When you start to write a novel or a short story, how many characters should you introduce in the first scene?
I picked up the novel of a new-to-me but best-selling author tonight and started reading. On the first page (really a half page), five characters were introduced along with their relationships to each other. On the second page, four more people were named and their relationships. On the third page, one more. Ten names and a web of who knows how many relationships in two and a half pages of text. None of them were developed enough to know more than “he’s a detective,” “she’s an au pair,” “she’s giving the party” and “he’s got a crush on the au pair.”
A bit into the second page I was flipping back to the first page to remind myself who was who. Then, befuddled, I pulled out a piece of paper and drew family tree-like relationships to keep characters straight.
Should this be necessary? How many names are too many names?
I have never read any guidance on this topic. Yet a maximum number of names is an important criterion for me to use to determine if I will keep reading. If I find myself needing to draw family trees, I ask myself, “Is this worth reading?” “No,” I almost always decide. If an author can’t figure out how to introduce characters without confusing me, then the author can’t be that good. I put the book back on the shelf and move on.
In college I needed to read Anna Karenina in English 101. At the front of my translation was a list of characters which at first intimidated me. But I rarely consulted it. Tolstoy had a way of introducing characters without overloading my short-term memory. For the heck of it, I just now checked to count how many characters Tolstoy introduced by name in that novel’s first scene (about two pages). The answer–three: Stiva, his wife, Dolly, and one man named as part of a silly dream, a man whose name we realize immediately is not important. Other people’s roles are mentioned—a French governess, an English governess, a housekeeper, a cook, a kitchen-maid, a coachman, the children—but they are not named. A reader needs to keep track of only two. And one of those two we are learning about intimately since those pages are told from his point of view.
How many names are too many names? I don’t know. But when I am confused by the third page, that is too many names.
English Writing Teacher 