Tag Archives: character management

Easy: Keep the Cast Small

- September 14, 2012

Ha! Ahem. Okay, so, I’m not the person to ask about managing large casts of characters — I’m shit with large casts of characters. Frankly, I get exhausted reading about a large cast of characters. I might give you six or eight named characters who influence the story, but really, the story is only about […]

Shaking the Tree

- September 14, 2012

Can you name the original X-Men? Do you know who the first members of the Uncanny X-Men (the second team) were and how many are still in the group? All right, how about the Reavers? Or the New Mutants? What about Generation X? My point being that as a reader, anyone who followed the far-ranging […]

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice…

- September 13, 2012

Writing a story involving multiple characters is never easy. Heck, it’s hard enough writing a story about one main character, knowing there are going to be secondary characters moving in and out of their story. But the bar gets raised when — to the writer’s surprise — several supposed secondary characters begin to cry out […]

5 Ways to Avoid Character Confusion

- September 12, 2012

When I’m writing I can picture all the characters from my story interacting. In my mind they are fully realized individuals with their own strengths and personalities. They entertain me with their uniqueness, their specific way of speaking and their wacky fashion statements. It’s easy to forget that a reader coming to my work fresh […]

Crowd Noise

- September 12, 2012

Writing a story with a large cast of characters can be tricky. My books tend to have a large cast, and with each progression in the series, the cast gets bigger. Book three, especially, has become a little out of hand, but that’s a major plot point, so whittling down the number of people/creatures would erase […]