Overwhelming Your Reader With Too Many Characters (Don't Do This)

Have you ever been to a holiday gathering for a significant other, or maybe gotten dragged to a big meet-up by a friend of yours? If so, then you probably remember how you were immediately thrust into an environment where there was one person you know and were familiar with, and you spent the rest of the event in a blur trying to build a map of who was who? You might have remembered that Jim, the big guy with the receding hair and the dad-stashe, was your friend's work-husband. Maybe you managed to remember the woman with the red hair was named Jessica, and she was your friend's ex from high school. But beyond that... well, it's mostly a blur. Even worse, you spent so much time trying to learn everyone's name, and to figure out what their relationships were, that you completely missed the evening's conversations, and anything that was happening throughout the night.

That feeling of exhausted discombobulation is the same feeling readers get when they're immediately shoved into a book that has a massive cast, and you're throwing names and descriptions at them faster than they can handle.

Who the hell were you again?

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Frogs and Boiling Water

You've likely heard the old saying about how you can't just drop frogs into boiling water. If you do that, they'll just jump right out again. However, if you put them in lukewarm water, and then ratchet up the heat a little at a time then they'll just stay in the water while you cook them. While we aren't looking to harm our readers, this is generally the method you should use to introduce them to both your world, and to the characters who populate it.

So, there was a thing called the Fast Food Wars, and, ugh... well, it's complicated...

There are generally two methods you can do for this. The first is to have a long story so that you can introduce your cast of important characters over time. This is probably the most common strategy used for those writing a novel series. The second strategy is to have a flash-introduction for the whole cast all at once, but not to linger on them. Then, one-by-one, we find reasons for our readers to spend time with them, and to fill in their details so they gain depth and personality.

Consider a book series with a massive cast of characters, like A Song of Ice and Fire. Even if we just include the main cast, there's more than 20 some-odd characters we spend a lot of time with, and at least a dozen of them become point-of-view characters throughout the story. However, we're introducted to this cast over several very large books... and more importantly, the audience is often told about characters before they meet them, so that when they actually show up the audience has at least heard of them before. And as new members are added to the cast, and new events happen, we get to add more and more names to the roster without confusing the audience.

Of course, it also helps that they seem to get pruned every couple of chapters as well.

Prime examples of the latter strategy, though, tend to be mystery stories and cop/private eye dramas. For example, consider a story like Murder on The Orient Express. The cast is rather large, and we get them in a rather rapid succession... but we aren't slammed with all of them all at once. We, instead, get smaller touches of conversation, as well as interviews with Monsieur Poirot. In this way we can introduce a number of characters in a controlled environment so that our audience can "meet" them all, but they're also there to be examined and learned, as we're looking for details about their lives and possible involvement in the unfolding murder. You'll see similar setups with the Benoit Blanc films Knives Out and Glass Onion, as well, which allows us to easily juggle a dozen characters or more with relatively little stress.

The key in both situations is being able to breathe in between bites. If each new character is a new dish, it's important to give your audience time to take a bite, chew it, analyze it, swallow, and maybe take a drink of water to cleanse their palate before you give them a new one to taste. Space out how often you introduce your cast, and just as with your plot or world building, don't just jam a funnel into your reader's mouths and pour until the bottle is empty.

No one will enjoy that experience, and it's likely to lead to readers putting your book down and walking away before they ever get close to the dessert course.

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Whenever Possible, Let Your Characters Solve Their Own Problems

Stories are full of conflicts. Whether it's soldiers on the battlefield, star-crossed lovers trying to make their relationship work, someone who is trying to win a big competition in order to win enough money to stop the local rec center from closing, we're here to see how our characters handle these conflicts. However, too often we end up letting the machine of the gods come down and save the day on the behalf of our characters.

It's why I wanted to say that, whenever possible, you should make sure that your characters are responsible for solving their own problems.

Eh, I'm sure lightning will strike the dark lord at the proper moment.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Pull Yourself Up By Your Plot Hooks!

There are often a slew of factors involved in a story, and there are often circumstances outside of your protagonist(s) and their actions. However, the main thrust of today's post is about how the problems and conflicts in a story should be solved by the character, and the actions they take.

For example, let's say you're writing a coming-of-age story where your protagonist is in middle school, or maybe a freshman in high school. One of the problems they're facing is that they've become the target of a school bully, or maybe even a pack of them. Now, they might be the main antagonists, or they might merely be secondary threats that represent something your protagonist has to deal with. And maybe it comes down to a good, old-fashioned schoolyard brawl where the bully gets their nose bloodied (or broken). Maybe your protagonist lays a trap for them, scaring the pants off their bullies without actually hurting them. If there's an additional threat in the story, ranging from a haunted school to a serial killer targeting kids, your protagonist might actually save their bullies from danger, taking them from foes to friends in a rather big hurry.

Now imagine if your protagonist just told a teacher, and that teacher swooped in and reprimanded the bullies for their behavior. Or, worse, the bullies' parents just showed up right when things got tense and dragged them off with no provocation from our protagonist. These other characters just swooped in from out of nowhere to handle the problem for your lead who didn't do anything to fix it themselves, and as a result they've done nothing, but their problems have been fixed for them. Is that a satisfying resolution to the problem your protagonist was facing?

I have learned nothing, and accomplished nothing... away!

If you find that too many of the problems in your books are being solved by forces outside your protagonist's control, and without any input or effort from them, it may be time to reconsider the way your story is being told. Your protagonists don't have to single-handedly defeat armies, or solve everything with a fist fight, or always know the most obscure of facts that just so happen to be the bane of the enemy's existence, but their efforts should have some impact on the overall outcome of your story.

And if they're not... well, ask yourself why, and if the audience is going to be less-than-pleased that the character they've been following didn't actually fix anything themselves.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

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And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

How Many Characters Does Your Story Need?

If you're a fan of Stephen King, chances are you're at least familiar with the book The Stand. A novel about a majority of the human race being wiped out by a super flu (and doesn't that hit different after 2020?), it is a huge brick of a book even by the famous author's standards. Part of the reason for that is the absolutely massive size of the cast, which is kind of ironic, given that 99% of the world's population was wiped out by the plague early on in the story.

To fix this issue, Mr. King had an Event take place about 75% of the way through the book that drastically downsized the number of characters we were following. And while it was dramatic and pulse-pounding, the author later said that it was done more as a matter of practicality, because he'd allowed the cast to get so bloated it was becoming impossible to manage.

And if a problem like this can happen to one of the best-selling authors of our age, it's definitely something that can happen to you, too.

Look, brothers, we can't ALL be the chosen one...

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

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How Much is Too Much?

An average book, or even a short story, is going to be filled with a lot of characters. From the waitstaff at restaurant scenes, to the cops manning the barricades at a murder investigation, to the arena full of sports fans during a climactic showdown between our lead and the terrorist they've been chasing, books are just crammed with characters... but a majority of them are going to be in the background. They're characters whose names we may never get, whose faces we may never really see, and who might not even get any dialogue in the story.

However, you aren't expecting your audience to remember those characters. Their motivations and backstories aren't going to affect the plot as it unfolds, and they aren't going to be personally tied to what's happening. They're supporting cast, who are there to provide information, keep a scene flowing naturally, or to provide the appropriate background while your leads drive the story forward.

No, the question you need to ask is what happens when your main cast gets too bloated, and it starts to become a problem.

Especially if you're trying to get a manageable word count.

The problem is, of course, that there is no hard-and-fast rule for when your cast of characters has grown too large. There are novel series with colossal cast lists, like A Song of Ice and Fire, and the character bloat doesn't seem to have hurt the readers' opinions of the work... but was it a feature, or a flaw?

As an example, considering the translation of Martin's books to the small screen provides us a lot of solid examples of characters either merging together, or characters who were less important being ignored in favor of maintaining a stronger, central core, with their actions being taken by one of our established, "main" characters.

For instance, Bronn ends up wearing a lot more hats in the show than he did in the book. While he was originally just Tyrion's bodyguard, he also took on the role of guard captain of King's Landing (a role which was originally filled by a character who was named, but rarely seen). There were also several moments where violence had been done by relatively unimportant characters that were instead given to him. One could argue that it was because the costs of a bigger cast are far more noticeable in a TV show, where a new actor has to be given a costume, choreography, lines, etc., and so it's just easier to use members of the cast who are already under contract, and whom the audience already knows. However, this has the side effect that it creates a tighter story, focusing the attention of your audience, and allowing them to get more invested into the characters you've already fleshed out.

As a general guideline, what I recommend is that you should always try to make your cast of main characters (your protagonist or protagonists, their immediate support characters, the villains, and their support staff) as tight as possible, without sacrificing anything. This is particularly true when it comes to important events, or things that happen onscreen in your book. If your lead is being framed for a crime, you could create a whole new character to come arrest them. However, if you've established they have a friend on the force, it would create greater resonance if that friend volunteers to perform the arrest in order to minimize resistance from your lead. Or if your lead has an enemy who's a cop, it heightens the drama to have them be the one who puts your protagonist in cuffs.

You shouldn't be afraid to add new characters as you need them... but keep in mind that there are characters, and then there are characters. If you just need someone to fill a role, say a few lines of dialogue, sell our protagonist a gun under the table, etc., that can be done by any of the former without much sweat. But if this is a character with a name, a face, and whose story you want your reader to know and empathize with, consider the investment you're asking of the person holding your book, and what the payoff is going to be.

Because if it feels like every character we meet is important, pretty soon it can feel like no one is important... even if you don't start killing them off every three chapters.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Evocative Names Can Do a Lot of Heavy Lifting For You

"If you want to be a good writer, first you need to be a good reader."

Chances are good all of us heard that at some point. And of all the pieces of writing advice I've talked about on this blog over the years, this is one that I think is just all-around good. If you want to really excel as a writer then it helps to see examples of the craft, both good and bad. There's no better tool for understanding story structure, tension building, and even atmosphere and style than just looking at the finished product and examining it for yourself.

Following this advice is what clued me in to this particular writing tip... which is that a truly evocative name can do a lot of work for you.

They call him the Ghost... and all the rumors you've heard are true.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

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A Professional Trick From Across The Pond

Names do a lot of work in our stories. Character names, country names, names of weapons, and the names of magic, all of these things are necessary for labeling our worlds and the stories that happen within them. Most of us try to find names that are fitting, or which roll off the tongue, or which are easy to remember... however, none of that is the same as a name that is evocative.

An evocative name creates a strong impression, usually through specific language that immediately calls to mind an image. It's something I grew up seeing in comic books and pulp fiction, but for true masters of the trade I recommend glancing at authors from the U.K., as it seems to be particularly common over there.

Take a walk down these dark streets?

Simon R. Green's Nightside series, which starts with Something From The Nightside, is a study in this kind of storytelling. Often times there are places he'll name, like the Bizarre Bazaar, or characters like King Video or Deadboy, who get little to no extra description because they just don't need any. Once you have their names, and the reaction of those around them, your mind is able to conjure up a fitting image without any additional word count. Even better, it allows sidelong mention of people and places that hint at a larger, deeper world without any additional worldbuilding done until later... smoke and mirrors with a single word or two.

Green isn't the only British author who seems to have mastered this, however. Anyone familiar with the works of Neil Gaiman can tell you he's quite skilled in using a thing's name to immediately bring across who and what they are. From the Endless of Sandman fame, to characters like Hunter in Neverwhere, it's sometimes hard to tell exactly how quickly these images are built in your mind because they're done with a single stroke of the brush. You see shades of this in Clive Barker's writing, as well, and I hear echoes of it in Alan Moore's work.

And while this is by no means a skill solely practiced by authors from this corner of the world, it's where I first really noticed it, so they're the examples I can most easily point folks toward.

Giving Readers The Right Impression

There's a whole psychology behind naming characters, and the secrets behind certain choices. From how characters with the name "Hammer" tend to be dangerous, and are typically villains or anti-heroes, to how characters with the initials J.C. may martyr themselves by the end of the story in a manner similar to Christ, there are all kinds of things we absorb from fiction without even thinking about them.

The idea is that evocative names immediately grab the reader's interest, create something memorable, and set them up for further explanation as needed. Sort of like how an elevator pitch is meant to get someone interested in your book, but it by no means covers every aspect of the narrative that you've told. And in some cases the name has to be powerful enough to stand all on its own, even when we know nothing else about the character who holds it. Like Dr. Claw, for those who remember the old Inspector Gadget cartoons.

And for those who are looking for examples from out of my own catalog, consider the mysterious figure known as the Ghost who seems to appear and disappear throughout the current installments of the Silver Raven Chronicles series (it's all about punching fantasy fascists in the face, so give it a look!).

- Part One: Devil's Night

- Part Two: From The Ashes

- Part Three: The Raven's Nest

- Part Four: Circles in Salt

This isn't a trick you should use for every character and location in your story, obviously. Some aspects are meant to be more normal, average, or forgettable, after all. But it's worth keeping in mind if you want to immediately cement important nouns into your readers' minds as soon as they show up on the page!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!