I'm planning on writing a short story (might evolve into a short novel if I get enough inspiration), but I'm kind of hesitating whether having tons of characters is going to damage the quality/confuse the reader. The story is some sort of military science-fiction, and I thought of having an entire platoon as the cast. The reason is because having a lot of characters means you have more freedom in killing them off in large numbers, and this creates a sense of drama by removing the hero shield. I have 22 (named) characters, but I'm planning on killing off about half of them in one of the first chapters. So that leaves us with about 11 characters for the remainder of the story, 6 of which are in the spotlights. I was thinking of writing a chapter out of each character's perspective, but I'm not quite sure if that'd work well.
So, should I keep my idea of having a dozen of named characters playing major parts in the story, or should I opt for the more traditional route by killing off most of them and keeping 3-4 main characters?
For the record, there isn't any real antagonist to speak of.
Um short stories aren't supposed to have chapters.
Right. But if it continues into a short novel, it will.
If it's SHORT, there shouldn't be more than 3 mains IMO.
I see. Well, let's make this a short novel then.
22 is far to many, you may be able to kill loads for drama but the reader won't be emotionally attached to them, because they can't remember who they were and that they find so many characters confusing. With that many characters you won't be able to develope them as well or as deeply as a short story with say 3 characters in.
I understand, but it's especially hard to write about a war without killing off people. It's not so much that I want to make the readers emotionally attached to the characters, but more give the readers the sense of urgency, danger, and especially stress that any character, including the few main characters, can die at any moment.
Then you are planning to write a whole book.
with 22 main characters, in order to make the reader emotionally attached to them to make it sad and dramatic it's going to take a hell of a lot of writing. They all will have to have a proper background and enough character development to make them missed when you kill them off.
Yeah, I can see it's going to be a challenge.
I like challenges. However, I think I'm going to give every character a distinct personality, so that every reader can find two or three characters he can relate with. If the reader would mourn over every death, he'd be pretty damn depressed at the end of the story.
I don't know. If you're a very skilled writer, you can do a hell of a lot with a short story and 22 characters.
But, for most writers around Facepunch, I would think they'd be better suited to using 22 characters for a comedic short story.
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