What is the Right number of characters for a novel?
By John Fagan
At Happy London Press we recommend : For novels that require an intimate plot line, a good start for the right number of characters, is that it is best to keep the number small such as 2 main characters, with around 1 to 3 secondary characters, and for broader stories, this number could rise to as many as 15 to 30.
Two books to compare the number of characters that support a good plot - 'The Idiot' vs 'The Road'
When it comes to the amount of characters in a novel, how many should an author include? Some novels have hundreds of characters while others have only a handful. There’s no right or wrong answer, but it’s worth looking at two masters of literature to see how they have answered this question in their own work.
Written centuries apart, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Road by Cormac McCarthy are considered two of the greatest novels of all time. Both are written in third person, both concern central characters that are uncomfortable in their surroundings, and both are beautifully written and to the highest standard. However, in terms of the amount of characters they verge as far apart as possible.
Example in 'The Idiot' Has a great many characters to support the plot
On one side of the scale is Dostoevsky and his masterpiece The Idiot. It centres around Lev Nikolaich, an epileptic prince and his return to Russia after being treated in Switzerland for his illness. Dostoevsky introduces a lot of characters early on and the reader is bombarded by names. In the opening 35 pages, no less than 30 characters are introduced or spoken about and many by several names. For example, we are introduced to a character called Mrs Yepanchin who is also called Princess Myshkin, Yelizaveta Prokofyevna, and Lizaveta Prokofyevna. Another main character Gavrila Ardalionovich is also called by three further names: Ganya, Gavrila Ardalionych Ivolgin, and Ganechka. This is not unusual for 19th century Russian literature for characters to be addressed in both a range of formal and familiar names, but it can be hard for the reader to keep up with and work out who is who.
Dostoevsky makes his reader work for the story, introducing an army of characters in a short space of time. But you trust him that it’ll be worth the effort, as you know who he is by reputation, even if you’ve never read him before. New writers would be taking a huge risk in doing this, but in the 19th century this bombardment of characters in a short space of time was not uncommon. It does have the advantage that if you don’t like a character, you know the story will be taking a break from them at several points to involve the others.
"The Road" - does only a few characters work?
One the other side of the scale is McCarthy, one of the greatest living writers of the 20th and 21st century and his novel The Road. This novel does almost the opposite to what The Idiot does. It is about a man and his son who are travelling through a bleak, dystopian land, looking for food and shelter. In the first 35 pages there are only four characters introduced: the boy/the child, Papa/the man, and vague mentions of the man’s uncle and his bride in two separate dreams. That’s all. He doesn’t want to swamp his dystopian masterpiece with several characters akin to what The Walking Dead series did. He keeps it minimal and fast-paced for the reader and relies on their investment in the few characters. The risk on this side of the scale is that if the reader doesn’t connect with the man and the boy then they will quickly lose interest in the story.
Author's insights - It all depends on the story
Chekhov preferred The Road’s way of doing things. He wrote to his brother saying:
“There is no need to chase after a crowd of characters. Only two should be at the centre of gravity: he and she.”
McCarthy’s is a story stripped to its literary bones, whereas Dostoyevsky’s is overflowing with minor storylines and character arcs. How many characters is too many? It depends on what kind of story is going to be told. Some need lots of characters to carry it, while others only need a few. The Idiot could have shaved a lot of minor characters out and been just as good, but there was a preference by a few greats in that century to have many characters in their novels – Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to name but two. An epic like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire needs a full cast to tell the story, while Matheson’s I am Legend and Glavinic’s Night Work work better focusing on single characters, showing us the world through one pair of eyes.
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Other opinions about
how many characters makes a good novel
Pierce Brower, teenage reader and writer
In a novel that flips back & forth between characters and their experiences on the topic, how many key characters is too many?
In my experience, it doesn’t necessarily matter on how many characters you use, more on when you “flip” perspective.
In the Heroes of Olympus series written by Rick Riordan, the perspective changes between three to four characters every four chapters in a consistent pace. You read about one scene all the way through before the next narrator takes over. Each time you start with a new narrator, they catch you up on what’s been going on in with them (internally and/or externally) for a page or two before moving on to what happens next. The transitions are beautifully and seamlessly done, and the writing style stays relatively the same even though the narrators’ personalities vary greatly.
In Witch & Wizard by James Patterson, there are only two characters that the perspective “flips” between: siblings Whit and Wisty Allgood. While James Patterson is a writer known for his excellence, this book didn’t handle the transitions or perspective flipping very well at all. It was inconsistent, the writing style changed too much, the chapters were incredibly short, and the perspective swapped several times within each individual scene. I couldn’t even get through the first 40 pages because my head was spinning with how all over the place the book was, not to mention the general cheesiness of the actual plot and character names along with how quickly it all escalated.
As long as you are consistent, precise and intentional with your “flipping,” then it shouldn’t matter how many different narrators you have, as long as they are well developed, have some level of depth to them, aren’t too similar and are important enough to the story (or writing style) to be justified as a narrator.
Robert Frost, Cinephile and movie blogger
Nothing has really changed. All we have to do is go back and look at the past, to see that.
Take 1939 - what were the most successful films?
"The Rules of the Game" - adapted from a French play
"Gone With Wind" - adapted from a book
"The Wizard of Oz" - adapted from a book
"Stagecoach" - adaptated from a short story
"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" - adapted from a short story
Sequels have always been common too. How many 3 Stooges movies were there? How many Thin Man movies? How many Tarzan movies?
The only change is our perception. When we look at the past, we just see the films. When we look at the present, we see the films and we see the hype. The media is most comfortable hyping what they can understand - which is a known property (not an original idea). So, we perceive an increase in unoriginal ideas.
Rayne Speryll - Christian, Author, INFJ, Librarian
A novel has too many characters if there are a bunch of characters who have no purpose. They tend to crowd the story and distract the reader. When I read books with ‘too many characters’ (at least for my taste), I find myself struggling to remember names, growing bored during the chapters or scenes dedicated to the unnecessary ones, and skipping large chunks of pointless narrative or dialogue.
In general, the consensus is that each character should have a purpose, even if it’s a small purpose. If a character is there for no other reason than to add another name or perspective, then you might need to reevaluate their place in the story. Could their role be given to another, more interesting character? Should they perhaps take on the role of other, less interesting characters?
The main reason for this is that the more concise your book is, in terms of plot, dialogue, and description, the more likely your readers are to remember and care about what’s important.
Josh Hamming Aspiring Writer
This is a tricky question. One thing that can help is reading other books or watching films with ensemble casts and seeing how they balance their characters. You have to see for yourself how many characters you think is manageable before you lose track. What is reasonable for you might not be reasonable for everyone, but it certainly gives you a maximum number of key characters.
You also have to take into account what serves the story best. I have no idea what sort of story you are writing, but sometimes more characters are necessary for a novel to accomplish what it is meant to. The issue is knowing how many characters you need. Every character needs a purpose for being there (filler is abhorrent), but you also have to watch out for leaving a character gap. If you do not have enough characters to accomplish whatever it is you are trying to do, it will be obvious and your novel will stop flat on its face. A lot of this falls on you to figure out how many characters you need.
Another thing to keep in mind is what story arcs are going for all of your characters. All of their stories have to connect somehow, at some point (even if only thematically), but that does not mean that they cannot each have their own story (as long as it feels like they all deserve to have their own story, each story deserves to be in this novel and not in a novel of its own). However, if their stories are fairly separate, then I would recommend only switching between three, maybe four characters, because likely each of these characters will have their own supporting characters and perhaps even their own antagonists (whether or not any of your key characters share any supporting characters or antagonists is up to you). If, however, their stories are fairly unified in terms of plot (e.g. pursuing the same goal), you might be able to get away with more than three or four characters, but I still would not recommend it.
Conclusively my opinion is to only have about three major plotlines (so three key characters at most) and just give them supporting characters, background characters, and whatever other characters are necessary to the story, but have these as a part of the three important plotlines, not plotlines of their own.
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