How many is to many?

[C.B. Jones]

I have a question. In my novel there are fifteen character prospective's. I'm only on chapter 6 and already have two hundred pages done without telling the entire story i wanted to tell in book one. Is that to much?

 

[Androxine Vortex]

That's a lot of perspectives. I for one enjoy getting different angles on the story but I think that fifteen might be too much. your readers might feel overwhelmed and I think that it would be better to cut that number down, that way you can connect with the characters better instead of having to constantly adapt to new ones.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I have a question. In my novel there are fifteen character prospective's. I'm only on chapter 6 and already have two hundred pages done without telling the entire story i wanted to tell in book one. Is that to much?

Well it's ultimately up to you. However, if this is your 1st novel then it's likely too much. 15 POVs is a ton unless it's an epic tale spread out over a series of books.

As far as the number of pages & chapters are concerned, it depends. You're better off thinking in terms of total word count for your first book. Aim for a range of 80-120k.

There's lots of posts on word count if you'd like to know why. Basically though, it's all about production costs involved when taking on a new writer. A new writer is a risk.

 

[C.B. Jones]

It is a epic tale I wanted to tell in 8 books.And without the 15 main's a lot of the story wont be known to the readers. Is that OK?

 

[C.B. Jones]

Thanks for the advice. It is a lot of angles since none of the characters are in the same place.

 

[Hap818]

Just try and shorten them down. Each book can have 15 chapters and just try to limit the size of each chapter so it isn't so long.

 

[C.B. Jones]

i know it's going to be HUGH!!! But I didn't want the first book so long. If I cut it down it will be more books.

 

[Hap818]

Maybe you could have 15 books with 15 chapters each

 

[C.B. Jones]

Ha ha ha nice suggestion, but with ever book people die and other's rise.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Let's put it this way: A Game of Thrones is 293,000 words (nearly 1,000 pages printed) and contains nine POV characters.

It should be fairly obvious that you should not try to out-do A Game of Thrones with your first novel.

 

[Kit]

9 POV's in GOT? That can't be right. I count more than that on my fingers without even thinking hard. Of course there were several new POV's in the newest book, and a couple of POV characters have kicked the bucket.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

9 POV's in GOT? That can't be right. I count more than that on my fingers without even thinking hard. Of course there were several new POV's in the newest book, and a couple of POV characters have kicked the bucket.

There are nine POV characters in A Game of Thrones, where A Game of Thrones is the first book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire. ASOIAF has way more than 9 POVs overall, but book 1 (AGoT) only has nine (including the prologue, and that guy only has one chapter, so really there's only 8 major POVs in book 1): Will (prologue), Eddard, Catelyn, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Jon, Tyrion, and Daenerys.

The TV show is "Game of Thrones," book 1 is A Game of Thrones.

 

[Kit]

Ah, I see. Thank you for clearing that up for me.

 

[JonSnow]

So I've done some research on this subject as I've started a new re-write of my own novel. I've looked at a number of different authors' fantasy novels, to get a feel for how many words per page, and how many perspectives they use. Some, like Terry Brooks, don't use a lot of different perspectives at all. But Song of Ice and Fire uses a lot.

I wouldn't suggest anyone using as many perspectives as George R.R. Martin (he ranges between 8-10 the entire series, as characters emerge and die). For instance, you lose Eddard at the end of GoT, but gain Jaime in Storm of Swords. But even with 9 perspectives, the sheer number of characters, subplots, and peripheral people is STAGGERING and overwhelming to read. I finished Game of Thrones and felt like I only absorbed half the book because there was so much.

I settled on 4 perspectives for mine, and some of them won't start until the middle of book 1. Even that is going to be plenty, I think.

In terms of page/chapter/book length, I think you need to at least do 400 pages if you want your book to be anywhere near average publishable length. For epic tales like GoT or Wizard's First Rule (Goodkind), these can easily rival 1,000 pages. For shorter books, like some Terry Brooks, Dragonlance, etc, you still probably want to be in the 400-500 page range at about 400 words per page. That means that an "average" fantasy book length is about 16,000-20,000 words.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

That means that an "average" fantasy book length is about 16,000-20,000 words.

He meant 160-200k words. I won't disagree but as has been mentioned in several posts, a 1st time author wanting to go the traditional publishing route should probably stay in the 80-125k range.

 

[JonSnow]

My math was obviously fuzzy. I missed a zero...400-500 pages at 400 words per page would be 160- 200,000

 

[Penpilot]

FYI. There's one more complication to think about. Each POV character adds to the complexity of relationships in the story. If they interact with one another, there has to be a relationship established, progressed and weaved together with the other POVs.

If I'm doing my math correctly, for 9 POV characters that interact with one another, there are 36 relationships that must be established and developed. For 15 POVs, there are a possible 105 relationships to establish and develop. This isn't even counting the secondary characters. This is a huge thing to undertake.

Please don't take this as discouragement because if you think you need 15 POVs to tell the story you want to tell then you need them. This is just to give you a metric on what you're dealing with and to say really make sure you need that many POVs because you could be making things more difficult than they need be.

 

[Fluffypoodel]

I agree with Pen Pilot. the more pov characters that you have the more relationships you need to back up. I'm working with 8 pov characters in my novel but they are seperated for most of the book, although they do know one another (for the most part) I don't think that I could start a book at double that but then again I know that I cannot write the book that I am writing with any less than 8. I would suggest knowing your characters before you start writing seriously about them. if you decide that you don't like a character 400 pages into the novel and decide to remove him/her then that is a lot of editing. I wish you luck though and if you need those 15 characters then pound away at it! leave George Martin in the dust!

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

FYI. There's one more complication to think about. Each POV character adds to the complexity of relationships in the story. If they interact with one another, there has to be a relationship established, progressed and weaved together with the other POVs.

If I'm doing my math correctly, for 9 POV characters that interact with one another, there are 36 relationships that must be established and developed. For 15 POVs, there are a possible 105 relationships to establish and develop. This isn't even counting the secondary characters. This is a huge thing to undertake.

Only if they all interact directly. Jon Snow doesn't interact directly with most of the other characters (some in the first part of book 1, and then a couple chapters near the end of book 3, and a few in book 5). Daenerys doesn't interact with any other POV characters until book 5.

Yeah, theoretically the number gets large, but that's an upper bound. In practice it's going to be lower unless all 15 characters are all travelling together.

 

[Twilight Goblin]

I have a question. In my novel there are fifteen character prospective's. I'm only on chapter 6 and already have two hundred pages done without telling the entire story i wanted to tell in book one. Is that to much?

That is a lot of characters! The most I would say to use (And this is just a personal opinion) is about seven. That way, when I write the story, I don't have a lot of scrambling about who's who. With that many characters, I would break the story up into different parts, or split the characters up and write seperate stories about all of them.