[stylist] Dealing with a large cast of characters

[Miss Thea]

Oh yeah, they did that in The Left Behind Series.
There was a dramatis personnae at the beginning of each of those books.
Thea

-----Original Message----- 
From: debby via stylist
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 10:50 PM
To: Tessa via stylist
Cc: debby
Subject: Re: [stylist] Dealing with a large cast of characters

Hi Tessa, one thing you could do is list all the characters at the beginning 
of the book. I have read a few books where the author does that. I've liked 
that in some cases as I too got lost and couldn't remember characters. Best 
of luck.    Debby

On Jan 3, 2017 12:01 PM, Tessa via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> 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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