EGGammon, I suggest the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Large cast of characters, long, involved plots, happening over many books. With each book, new characters are added, and some are subtracted. The characters are handled pretty well.
James D. Macdonald said:How many of those characers are major characters?
How many are just walk-ons?
brinkett said:I don't know how your series progresses, obviously, but if you get me to care about your characters, I'd definitely be p*ssed off if you keep killing most of the main ones off. By book 2 or 3, I won't want to invest emotionally in any of the characters because I won't see the point, so I'd stop reading the series. Killing off a main character here and there is okay, but constantly killing them off probably won't work too well for a soap opera series, where caring about the characters and their lives is key. I mean, it sounds like you're killing off at least ten main characters in the first book. If most everyone I care about is dead, why read book 2? Just my opinion, of course.
James D. Macdonald said:E.G. -- How far have you progressed? Have you reached the end of the first book yet? The second?
Maybe reading War and Peace would help you in working with large casts. Maybe not. But I tell you for true: It won't teach you a tenth as much as writing the novel.
So ... what have you gotten done so far? It doesn't have to be finished and polished, but do you have first draft yet?
50 main characters is a lot. It'll take a huge amount of skill to introduce 50 characters in a single book (of reasonable length) so that the reader will care about all of them. Are you sure you mean 50 main characters?And you said: "I mean, it sounds like you're killing off at least ten main characters in the first book. If most everyone I care about is dead, why read book 2?" 10 of more than 50. There are plenty left behind after the kill-off and more to come. Plus there is a growing mystery that will (I assume) draw readers in.
brinkett said:50 main characters is a lot. It'll take a huge amount of skill to introduce 50 characters in a single book (of reasonable length) so that the reader will care about all of them. Are you sure you mean 50 main characters?
maestrowork said:50 main characters? Good lord. Even if you do have a large cast (soap opera, war and peace, space opera, whatever) you still should focus on a handful. Look at Star Wars... sure a lot of them are more than just "minor" characters -- Yoda, Obi-Wan, The senate, etc. -- but when you examine it closely, you'll realize we're only folllowing a handful (Darth Vader, Leia, Solo, Luke)... the supporting cast is there to support and advance the story. They're not focal characters.
Egg, I do think you have a spiral out of control problem here. I might be wrong, but 50 characters? And at 100K you're still nowhere near done?
You'll be testing your readers' patience... maybe you should consider writing a serial instead.
maestrowork said:A series is like Harry Potter...
A serial is TV... episode after episode, and eventually you have volumes. I think the Dark Tower series were originally serials? I could be wrong....
James D. Macdonald said:E.G. if this is the book that's filling your heart, let it out. Write it fully, the best that you can. Perhaps you'll publish this one, perhaps you'll publish others. But until you've written this one you won't know what you have and what you can do.
bkrrh85 said:EGG--
I have occasionally read books with very large casts of characters, but I sure don't like to. Inevitably, three of their names start with the same letter, they're all men (or women), all tall dark and handsome, or whatever. I have a hard time keeping track of a rather reduced cast of characters (less than 50), never mind such a huge amount.
How on earth do you keep track of all them???? AND, there's all the details about each of them. They can't ALL possibly be major characters. The book I'm working on has four major, major characters--occasionally one gets killed or maimed, and another pops in at the right moment, along with a handful of minor, and somewhat more than minor (but not major), characters.
The thing I find interesting is that, now that I have finished my first draft and am reworking my chapters, my characters are so much more familiar to me and I am able to "update" them in my revisions, and they become more real and alive and individual. That, I think, is a distinct plus!!
Happy writing,
Ranneh
maestrowork said:A better question: how do you ensure that your readers can keep track of them?
bkrrh85 said:BTW, are any of these published works, yet? If not, perhaps it is time to introduce the world to some of these folks, before you add yet more!
wurdwise said:I'm thinking the same thing. Seven years is a long time and this is a highly complex project you've worked very hard on, that's easy to disern. Maybe it's time these characters got a road test.
EGGammon said:And how would I "introduce the world to some of these folks" and give "these characters a road test?" if my work isn't really finished?
James D. Macdonald said:Short stories.