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Thoughtful Thursday – Characters – July 17, 2014
Reading Is Fun Again created Thoughtful Thursday. Each week, she posts a new bookish thought that she discusses.
Everyone is welcome to join.
July 17: How many characters do you like to meet and get to know in a book? Do you prefer a book with just a protagonist and a handful of central characters or do you like to meet lots of characters?
I have a confession to make. I really, honestly, don’t actually care that much about supporting characters. If you’ve got two or three multidimensional, well-developed characters doing interesting things that’s plenty. I’ll use the Mistborn series as an example. I LOVE Kelsier. I LOVE Vin. I even sort of got attached to Sazed & Elend. I realize that the rest of the guys were all important – and more developed than most secondary characters due to the Awesome that is Brandon Sanderson – but I promise you I’d have to look on the Wiki to remember any of their names.
Be sure to check out the other posts on this topic at Reading Is Fun Again.
2 Comments
by Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
Interesting question! I do pay attention to important secondary characters. I don’t mind a fair few of them if that’s what’s needed for the book (for example, the Harry Potter books have a lot of characters.) But it’s important that there not be too many main characters, because I want to invest in them, and if there are too many (like more than four or five) it’s harder to do that.
by ferabeth
Exactly! And it gets pretty tricky to fully develop that many characters, too.