General Writing Discussion Thread | Current Topic: NaNoWriMo

RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Questions for Readers and Writers​

Question 6​

How many characters should a typical story have? Is there such a thing as too many characters?​



I see some stories that have an abundance of characters, and while I applaud the writer for his efforts, I can only think that it must be hard to keep track of so many different people. Not only that, but they all have different personalities and evolve into dynamic characters, so I'd imagine any more than three protagonists would become overwhelming as the story progresses. Now there can be many background characters. I think that, in this specific type of characters, any amount can be enough depending on how reliant a story is on its characters. All in all, I think that three is a nice, round number that suits a story, though that number can change based on length.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Turtwig said:
Questions for Readers and Writers​

Question 6​

How many characters should a typical story have? Is there such a thing as too many characters?​
Click to expand...

Too many characters become overwhelmingly confusing. I prefer for stories to have a limited cast, like the traditional line-up - protagonist(s), antagonist(s), supporting character(s). I would say less than nine characters are enough for any fictional story, to be quite honest.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

I focus on 1, maybe 2 core individuals, and any other characters that appear are either supporting characters to the protagonist, or to the antagonist (or, of course, the antagonist itself). Going beyond that (as far as main/core peeps) in the story I find is vastly ineffective as you have to try and devote attention to all of them, whereas with support characters there is no standard for allotted time.

edit: maybe, not many
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

I think it depends on the story, really. There are some stories that require a larger cast of characters, and depending on the flow of narration and the author's style, it can work really well when done right (I'm thinking of, for example, longer/large scale fantasy epics, LotR, ASOIAF, even Harry Potter to some extent). On the other hand, sometimes you can end up with so many characters that it becomes daunting to try and keep track of them all and the story falters, especially if a large number of characters is being introduced at once, casuing the reader to have to reread to understand things, or just give up on remembering the characters (See: later acts of Homestuck).

For me, I normally try and keep my amount of characters down. I'd rather have a few characters that I can explore more intimately than a larger cast with a more split attention. One of my favourite stories that I've ever written revolved around a single main character with only 3 other characters showing up multiple times (each for a short duration) and 2 characters only showing up once. The story was mostly told internal monologue style and focused on the thoughts and actions of the main character. One of the larger, overworld themes was the isolation of the society which forced most people to live alone, and so I reflected the theme into the writing style and it worked pretty well, I think.

On the flipside, with Mysteries, I've been dealing with a very large cast, the 16 submitted characters and also the NPCs I've introduced. Though, due to the very nature of the storytelling, some characters have had large roles, and others have hardly appeared, even though the story is almost 40k words now. Such a distinction was entirely the luck of the draw: Juliet and Shirley have probably had the largest roles so far, and mostly because they both lost early matches so they were featured in their matches and all the intermission parts since then; whereas the lesser-known characters mostly haven't fought yet or have won their battles and are once again out of sight for now. For the story's sake, I'm letting the flow of the story dictate who will be shown. Of course, this does mean that some characters will get a lot more screentime than others, but trying to force all characters to appear equally would be cumbersome and bloated and would make the overall story worse.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

A typical story should usually have about three or one character(s) in the first few chapters, and then introduce other characters. For me, I think the most characters I would introduce in the fifth chapter would be nine. And yes, there is a such thing as too many characters. Although, I think a exception could be made for war stories… after all, if there's a lot of fighters, then why not just introduce a large cast of 'em? :p
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Let's take a moment and reflect on my Santa beard.

Extension of the writing question: Some exceptions to the "limited characters" issue would probably be in contests like Athena's, conflicts, and the zombie apocalypse and long journeys (like the Pokemon anime in a book). I honestly don't mind a never-ending list of characters as long as each one serves a role/purpose and is not left in the dark; in other words, each character better have a reason for being put into a story, and, in the end, every single character better have a resolution so we aren't unsure of his whereabouts.

Happy Holidays, everyone!
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Merry Christmas, everyone!

As for the numbers of characters... That depends on the story. It's always good to have a large roster to kill off slowly and procedurally use. I usually use a larger character roster just anyway, and even name people who are off the roster to give them a bit more personality if the scene could support it.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Hmmmm, I think there can honestly be too many characters if you are just writing a short story or a story with no sequel in sight. The max I would do for short stories/solos is probably around like 10, and that is highballing. Of course, I am talking about characters that are actually in most of the story, I'm not talking about characters that show up for a page to help the main character figure their way around.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Indeed, Happy Holidays, and I hope that you all have many great ideas in writing to come.
 
Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Anyone have New Years Resolutions? I know I have a few.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Well, I think the thing that is at the top of my list is to get outside more, seeing as how I usually just sit around inside and just type on the computer.

The next thing is probably cutting back on the soda pop. Seriously, I can't go a day without any of it and it is probably killing me.

Third, lose some weight, I'm about 30lbs overweight and plus it would make me look nicer, that is always a win.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Appropriate to this thread perhaps, my New Year's Resolution is writing related. Namely, making sure to write each day, to keep myself into it and not fall back into a slump like I did before I started writing here again.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Questions for Readers and Writers​

Question 7​

Is there such a thing as too much description or dialogue? Have you seen stories based solely on one of them? If so, how have they done?​



I definitely see books with way too much description. I know that part of it is because I don't like reading it (really bad habit), but some are overly dramatic. I had a hard time reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne not due to its content, which was a fascinating tale, but rather because of its language. However, there have been stories here at the Corner that have way too much dialogue. I have gotten better with the over-abundance of it in my own writing, though I do like seeing an equal balance of the two. I think that this balance is crucial in writing a successful story that will score the most positive results.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Turtwig said:
s there such a thing as too much description or dialogue? Have you seen stories based solely on one of them? If so, how have they done?
Click to expand...

The first example I immediately think of when someone says "too much description" is Anne of Green Gables. When I was a kid, my mom used to read me bedtime stories, but I got bored very early on with short picture books, so she started reading me YA novels when I was 7 or so. One of the first ones we tried was the aforementioned Anne, however, we quickly lost interest when the first 35 pages were just one big, long description of what a woman sees looking out a window of her home. Both my mum and I were bored to tears, so we quickly abandoned it.

I can't really think of an instance where I've seen too much dialogue though, unless you mean too much dialogue in the sense of "not enough description", which is the impression I get from your own answer about the stories you've seen here. In which case, yeah, I generally see that as rookie writing and not in serious publications, but even walls of dialogue text can be done well if it's used effectively for stylistic purposes (I'm thinking of Homestuck mostly, in this respect).

Description can be tricky. On one hand, you want to describe enough so that your reader can be brought into the world as if they were there, but too much description gets very boring very quickly. On the other hand, if you don't describe enough, your story can feel flat and shallow. I definitely think it's important to find a good balance.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Athena said:
I can't really think of an instance where I've seen too much dialogue though, unless you mean too much dialogue in the sense of "not enough description", which is the impression I get from your own answer about the stories you've seen here.
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That's basically what I meant. When I say "too much dialogue," I think of where every line is taken up by dialogue and there is barely any description at all.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

"Too much dialogue" ruined one of my earlier works a while ago, so… yeah, it exists.

As for "too much description", that reminded me of Seraphina. I only got through the first few ten chapters before I gave up trying to understand it. Or was that less than 10? I have no idea. @_@
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

Too much description? Too much dialogue?

Obviously, you must be referring to Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. The first few pages of this book are hellaciously boring. The protagonist, Jake Barnes, immediately dives right into the story; there is no fluff, no interest, no hook. I wanted to close it as soon as I opened it, but then, I kept reading. I read, read, read and read, and I do declare, that work is a literary masterpiece. It is full of dialogue, and I shall admit, a lot of it is confusing (you haven't a clue who is speaking at some points in the story).

Too much description? Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men's opening page is a complete turn-off. It is utterly boring, and contains nothing but description of the rolling land and a river.
 
RE: Writer's Corner General Discussion Thread

I've read Of Mice and Men as well and must admit that its first couple of pages were hard to read. The book got much better later on, though.

I have seen books that use this confusion as an actual purpose. For example, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World had one chapter that used multiple points of view (that mainly just contained dialogue). He utilized this technique to alternate scenes in an effort to demonstrate examples of what a world leader was saying to a bunch of kids. Most people hated that part, but I thought the display was genius.
 
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