: Re: How many characters are too many? I am plotting out a longish story, which would have the following number of characters: Main/ reasonably significant characters: Nine Characters still vital for

Consider, for example, The Lord of the Rings: you've got the Fellowship (nine characters), you've got Bilbo, Elrond, Galadriel, Theoden, Eomer, Eowyn, Denethor, Faramir, Sauron, Saruman, and several more all vital for the story to work, you've got a lot more named side characters.
There are other examples. Song of Ice and Fire, for instance. So in terms of sheer numbers, you're fine.

However, your concern is not unwarranted: with so many characters, you do need to take steps so your readers don't start mixing them all up.

How do you do that? First, character's names need to be sufficiently different. Readers often complain about Sauron and Saruman being two bad guys with confusingly similar names.

Second, don't dump all the characters at once on the reader. Introduce them a few at a time, let the reader get to know each - who they are, what's their relation to the MC / the plot.

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: Re: How many characters are too many? I am plotting out a longish story, which would have the following number of characters: Main/ reasonably significant characters: Nine Characters still vital for

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