Young Writers Society

Hey everyone! I transport what I have written on Wattpad over to this site, but there's one thing I was wondering: I have a cast list in Wattpad for the characters in the two stories I am posting on this site. I was wondering, should I add the cast list as an Author's Note at the beginning of the stories, along with the pictures of the actresses/actors that I have picked for the characters? What do you guys think?

I would say no to putting them in the work itself, for three reasons.

1- These will not show up in a published work except in certain circumstances. Getting into the practice of only posting what will be in a published work is a great step in going along the mental path for eventual publication, and forces you to pick and choose what exactly you want to include in the work. If a particular character's feature is so important that it has to be known, then include it in the prose instead of relying on images.

2- Unless it's plot specific your character has a certain feature (and if it is, it should be in the prose as per point 1), it's not actually that important. Even with character references, people imagine how they want the characters to look, so it's pretty superfluous to mention it

3- If you absolutely need a cast list for readers to keep track of who's who, you haven't characterized the individuals in the story enough and need to edit so readers can keep track without an index. I have nearly 20 named characters in 30,000 words of novel, but readers can keep track of them all because they are different people and have strong introductions that make them memorable.

That being said, nothing's stopping you from making a thread about your novel with extra details here, if you want! I'm just pointing out that if it's mandatory for the story, then the words themselves need to be stronger so people don't absolutely need it. Cast lists can be cool extra flavours, but they shouldn't be required to follow the novel (unless you're working on an epic fantasy, at which point the rules are a little different... but you really shouldn't start publishing with an epic fantasy.)

Thank you! I decided against it, as I am already doing a pretty good job of describing them.

Just to reiterate though, you can have a thread in this forum devoted to the fun extras, like cast lists, for your project.

Project threads can be used for a ton of other things, like keeping track of your writing progress and getting feedback on little things that might not be mentioned in reviews (like alternative character names).

Since you have this thread going already, you might as well repurpose it. ;P