Young Writers Society

I'm finding that with my new WIP my cast of characters is constantly growing, and I'm not sure what the final count will be. Sure, only some are major, some are minor, and some are very minor. But I've never worked with larger casts like these. And they are all close nit, too. It's about actors in a theater, and you probably have from ten to fifteen people in the troupe, right?

What is the safe way to write something with so many characters? Do I make up the ones I deem "Important" and the others are just there when need be, or do I learn who they all are, and just have a very large cast?

I tend not to write with more than three or four characters, at a time. There may be more characters in the story, but they are never all together. Here, they're almost always all together.

I've heard from a few in the character dialogue topic. Where is your piece anyway? I'd be interested in seeing what you've got.

Well, they likely aren't going to be all together all the time (as they do have personal lives even if they live together), at least not standing next to each other. At those points it is more managable. When they are all together, well, you just have a lot of characters.

First, find which characters have the biggest relevance/impact to the story, and focus on them. The rest are then minor roles, and should be treated as such. As with a play, even if everyone is needed, there are leads and supports, and who's who in these roles must be known to you. If all are pivitol, I think you have one heck of a challenge on your hands That I'm really not sure how to help you with.

In scenes with all or most of these characters, I'd say the most important thing is to make sure that the reader knows who said what. There's little more annoying than reading a section and then realizing that it was somebody else who said it. Getting that right should be half the battle in managing. The other half...I'm not really sure, but I know there's more than what I said. I've seen a lot of authors do five or six characters all in the same place who are important, but I don't think I've read one with ten.

As to your suggestions, don't force it. If you make sure certain characters are together at certain times and try to avoid them being all together, it may look contrived, since as you said, it is a theater troupe. People will be where they end up, so just let the natural order of things guide you. And by what you're describing, with major, minor, and really small characters, I'm not actually sure if there's a problem at all; except for the close knit part. In the book Through Wolf's Eyes, characters include Firekeeper, Derian Carter, Elise Archer, Prince Newell Shield, Melina Shield, Ox, Earl Kestral, Blind Seer, Sir Jared Surclife, Saphire Sheild, Lady Zorana and several others. There are times when maany are present in one scene, as many are part of the nobility and are often in the same vicinity, but these scenes are generally short with some character having one, two, or even no lines of dialogue and only a mentioning of their presence. Your scenario seems to have them all in each others compony nearly constantly, so I'm not sure how much help my example was.

In closing, I don't know why it couldn't be done, it just takes a bit more thought. Keep in mind who needs to have importance and emphasis when, and deal with it from there. That's about all I got. Personally, I hardly ever really have more than five characters tops, everyone else is nameless and there to build the world and setting. Hope you could glean something from all this, and enjoy yourself.

Ah unbelievable amount of thank to you! That was very helpful, and I think I don't even need anymore advice on it...That was exactly what I was looking for? Yes, certainly was. Or, at the least, it helped me to think about it and know I could do it.

I've heard from a few in the character dialogue topic. Where is your piece anyway? I'd be interested in seeing what you've got.

has yet to be written, I'm working on making up my characters and plotting first, though I might write a beginning scene that I thought up today. Good beginning scenes are always hard to come by, but this one looks somewhat hopeful. It doesn't even have a title yet so it probably won't be posted for some time, once I do work on it.

Again, thanks for the help!