when you have group of individual people. how would you write them down?

[Remedian]

when you have group of individual people. how would you write them down. as a stepping stones for the character? a hindrance, a helping hand?

i have this 12 characters that i dont know how to fit in the story. all i know is somehow they ended up in the same world the mc did and they to came from the world the mc originated from. be it before or after or combination of both.

this people are already rooted in the story and theyre not connected to the story in any way or form.

the mcs are merely the byproduct of the incident. they also dont know about the incident and has no idea of this 12 characters are from the same world as they are.

now i need to drive the story in where they learned later on little by little about them, finding them and getting answers through them. and how to get back.

the catch tho is. how can i not make this 12 characters to influence the world ( since theyre scattered through different timelines when they arrived ) around them in such a way that its not obvious for the mcs that the world was influenced by this characters. the current world is a fantasy world so that like in a medevial period type setting, so it cant have a modern world influence thats too obvious for the mcs.

the 12 characters are very smart tho so its really hard for them not to influence the world. most of them are good people some turn bad in some form of way some died.

so yeah iam stuck how i can make this work.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Personally, I would just kill off or merge half of those characters before I started even writing them. Having 3 (or 6) well developed characters leads to better stories than 12 random NPC's. It's also more manageable to only have to worry about a few of them.

As for how to keep 12 of them from influencing the world, the answer (at least partially) already is in your description. You're writing in a pre-modern setting. If you make travel hard and dangerous, then a person stuck in the middle of nowhere will have very little influence on the wider world. There's no such thing as fast travel in a medieval setting (well, not completely true, but close enough). It can take years or decades for an idea to spread and there are reasons some things were invented multiple times.

Also, even for smart people, if you limit the actual applicable knowledge they have, then it doesn't matter how smart they really are. Many modern people transported to a medieval world would be completey lost. How well could you survive without electricity, clean running water, a fridge, etc? Most people have no clue how stuff we take for granted is made. They have little knowledge that is actually useful in a medieval setting. Yes, I might know the best way to reach 10 million people on Tiktok (I don't by the way, just an example), but is that going to keep me alive when I land in a wolf-infested freezing forest in the middle of nowhere? And if I survive that forest, what actual skills do I have to make life easier and better for people around me? I could explain to them how a microprocessor works, but there's no way I'm actually going to get one built. So that's useless.

 

[Remedian]

Personally, I would just kill off or merge half of those characters before I started even writing them. Having 3 (or 6) well developed characters leads to better stories than 12 random NPC's. It's also more manageable to only have to worry about a few of them.

As for how to keep 12 of them from influencing the world, the answer (at least partially) already is in your description. You're writing in a pre-modern setting. If you make travel hard and dangerous, then a person stuck in the middle of nowhere will have very little influence on the wider world. There's no such thing as fast travel in a medieval setting (well, not completely true, but close enough). It can take years or decades for an idea to spread and there are reasons some things were invented multiple times.

Also, even for smart people, if you limit the actual applicable knowledge they have, then it doesn't matter how smart they really are. Many modern people transported to a medieval world would be completey lost. How well could you survive without electricity, clean running water, a fridge, etc? Most people have no clue how stuff we take for granted is made. They have little knowledge that is actually useful in a medieval setting. Yes, I might know the best way to reach 10 million people on Tiktok (I don't by the way, just an example), but is that going to keep me alive when I land in a wolf-infested freezing forest in the middle of nowhere? And if I survive that forest, what actual skills do I have to make life easier and better for people around me? I could explain to them how a microprocessor works, but there's no way I'm actually going to get one built. So that's useless.

Thats a very helpful insight i do plan on killing some of them and just mention them in passing as tales or legends of some sort. And for the influence that very well might work. dissemination of information in a medieval setting would be slow, so it won't make enough of a difference for it to totally spread and influence a large part of the world. so, a small influence here and there would be totally plausible.

 

[pmmg]

Twelve does seem excessive. It would be hard to do all twelve justice. I would consider cutting it down to a smaller number, of just not have them. How do they add to the story?

 

[ThinkerX]

The simplest way would be for your MCs to hear about this group of twelve, but not have any detailed info about most of them. 'Brandon the Bold' and his companions, or some such. Even if they meet, only one or two of the twelve need to stand out.

 

[skip.knox]

It will work much better if you got to 12 characters because you were developing your three main characters and these others kept intruding. As it stands, it sounds like you just arbitrarily picked a number and now are trying to figure out how to use it. It will be difficult for that not to feel contrived.

How about this, try writing--sketching and notes are allowed at this stage--your story entirely from the POV of your main character(s). Maybe you get all the way to the end and find the story doesn't need those other 12 at all. Maybe they exist but are entirely off-stage, appearing as legends or rumors. Maybe you find your MCs encounter one, then another, then another, and only at the end do they discover these people are all related in some way.

Right now, there are too many possibilities. What you want to aim for is to have whatever characters appear to feel necessary for the reader. Easier said than done.

 

[Prince of Spires]

One other thing worth mentioning is that you don't have to fully develop everything in your world to be able to write the story. You just have to make the reader believe that you have developed everything.

You can have your 12 character, but you actually only know something about 3 of them. The rest can just be a list of names who live in a distant area of the world your character never gets to. They might get a mention in your story once or twice. Then you can develop the other 3 because the main characters actually run into them.

This way, you show the reader that these characters exist, and because you know everything about these 3, the reader will just accept that you know everything about the other 9 as well. It's like having that random country on the faraway border you mention once or twice where you know nothing about it other than that it's cold, their main exports are pelts, and the people there are short and grumpy.

 

[Remedian]

Twelve does seem excessive. It would be hard to do all twelve justice. I would consider cutting it down to a smaller number, of just not have them. How do they add to the story?

Yes i realize that too and itll be hard to keep up with all of them. Imma kill half of them i think. Originally i started the story because of the 12 characters. I was planning on centering the story around them but decided against it later on. And just make them be the building blocks of the main story for the mc to encounter each.

 

[Remedian]

The simplest way would be for your MCs to hear about this group of twelve, but not have any detailed info about most of them. 'Brandon the Bold' and his companions, or some such. Even if they meet, only one or two of the twelve need to stand out.

Yeah, iam now trying to create a lil back story for those that iam planning to kill off. And let a few of them actually be part of the main storyline

 

[Remedian]

The simplest way would be for your MCs to hear about this group of twelve, but not have any detailed info about most of them. 'Brandon the Bold' and his companions, or some such. Even if they meet, only one or two of the twelve need to stand out.

Yeah, iam now trying to create a lil back story for those that iam planning to kill off. And let a few of them actually be part of the story

It will work much better if you got to 12 characters because you were developing your three main characters and these others kept intruding. As it stands, it sounds like you just arbitrarily picked a number and now are trying to figure out how to use it. It will be difficult for that not to feel contrived.

How about this, try writing--sketching and notes are allowed at this stage--your story entirely from the POV of your main character(s). Maybe you get all the way to the end and find the story doesn't need those other 12 at all. Maybe they exist but are entirely off-stage, appearing as legends or rumors. Maybe you find your MCs encounter one, then another, then another, and only at the end do they discover these people are all related in some way.

Right now, there are too many possibilities. What you want to aim for is to have whatever characters appear to feel necessary for the reader. Easier said than done.

Your exactly correct on that assumption lmao. I did pick just that number as theyre the characters i initially created before i even had the idea to create a story and are now just trying to find a way to insert them in that feels natural. But i already got some ideas from your comments. Whoever serves the purpose of the plot gets to live.

 

[Remedian]

One other thing worth mentioning is that you don't have to fully develop everything in your world to be able to write the story. You just have to make the reader believe that you have developed everything.

You can have your 12 character, but you actually only know something about 3 of them. The rest can just be a list of names who live in a distant area of the world your character never gets to. They might get a mention in your story once or twice. Then you can develop the other 3 because the main characters actually run into them.

This way, you show the reader that these characters exist, and because you know everything about these 3, the reader will just accept that you know everything about the other 9 as well. It's like having that random country on the faraway border you mention once or twice where you know nothing about it other than that it's cold, their main exports are pelts, and the people there are short and grumpy.

Hmm my approach right now is just creating a rough setting. As of now i only have a planet, a solid power system, lists of random powers 3 mc and 12 characters. After that i think ill just let the characters take it from there. I know not everyone writes the same but is my aproach good or nah?

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Hmm my approach right now is just creating a rough setting. As of now i only have a planet, a solid power system, lists of random powers 3 mc and 12 characters. After that i think ill just let the characters take it from there. I know not everyone writes the same but is my aproach good or nah?

If it works, it works. There no right or wrong. There is only one rule: Writers write. All else is process. What I tend to do at this phase is to hit Pinterest and start looking for whatever pricks my interest. Then it's like dumping random elements into the pot to see what sort of soup they make.