Steve (@2) is correct in that readers can become impatient. Trying to focus on a seperate plot or point of view while constantly thinking about my favorite character(s) can be somewhat distracting and takes away from the enjoyment of the story.

There are a few authors that manage to keep me entertained throughout yet still offer a large cast of characters. I think the best of them (in my opinion anyway) succeed by keeping the overall story moving rather than playing catch up with every character when it is their turn in the spotlight.

Some authors tend to fully introduce their characters the first time you meet them. The third or fourth time you focus on this character, it is often just a name. Instead, I prefer receiving this information in smaller doses so that I learn something new every time I encounter the character.

I think you should write the story you want to write and see how it turns out. The best case scenario would be it is an instant success. The worst that will happen is it doesn’t turn out how you envisioned it and you learn something in the process.

It seems to me that when we ask for someone’s advice, we are really asking for confirmation of our own opinion though we often aren’t sure what that is until we listen to what everyone else has to say. You can weigh both sides of the coin, but I think you should just flip it and see what happens.

I think to understand how to write a story with a cast of thousands, one needs to understand why such a story typically fails. As an attorney, who has to write about complex issues for decision makers, this is a challenge I face in my work.

The reason why such a story is likely to fail is because of how the human mind works. On average, humans are able to process seven facts in their mind at one time. Indeed we are able to memorize lists, but there is a limit to the number of items in a list we can remember. Our minds can only keep track a limited number of facts at one time.

The way that we get around this is by what scientist call “chunking.” A great example is written language itself. We could never memorize the symbols to create a 50,000 word vocabulary with each word having a unique symbol. Nevertheless, if we memorize a list of 26 letters, we can combine them in unique ways to form a 50,000 word vocabulary. Spoken language also uses this principle. We combine words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs to make communicating more complex thoughts possible. Each stage is an example of chunking. Small pieces of information are combined to make one larger piece of information. With that larger piece, we can combine it to make more complex pieces.

Therefore, it seems to me that one would reverse the process to make this work. One would have to find a way to combine these characters in the mind of the reader so that they form some type of coherent whole. In other words, the characters would have to be related to each other by relationship or subplot that is distinct from the rest of the characters. I think this is what Will @ 5 is suggesting. I think this is what Tolstoy did. He created multiple subplots each with a limited number of characters. In other words, stories within stories. Then, he skillfully moves the characters between subplots, which relates each to the whole.

So perhaps the real answer is: avoid having a cast of thousands until you are an expert director. (And even then, your producers may have to approve your budget.)

> Don’t leave George R. R. Martin’s A Song of
> Ice and Fire of the list of ensemble casts

Oh, it’s on the list, but it’s a great example of how a deliberately huge and sprawling fantasy blockbuster can lose its way in a vast swamp of words populated by a swarming of unnecessary character viewpoints and extra subplots.

GRRM has written some great stuff elsewhere, and there’s little passages in that fantasy series that are quite good, but on balance I think it’s turgid and bloated. Cutting out 2/3 of the character viewpoints and tightening up the story would really have improved it.

I don’t know GRRM at all, nor do I follow the fan sites for his work, but I gather that at some point he seems to have lost his way in the middle. I suggest this is at least partly because there are too many words and too many characters.

On the other hand, if you measure success in sales, and I’m not sneering at that, only bemused by this particular work’s popularity, I guess there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

They act as much as setting as characters as well.
This is why Dumas and Tolstoy still work today.
A person picking up their books presumably has
some interest and knowledge of history to begin with.

It is harder when a writer is starting from scratch. However, if a character if filling a specific role that does gives a reader some initial frame of reference. If someone is introduced as an empress, or a guard or a powerful sorceress, that immediately evokes ideas in a readers imagination that allows the writer to associate additional detail with the character and expect it to be remembered even in a long work with many characters.

SKB has the additional mechanism of having introduced us to the various families of
his setting so now if he tells us someone is a Dragon, or a Dzur, or a Teckla we have immediate expectations of who that character is
and how they will act. In other genres, stereotypes serve a similar function.

At least Martin makes his characters’ deaths more meaningful than all those nameless extras on Star Trek.