KacyWriter

If you're confused, your readers will be too. Other than that, if you're not having any trouble keeping your characters straight, then they should be fine. I once wrote a story that was about a family with six kids, each kid got married and had kids, I had to just follow on of the original kids and her husband and kids, (and ocasionally bring in one of her original siblings) or I would have become totally confused.

Lady Duo

I have 2 main characters in my novel. Each have the same amount of space and have grown equally as good entertainment. The other characters in my book support the story so it doesnt get confusing... well i hope it doesnt lol :p

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Oracle

I think it depends on the genre. In fantasy/sci-fi six is perfectly acceptable... In fact, it's even small. I'd keep the viewpoint characters to a maximum of 4, but 6 or more fully-developed characters is no problem if you can handle it.

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scott777ab777

Frist Book

Imo

He has 5 main characters.
The 3 boys
Lan
and the Lady.
Been a long time sense i have read those books.

Then he adds more and more and more MAIN characters as time goes on in the series. I think it is like around 20 main characters LOL. Seriously.

But there is a web site that has a list of what they claim to be all 1700 characters in his series.

http://www.encyclopaedia-wot.org/

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I am no longer here to debate, I just want to learn how to write better.
Peace unto you all.

Bumblebee

In one of my work-in-progress novels I have four main characters and two (what I call) fringe characters. The main four are the ones that the story revolves around and the other two serve to tell the story from a more objective perspective, so I have six view points. I feel my "story" needs all these characters. They are all distinctly different in character. I think that's the most important. As long as they are all different enough and all add something to the story you're telling, you can have as many characters as you want in my opinion. So go ahead and use them. You will know soon enough whether it is too many.

kalrarii

I say use however many you need. There is, of course, the possibility that one or two of these six would be sub-main characters - like how Dumbledore is in Harry Potter. He's needed, and part of the focus some of the time, and he's in the books a lot, but the story isn't about him... You get what I'm saying? So you could have four or so main characters and a few sub-main, and so on.

But a good writer with a good story doesn't even need to think about the characters as numbers. If the character comes and fits in, in he goes. ^_^

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Dookie

Yeah, if there really is no need for a character then you realise pretty quickly and just attempt to edit them out. A useless character is quite annoying. Sometimes though you really get snookered because you have a really boring useless character but they're needed for the story to flow.