[stylist] Dealing with a large cast of characters

[Vejas Vasiliauskas]

I like stories with lots of characters too.
How about: for the siblings, how about focussing on 1? Let's say 
there's one named Cecilia.  If they're exchanging letters, 
Cecilia could write "We are all thinking of you or could even 
write about stories that happened such as "Today Jack and Amelia 
were trying to make a cake and..." So basically having one 
sibling as a main point of contact.
As for the 28 men, who are whittled down, how about you having 
her have a crush on the first of the men that leaves? That could 
be a significant plot.  Then she could fall for one of the men 
who stayed.
Just a thought.
Vejas


 ----- Original Message -----
From: Tessa via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Tue, 03 Jan 2017 15:01:32 -0500
Subject: [stylist] Dealing with a large cast of characters

I would like to get some thoughts on how to deal with a large 
cast of characters.
In my WW II story my mc ends up nursing victims of shellshock.  
First she has a large family 4 brothers and 3 sisters who she 
thinks of often.  Second when she enters the nursing program she 
is placed in a room with five other women.  Third she works 
primarily on two wards containing 40 men of whom six or eight 
play a major role but she knows and works with most if not all of 
the others.  She also has friends and colleagues that she deals 
with.
At one point she and another nurse and 25 of the men are moved to 
a new location and then those 25 are slowly whittled down.
My big issue is trying to keep everyone straight, who's present 
who's now gone and so on, I'm just not sure how much of that I 
should detail.  When they move should I list in some fashion the 
ones that make the move or let the names come out in bits and 
bites through the story.  Most of these guys appear once or twice 
in the story and I can't really create entire episodes for most 
of them but I don't want them to just be faceless entities 
without a name.
I know in many books with large character lists I find myself 
getting lost as to who is who and I don't want my readers to be 
doing that.
I have about 10'000 words to edit before the end and then I hope 
to start on the final edit where I'll tie up all these loose 
threads and suggestions from readers.  So if anyone has any ideas 
on how to handle this I'd appreciate hearing them.
Tessa


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