Some authors believe in very few characters, and some believe in having a sea of them, so far and wide-reaching that you lose track of who was literally just speaking.
I’m a fan of having a fewer number of characters. It lets you deeply develop each one, giving insight into their reasoning and decision-making throughout the story. Too many characters can oversaturate a book and leave the reader confused.
However, I’ve been adding as I go!
In the first book, Beyond the Shadows, I had five characters: two main characters (protagonists), two side characters – a man and a woman, and my evil antagonist. In my second book, SpellCast from Darkness, I kept my two main characters and two side characters, but I added in two more side characters, a whopping four antagonists, plus a final mystery character!
It was so much fun to continue developing my original characters while adding new ones to play with. Plus the main characters were so well-developed, it made it easy to remember their reasons for why they did the things they did. This gave up room for new characters to be created and nurtured into existence.
Now that I’m started on book three, Against the Coming Dark, I’m finding even more characters that I want to join the rest. My two main characters will of course be in it, and the original two side characters will make their entrance into the story a bit later, but this is where it gets interesting! My mystery character will be fully fleshed out, there will be three more vampires, plus a fortune-teller and an FBI agent. They are all integral to the story, and hopefully you’ll love them.
Intrigued yet? I can’t wait to share more with you as it comes along!
Author Shanna Robillard 