want the audiecne to feel atached/identified/satisifed with them all yes they are a lot. Your audience will not care of any of them. Unless you gve your audience time to get atached to them all... and tust me sometimes not even 3 entire books of adventures aren't enough to know a single character completely.

But if you want them to have roles instead of deepness and memorable personalities (in other words background characters and secondary characters) then yes you can have 100 characters with no problem.

edited 22nd Oct '11 5:54:40 PM by FallenLegend

edited 22nd Oct '11 6:19:04 PM by annebeeche

edited 22nd Oct '11 6:19:20 PM by annebeeche

edited 22nd Oct '11 6:19:31 PM by annebeeche

Um... anne... are you sure you're posting in the right thread?

Oh whoops. That's all supposed to go in the Post Your Random Thoughts thread. I sometimes post my random thoughts in other threads by mistake. That usually happens because I'm browsing some other thread on tv tropes, and I come back and post my random thoughts because that's the thread I most often hang out in.

I need to stop doing that.

EDIT: while I'm here, I think 100 characters is very, very unlikely for someone to be able to do well and not eventually bore readers, because if you try to do all characters in one arc, the story gets too complex to follow, but if you try to stretch it out into multiple arcs involving different sets of characters and their subplots, the average reader will like some, but not like the others. The more characters the reader isn't interested in following, the more parts of the story the reader won't like, and the longer the parts of the story the reader does like are delayed.

You also have to have a small and consistent main cast, with the rest of the characters at the periphery. This doesn't mean that the other characters can't have elaborate stories and character development, it's just that the story of the main cast takes priority.

edited 22nd Oct '11 6:28:11 PM by annebeeche

What anne said. In order for this to work, the majority of the cast should be restricted to several arcs. Ten main characters distributed between ten arcs can be perfectly done. But an interesting core cast is still needed for the readers to connect to.