too many names

[A. E. Lowan]

I'll have to admit, even with the metric **** ton of characters we have in the series, those who don't pull their weight won't appear. We have a fair bit going on in the background, and there are going to be off-shoot stories and short pieces in between the main books. The majority of that 400 will make onscreen appearances, but if they serve no plot purpose at some point then they'll either be cut or they'll make their debut in a later book.

 

[skip.knox]

I agree with Gryphos. There is a difference between characters that make sense to have (e.g. family members), and characters that are needed by the story. There's a reason why so many fantasy heroes are orphans and without siblings.

OTOH, maybe the sisters are important to your MC. Maybe instead of finding ways to cut them out you think about meaningful roles they could play.

Having a character index is a separate issue. Go ahead and enter one. For myself, I never consult them, and here's why. When I'm on page 144 and I read a name and I don't really know who the character is, I'm not going to stop, flip to the back of the book, and look them up. And even if I did, it's unlikely the one sentence you have written under their name is going to make them meaningful to me in the context of page 144. I know this from experience. A character index didn't help with War and Peace, but I still loved the book despite the blizzard of names. A character index didn't help with Martin's books, and I still got frustrated with the series.

Every time I read about too many characters or too many adverbs or too many of whatever, all I can see is the Emperor of Austria telling Mozart his composition has "too many notes."

 

[stephenspower]

I dislike name noise as a reader, and yet I also radiate it when writing. So I understand your situation. My beta readers said the same thing. Some tips:

Could you somehow group your characters together so they seem less disparate? For instance, consider how Gandalf introduces the dwarves to Bilbo, then Beorn: in fraternal pairs, followed by a trio. Now the reader only has to remember five groups (with similar names to help you out) instead of 11 individual dwarves. That this is also part of Gandalf's strategy to get the dwarves inside without alarming the hosts, respectively, serves nicely to demonstrate Gandalf and the hosts' characters. Can your spies be paired off or put in opposition? If the MCs are the spied upon, can they be asssociated with certain spies?

Thorin is more thoroughly introduced as the leader so he stands alone. The king of all "this guy will be significant" expository moments, though, is in the first episode of "Lost" when Jack wakes up, helps someone (Sun?), then heads to the beach, at which point the person he helped says, "What's your name?" He turns around, the camera zooms in on his face and he says, "Jack. My name is Jack." Can you give each main character his/her Jack Moment? (Note to self: Having just come up with that on the fly, go back and make sure your ms does this.)

In addition, to indicate characters worth remembering later, give them with some characteristic or object. If anything the characteristic will be something that you can remark on later, while an object gives the character something to fiddle with, allowing you beats to break up dialogue.

 

[The Dark One]

I would never name a 'scenery' character, unless there was an important reason to do so.

Mind you, I only grudgingly add new characters because my personal rule is that all characters must be important; ie, have an impact on the plot or on a major character's developing characterisation.

I am aware that character ARKs are acceptable in fantasy, but I write mostly speculative fiction and crime.

Why do I come here? Because it's the best writers' forum I've found and most of the stuff discussed is relevant to all genres.