I have six flat-characters and two-rounded, the protaganist and his love interest. Eight characters is pushing the boundaries, when five or six is considered to be the norm. But they are all vital to the plot and storyline.
A brief explanation of what I mean to novice writers: A flat character is a minor character in a work of fiction who does not undergo substantial change or growth in the course of a story. Also referred to as "two-dimensional characters" or "static characters," flat characters play a supporting role to the main character..
A round character is a major character in a work of fiction who encounters conflict and is changed by it. Round characters are more fully developed and better described than flat, or static, characters.
I find this very interesting (and Jonathan's response reassuring).
A whole heap of shared works on here recently (including my own) have received encouragement and suggestions that characters need to be "more characterised" - or "rounded out".
I have thought - "hold on a minute, some of these characters don't need more description" - and - "rounding them out in this context will interupt/block the flow of action".
I have two works on the stocks at present. One expanding way off into the universe somewhere and the other pretty compact.
The former (from which I have submitted some extracts) has a single perspective - but I'm pretty certain that I have never described the character. I am, after all looking out from this persons eyes - so I should only see him occasionally in a mirror. I trust readers to work out for themselves who he is and, probably, to build their own image of what he looks like. I have already achieved causing one reader/friend to stop and think "Hold on? Who is this guy?" - which effect is one of my targets.
There are then probably at least - um?- eight characters that occur repeatedly. As with Jonathan's military campaign it doesn't make sense to have only one or two people with a few fringe characters around them. Then there is a cast of dozens of extras...
This makes for a huge pile of continuity work. It is, however, worth it - to me at least. I have at least a solid twenty "character files" which include dates of birth, death (where appropriate), Place of birth and death, height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, previous job(s), favourite food and drink, "Desert Island Discs" and much more. Everything is set out on a standard format.
The "Discs" I find most useful: they can add a quirk of character that wouldn't usually show up. This helps me to remember to just mention something about this in passing. I think that, even with a fairly background character, this can add just a touch that increases fullness - and hopefully realism. Just as two weird examples I have a young, chubby blonde environmentally fanatical young lady who is into Shock Rock... What does this tell us about her? (Apart from the fact that she's probably half deaf and has lousy taste in music). Another, pretty quiet / suppressed young man who is absorbed by on-line wargames is extremely knowledgeable about Classical Music.
I think that at least my own having this information helps to complete the "wallpaper".
In the other work I only have two characters with two close friends for one of them. Almost everything revolves around the first two with the perspective alternating between them fairly strictly. There are, however, numerous people in the background - there have to be - the location is modern Central London. It would be pretty weird to not have crowds of people... But in this case they do form something like a moving wallpaper.
Overall I think that there is no one answer. More than that I think that to restrict concepts, to put them into formulae is to unduly restrict creative thought. I am, however, biased about this.
Just as a thought. How many characters of each "type" would one identify in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" or (dare i say it?) Rowling's ... Um? what's the name of her book?
David
At the moment in my first novel, I have five rounded characters (4 x protagonists, 1 x antagonist), two flat characters and a whole host of walk ons, some of whom are simply hell-hound chow, others are incidentals to achieve a particular transaction in the story (ticket sellers, butlers, etc).
Adrian, that's really interesting. Did you set out to write that way or did you feel the story worked better, as you went along?
I ask because when I began my first story I intended to have a single MC and his 'sidekick'. But as I got deeper into the plot I thought the second character warranted expanding to the point where he became the second MC (and I did a lot of re-writing). This gave the book an advantage over most historical action-adventure, which seems to be based around a single character, but on the downside proved more difficult to write because I use single person POV to help emphasise period (no mobile phones lol). Regularly moving to a different person's head while keeping the narrative easy for the reader to follow was a challenge. Though I must admit I now prefer it and find 'omniscient narrator' POV takes a while to get into.
To answer your question, I have two well-rounded characters, seven semi-rounded (who we learn a little about and change through interaction with the MCs) and more than twenty 'flat' characters. Of the semis, two are real historical characters and of the flats six or seven. The numbers are simply down to the situation - British, French and Portuguese armies on campaign.
Twenty-nine characters ain't bad, out of more than 100,000 in real life ;)