Power Trio, Five Man Band, or Magnificent Seven Samurai?

For a story inspired by Power Rangers and Animorphs where aliens Recruit Teenagers with Attitude, I keep asking myself just how many people need to be on the team.

As first imagined and as it stands right now, I was going for a Magnificent Seven Samurai situation, with seven members from around the world. But when I think about it, I find that I can pare it down to a basic Power Trio: The Big Guy with a brain, The Lancer with trust issues, and The Chick / The Heart who also happens to be The Ace.

Then I think that three characters is too few for what I have in store for them, so I consider returning to the Super Sentai staple of the classic Five-Man Band, which is cliche but workable, but the inevitable addition of a Sixth Ranger throws that out the window and has me asking "why not just add one more?", and so I'm back to seven. And if I'm color coding these guys, ROYGBIV had all the members covered.

(Incidentally, girls will outnumber boys on the team no matter the final number, because I'm sick of Two Girls to a Team.)

In your experience, which of the various group dynamics would you say worked better, either for you or in other works? Should I consider an even numbered team? Would sticking with seven members be alright or would going with a smaller group be easier to work with?

I judge the quality of a team by how well the characters can conflict with each other, rather than the characters fitting a role. Like if something happens that causes an argument, how will that argument play out. Usually, I go with three: two extremes and a middle ground, tie-breaker or third option. Or four so it would be two extremes and two moderates. I think anything above five is a bit excessive.

edited 24th Jun '13 8:40:00 PM by WSM

Five or six can be a good number. Every character should be important. If one of them just sits around or is a follower most of the time then that one might as well not be there. Just go with whatever feels most natural.

Thank you so much for making the girls outnumber the boys. It's like Buffy. Does this mean that the leader will be a girl?

A girl leader was the original plan, but I'm honestly not too sure anymore as the male South Asian character strikes me as slightly better suited than the girl I had in mind, but that might change. One way or the other, this is a truly Multinational Team, so the All-American White Male Lead is right out.

Hm.

I tried writing a Magnificent Seven once, it's a really hard number to balance if you want to give everyone equal time. Also, I do not think seven is required for a rainbow motif. While yes ROYGBIV does give a nice indication that the "cool" side of the spectrum is a lot longer than the "warm" side, most people do not consider indigo to be a basic color. Also you could always add colors that are not on that spectrum, like magenta, brown, black, gray, white, etc., so seven isn't really a given logical number.

If you're having problems making your prospective team fit into a trope, why bother using the trope codifiers at all? Just write as many characters as you feel comfortable with, and that serve your story's purpose, and don't worry about making cookie cutter characters. Don't be afraid of combining two archetypes into one, having more than one character overlap in said archetypes, ect ect - just write what's best for your story.

While I occasionally try to make characters out of team archetypes just for the fun of it, the above post is sound advice. Don't limit yourself to some preset mold that has nothing to do with you're story.

, this. team numbering won't really matter if each character is well rounded and have an actual reason for recruitment other than "they are a girl/boy; have an interesting color, etc".

UNLESS, you actually have a motif that is integrated within your story. example, in Legend Of Dragoon, you will gather a party of Seven with 7 colors and 7 elements, one each. because the setting's element system contains 8 elements^note The last being Non-Elemental and is color coded. it STILL started with 3 person team dynamic though, though the game itself started with one guy.


BTW, majority of girls in the team is nice as well.

If the goal is to give each member of the team (relatively) equal focus, then the optimal size can depend on the structure of the story. Is this going to be a single unified story like a novel, or an episodic collection of adventures with perhaps an overarching conflict connecting them together?

In my experience the former lends itself better to a smaller, more compact cast. Trying to develop more than three or four characters equally can make the story feel bloated or drawn out, and attempting to keep the story tight will probably leave a few members of the team feeling like secondary characters.

If your design is episodic then a larger cast becomes more manageable. You can afford to spend a story developing each character and (more importantly in my opinion) have individual stories that focus on the relationship dynamics between different members of the team.

I did this once with a group of eight of my characters. Just threw them together with a shallow plot about them traveling to some mythic destination and wrote a series of stories about the various obstacles and monsters they encountered along the way. The larger cast was actually beneficial as it gave me lots of possible combinations of characters to play around with.

Most importantly, though, is what has been said above. Make sure you have some understanding of each character on the team, and don't feel pressured to add more members just to fill a slot. Don't worry about making the story fit to a trope, its up to others to decide what tropes fit your story.