[stylist] Dealing with a large cast of characters

[Miss Thea]

    Hi, Tessa.
I'm working on a novel, involving humans, angels, and demons.
Lots of people.
I created a list of each character, described them, who they're paired off 
with, what happens to them, etc.
The rest? I just call them "everyone", or "the crowd" to give the atmosphere 
of there being lots of people.
Hope this helps,
Thea

-----Original Message----- 
From: Tessa via stylist
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2017 3:01 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Cc: Tessa
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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