How many MCs is too many?

You have too many when a reader goes "Huh, now which one is this?"

You have WAY to many when you start to use the wrong names.

Something I found I had to do was to place my characters in order for each scene. The character who will be seeing/saying the most important things gets the POV. It will really help you find out which ones are a MC and which ones are just Characters. Do that for each scene.

I originally had seven MC's. I now have three without having cut anybody. A dozen before and Five after if you count the ones that die early.

On the other hand. If you can write them well enough that they aren't confusing to the reader, then you don't have too many. But for each one you add in there you have to write that much better.

GRRM has more MC's than I can count at the moment. And his books are made of pure awesomeness.

It depends on the type of the story and the POV.

You don't need to have a protagonist, or antagonist. You don't need to have one without the other either. Like you can have an antagonist, but no protagonists. It really depends. If you work with the world for long enough it will come to you.

I Know I use my own works a lot but I've got a bad memory, so they're what easiest for me to think of.

I've got a situation in my WIP where I don't have Protagonists or Antagonists. Because the POV on both sides is shared and both are confused as to what's happening. In one POV the "law enforcement" guys are the antagonists, because they are trying to kill the Protag, who is just trying to save women from his village from slavery.

But in the other POV, you have a guy who is blooding an army, hanging out with traitors from this POV and just killed a small force of their soldiers. They don't know the circumstances of the engagement or why he's building an army.

So look at the relationships from each POV. If there is someone who is the "good guy" from most of them then its very likely that he would be a protagonist. If you can't identify anyone who is the "good guy" or none of them have a significant enough portion of the stage time, then they are all protagonist.

If they are working together and against each other, then they are neither antagonist or protagonist. They are characters.

It depends on your book, and how well you do it. With my book EXPLORER X - Alpha, I really worked hard on character development. I wrote a detailed outline of each characters personality, verbage and position in the group.

Several of my Beta Readers identified so well with each character that they said that they could tell who was talking by the what and how the character spoke.

Therefore, if you spend the time to build your characters well, and it has a true purpose in the plot then you can have a good number. Explorer X - Alpha has eight.

However many is too many for you, as the writer, to handle, is too many. If you can write this story with four POV characters, then use four. If you can do it with twelve, use twelve. If you think you can only write it with one, then use one and don't be ashamed about it. However many you need to make the story as good as you can, use that many.

I lean towards a lot of characters in my books. I have 4 main characters and 27 total characters (the large character count is due to the type of story it is). Here are some things I learned about how to handle so many characters:

1. Have one primary main character. That is, the character the story revolves around. I made the mistake of giving equal weight to four main characters in a previous project, and it made it extremely difficult to do the query letter and synopsis without cluttering it with characters. When I added the bad guy into the mix, I ended up having five characters in the query--that's a lot for 250 words. And with the synopsis, critters had a hard time keeping track of who was who, but I couldn't omit any of the characters because I'd given them all equal weight.

2. Don't put too many characters in the first chapter. I had eleven named characters in the first chapter of that same project. One of the critters said she took out a piece of paper and wrote the names down to help her keep track. I've found that three characters is pretty good number, and then I filter in the others in the chapters that follow.

3. If an infrequent character appears, help the reader a bit with who he is. I have this problem with mysteries where it's revealed who the bad guy is, and I haven't a clue who he is.

So I'm eager to ask opinions as to whether four is too many?

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I would say I know I have too many when I start getting confused about who is who. That's actually not true because my character count is higher now than when I was confusing them. But I was also having a lot of trouble with subplots, and then, some of the additions came from the subplots. I was getting confused because the characters didn't have any role in the story--just the subplot. So, for me, if the character feels like he shouldn't be in there, the scene shouldn't be in there.

Tip: With so many names, it's easy to get something wrong, especially if you change the character's name. I use a character information sheet. It's about four pages long. I list the characters in alphabetical order, then add in whatever details I used in the book like hair color or a bit of backstory. I also include the old name if I changed it. Most of these details are about four lines long.

Then, for the second part of the character information sheet, I make a list of the characters who came out. My project is intended as a series, so these are names that may reappear at a later date. It's also a quick reference in case I find that I left one of those names in.

The list is really handy because if I can't remember how to spell a name, I can just look it up.

Rhys Cordelle said:

So I'm eager to ask opinions as to whether four is too many?

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Not necessarily. The difficulty is making readers care about all four of them. Generally readers like a solid protagonist so one of your MCs should be clearly identifiable as filling that position. I recall reading a novel by a debut writer earlier this year and she developed one character quite fully from the start, making the reader identify her as the protag. About three quarters of the way through the author developed another character more fully than the first and seemed to move away from her initial protag. It was very confusing and ended up making the whole story feel weak. As long as your protagonist is well defined I don't see any reason why you can't have four MCs, assuming they are all connected to the protag in some way and are all quite different and those differences show in the writing.

Ask yourself this:
Am I able to develop all 5 characters enough to be sure the reader cares enough about each of them to want to know what happens to them and wonder what the character will do next?
It is difficult enough to develop a protagonist, heroine, and antagonist, without adding 4 more main characters. Unless your storyline is strong enough that the characters are simply pawns moving about to make things happen, then, in certain genres you could get away with that many MCs.

4 POV characters certainly aren't too many (I don't want to say 4 MCs, because you already said you've identified one character as your true main character). That's really not that many, IMO. I've read books that use a dozen or more POVs effectively.

I don't think it's a good idea to say you only have too many characters when you're confusing yourself, though. At least for me, I can keep track of dozens of characters effortlessly, but a normal reader can't, because they haven't been immersed in the world of the book for months or years like I have. I think the only way to really know for sure if you have too many characters is to have some people read the finished book and see if they get confused.

4 POVs isn't too bad. Just make sure that each POV actually adds something and you're not just telling us everything (do we really need to know what Bertie's postman thinks about Bertie's marital problems, for example?).

4 MCs of equal weighting- it's really only done either in YA (best friends X, Y and Z) or in sagas or epics which might span generations. 4 MCs of equal weighting generally means that there isn't any real story, just some differing opinions. It might work in films such as Love Actually but not so well in books.

The protagonist and antagonist are basic building blocks of a story. Your favourite books are probably the ones with the obvious conflict between a protagonist and his antagonist. No protagonist or antagonist- a book where everybody wants something but not very much; some people don't like that but doesn't really harm them.
The possibility of more than one being a protagonist is a different matter. In many of Shakespeare's plays- A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example- one might argue that the protagonists are the lovers'. A more likely interpretation is that Oberon and Titania are protagonist and antagonist to each other. You might even say that Puck is the protagonist- who knows? It depends on how you interpret the story- which threads a reader feels most attracted to.

Six

Two is company, three's a crowd. I'd say keep the numbers down. It's a lot easier on the writer as well as the readers.

Awesome advice Linda! I completely agree.

My suggestion: don't confuse main characters (those for whom the audience is strongly sympathetic) with major characters (those that have a strong impact on the story's themes). Every conflict has multiple interesting perspectives; there are always more major characters than main characters.

Sympathy doesn't normally shift when impact does. There are tricks to keep the viewpoint near the action without losing sight of the main characters. I'm with some other posters -- one or two main characters at a time is enough.

There is no such thing as too many MCs!

Reason: Every minor/major character thinks of himself or herself as a main character of his or her life.

But...(there is always a but)...will readers fall in love with each and every one of them? They don't have to necessarily love them, if the said character is written to be someone readers should hate. The important thing, I think, is to have readers be in syn emotionally with ALL the MCs.

If it's not necessary, then that character is not a MC.

As long each and every one of your MCs connect with the readers (and that requires room/words), I think there is no such thing as a limit.

Now, if you dump all five main characters characters all at once...most likely you are diluting the impact of said main characters. You might start with introducing them, but readers may not pick out which one to follow.

I think it can work in, say, prologue where you introduce all five. But just because it's a prologue, readers don't expect to get too attached anyway.

Once chapter one starts, however, readers might expect someone to ... stalk.

just my two cents.

If you set up too many as MCs, if the reader finds one character really boring, they don't want them to be an MC but you will end up trying to make the reader like the character. A fifth of the book will be wasted trying to persuade the reader to feel an emotional attachment to the character.

Rhys Cordelle said:

I have five MCs in my novel, four of which desperately want their share of the POV. The fifth main is quite content to be seen through the eyes of one of the others.

Because of the nature of my novel I feel that it is important to do chapters from all four POVs because each of them sees the core theme in a different light.

My plan is to start with several chapters from one characters perspective, during which time the other MCs will be introduced so that they're established characters before they get POV time.

So I'm eager to ask opinions as to whether four is too many?

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I LIKE this concept of "enlarged cast"...if managed in the appropriate way, you can have something like four "subnovels" that interact, but it might complicated to exploit this idea. In particolar, you need to write four POVs that are really different from each other, therefore you need to define very well your four or five characters and understand the reasons why character 3 sees things differently from character 2 and so on.

I'm trying to do something similar in my novel and I really like to describe the same person, or object, through the eyes of different people, it's like to find out which are the perception of you that other persons have developed...usually one observer, one "projection".

You know, I just hope all your MCs have distinct voices. I'm reading this book right now and it's got the one big MC and then other major/minor characters like most books do. I never get confused about who's talking or anything, but everyone sounds exactly the same, which gets annoying.

The voices should be different but don't fall into the trap of creating 4 exaggerated and contrasting stereotypes instead of believable characters.

I totally agree with the first responder. You have too many MC's when you confuse the reader.

Rhys Cordelle said:

Because of the nature of my novel I feel that it is important to do chapters from all four POVs because each of them sees the core theme in a different light.

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Why did you assume you need to give them all the POV to get across their different views about the theme. Supporting characters that don't have the POV can do that job just fine.

I have seen six equal characters handled extremely well in "The Blending" and "The Blending Enthroned".

That doesn't mean every story or every author can pull it off.

The too many MC's is when the writer is no longer able to successfully juggle them and keep equal attention while keeping the story moving in an interesting way.

As with most things I'll refer you back to the source material. Seek out books with equal or greater MC's and see how they handled it.