How many MC's are too many?

The first question I'd have is, are they really all main?
Do they all have arcs that end at the same time, with the same (small set of) event(s)?

Or are we focused on a few, are they the main main characters? Because you can totally have POV characters who aren't main.

Sharon Shinn's latest 4-book series has (depending on how you count it) 5-8 main characters. But each book mostly focuses on 2-3 of them. So it can be done, but... focus is still important.

Eighty-seven would definitely be too many...

People can hold 7 plus or minus 2 items in working memory.

This means that I'd cap most things at 5. After 5, most people would have trouble keeping track, given that they also have to keep track of other stuffs.

Wouldn't it depend on the maintenance of a forward thrust to the story?

On my last project, I had four main characters. Not as many as yours, but maybe what I went through with it will help. All the characters carried equal importance. For my story, in hindsight, the "equal in importance" made it much more difficult to write the story. There was no one person the story was about.

That problem became apparent, also in hindsight, when writing the synopsis and query letter. It was very hard trying to make the story fit together in the synopsis with so many characters (there were also three villians), and the synopsis came out choppy. Critters commented: "Too many characters!" and because of the way the story itself was written, none of them could be left out without omitting critical plot details. The query had the same problem--it spent too much time with all the names, but it didn't make sense without them.

What ended up happening: A major revision of the book with a focus on one primary main character, but it still had three secondary main characters. When it was time to do the synopsis and query letter, it was a lot easier to do--and the synopsis only needed three characters to pull it off, not seven.

I've gone ahead and introduced them in the first chapter with brief snippets anyway and was thinking of continuing to jump over to them every so often just to build character. However, i am in two minds about this at the moment.

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I hate to tell you this, but if the character turns halfway through the book, the reader isn't going to remember who he was from a brief reference the first chapter. They're certainly not going to draw the conclusion from the mention that the character is important, and in fact, may dismiss it as unimportant because he doesn't turn up until much later. Also, remember the reader is jumping straight into the story and trying to get oriented. Throwing additional names at them to make sure they're in the book ahead of their introduction is only going to throw barriers in his way of getting into the story.

As Shweta points out, not all POV characters are MCs. A complex novel with farflung locations can have quite a few POV characters. Often this type of novel centers on an event that affects a whole population, a whole country, even a whole world. A good example is Stephen King's The Stand.

The Stand is also pertinent to your book in that it takes a while for all the characters to get together. I think King succeeds with a difficult structure by making each character whole and interesting on his or her own, by drawing each inexorably into the same situation (surviving the aftermath of global plague), and by fulfilling the implicit promise of landing each of them in one of two opposing camps of survivors by the bottom of the long slope to the climax.

My own sense is that a novel with many POV characters or MCs will need a strong unifying thread to hold them all together. It could be a shared event or situation. It could be that one character has ties to all the others or is the center of their attentions. It could be that fate (plot) is funneling them all together.

Some readers don't like frequent hopping from POV to POV and plot line to plot line. I'd say that most readers will be put off if they can't see why the writer is hopping -- if they can't figure out what the connecting thread may be. Introducing characters who won't figure in the main plot line for some time is tricky. On the one hand, you may not want them to seem to appear out of nowhere, unknowns who must now be developed in the midst of the action. On the other hand, unless you can imply that they're destined to hit the main stage at some point, their passages may strike the reader as irrelevant.

Can you pull this off? Sure, if you can pull it off. Yes, it's one of those tiresome situations. No more than one-three MCs isn't a rule, just a guideline. You might try to combine some of your seven MCs to bring the total down. But if this really isn't feasible for your story, write it with the seven. Then get advice from canny readers about whether the stage is just too crowded.

If it's the best thing for the story, go for seven. But be careful if one should be a minor character but has taken over a role as MC. I found this when my story lead me toward having the MC rescued by her younger relative. I woke up in time and reversed the roles.

But if you have seven genuine main characters, I hope it works for you.

The question you have to ask yourself if it adds to the story. Ask if sharing some info from the POV of another characters can't serve the same purpose.

I'm glad you posted this. I'm in a similar situation myself - three separate plots, each with its own MC, and I'm worried about the same issues. Wait - or is it five MCs? Or six? Oh crap...

It'd be much simpler, of course, to simply pick one of these plots and make it the primary focus, but I'm not ready to do that yet. Right now, if I'm putting it into my story, it's because I feel like it's important. Maybe this is pulling me in a dozen different directions, but I'd rather go to those places and then realize they were the wrong places to go, then cut them and risk losing something potentially powerful.

Perhaps when I'm revising I'll look at the work as a whole and realize what I thought were plots were actually sub-plots, or just fat. But - and maybe I'm wrong on this - in the meantime, I'm just going to keep my MCs, keep all my different storylines, until I get to the end of this and then step back and see what sort of animal I've made. The way I figure it, you never know what's going to happen in the process of writing the story - what will end up proving itself dispensable or indispensable.

Live fast and take chances, baby!

(and then revise like a bandit.)

You haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin, then?

I lost count of how many POV characters he has in the series. Personally it annoys the crap outta me ( I'm just getting invested in one character and he swaps to another), but he must be doing something right --it's probably the top selling fantasy series, and I get flamed royally for saying I don't care for it.

Think of all the stories that have many characters: Star Wars, Gone with the Wind, Harry Potter etc. They all have one main character.

By the way, they seem to be used interchangeably here, but POV characters and main characters are two entirely different things - take Sherlock Holmes for example...

Hey, I'm in the same "Too...much...to...chew!" boat.

I'm writing a story from the POV of no less than...

Er...

I think nearly 90 different characters. But, then again, the narrative structure is that I go to the POV of one character, then to another then another and never re-use a POV twice. So, the one snap shot shows you how the character views himself and the world, then the other snap shots shows you how other characters view that character, themselves, the world, whats going on.

Trying to go for an all encompassing picture here.

Doug Johnson said:

Think of all the stories that have many characters: Star Wars, Gone with the Wind, Harry Potter etc. They all have one main character.

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Agreed, my first book has a main lead character, but a very large supporting cast to round out the story.

Each of the supporters have their own pov to a small degree.

But the main story arc follows one specific mc.

I think you only have one main character, no matter how many POV characters you have. I read somewhere that the Da Vinci Code has twenty-three (yikes!) POV characters. But, still, the art historian guy is undoubtedly the main character.

The main character is who the story is about.

Like has been said before, you can have several main characters, but if you look deep into the whole story it breaks down into a tale of only one or maybe two true mc's.

Question is when you look through out your work, is there one mc who stands out above the rest?

If so this could be the true mc.

Doug Johnson said:

Think of all the stories that have many characters: Star Wars, Gone with the Wind, Harry Potter etc. They all have one main character.

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I'm not sure I agree.

But, then, I truly, deeply dislike the term "main character" in any case. Is the protagonist a "main character"? Sure. But isn't the antagonist also a "main character"?

It's rare to see many protagonists, but not uncommon to see two: check out "Romeo and Juliet." Or my own novel (he said modestly) listed below.

As long as the plotlines of the main characters will intertwine at some point of the story, and all are critical to the resolution, I don't think that there can be such a thing as an excess of main characters.

Length will influence things too. If this is going to be a really big novel, there's going to be plenty of room for seven characters to have their screen time, play their parts, have their personal story arcs/try-fail cycles, and give the readers a good read. I'd be concerned if I read a back cover about seven characters with their own story arcs and it's a thin book. If they don't have their own story arcs, then why so many? That's a question only you can answer. But write it first. Overthinking these things can spoil an otherwise good novel. Much as I like reading (and giving) advice I worry that something I say or imply might stop a writer from doing something beautiful because they thought I was right and they were crazy. Bear in mind I'm crazy too, and your brand of crazy may be able to pull it off.

The book with the largest cast of main characters I've read has been six, and she pulled it off beautifully. I suggest finding and reading books that have large main casts that work and see how they do it.

The series I've read is fantasy. The book series is written by Susan Green. It's a two part series with the first two or three books called The Blending then the next three or four books called The Blending Enthroned.

I do have one issue with this series is that she assigns one character's pov first person and everyone else third person. I hate, hate, hate that. I adore the books, but I really hate that, and she does tell the story from each of their pov's so it's obnoxious that she switches like that. At least to me.

As long as you keep their 'voices' separate & use a # in a line space to indicate scene & POV changes you should be fine. They should all be intrinsic to the developement and progression f the book. If you find a couple pretty much mirroring each other's actions/words/ etc., maybe they should be combined into one or be twins.

I've triplet princesses with very different goals, motivations and needs: the eldest is an assassin, the youngest voluntarily spent time in a demon realm, and the middle is a manipulative bitch who'll use any means to get what she wants.

I saw this on the list of questions at the Water Cooler and this answer immediately leapt into my head: "Five. Five is the limit. More than five is too confusing." Of course, your mileage may vary.

I think using multiple POVs (MC or not) gives you certain effects that you trade off for other effects. I love, love, love George R. R. Martin's books. The first one had 8 POV characters, all of them pretty important, and each book since then has added some. What we get is a big, sweeping picture of a deeply built world.

A friend of mine can't bring herself to read these books. She'd just get interested in one person's story and Martin would switch to someone else. Other people have told me they skip to the section of the characters they like the best. And the most recent book was met with a lot of wailing because he didn't have room for some well-loved characters. However, he's a master at this. I'd never attempt it myself.

For me, POV isn't just a way to get a certain set of story-relevant facts out for the reader. It's a tool to make the reader care about a character. If I'm in a character's head and see the world as he or she does, in first or close third, I'm drawn to care more about them and root for them. Martin gives me a good example of this. In the first book, a character does something so despicable to a child, I swore I'd hate him forever. And then, by god, several books down the line, Martin made me see things as this character does and I grudgingly gave in.

Usually though, too many POVs dissipate my attachment to the characters so I don't wind up caring much about anyone. So I guess, as always, it depends.

In my one WIP, there are four main characters. It's a third-person omniscient, and we can see inside the head of anyone, but who that person is changes. There is the main main character, the secondary main character, a tertiary main character, and a fourth character who gets some good face time but not as much as the others because frankly she's much more put together and less conflicted than the others. It seems like a lot, but it is perfectly clear who we're following. And to tell the story, it was necessary to go from one character to another, and even to peripheral characters for a little while.

I'm not saying it works, I'm just saying I did it.

I think to make it work, there has to be a reason. There has to be some essential plot point that can't be told properly any other way than following the character you follow.