I am plotting out a longish story, which would have the following number of characters:
Main/ reasonably significant characters: Nine
Characters still vital for the story to work:Thirteen
Side characters, named, with a little detail because they are colleagues/relatives of the character whose POV is in use: Nineteen
Is this too many? Only the Nine+Thirteen characters are fully developed, but I'm concerned that upon reading the names of other characters a reader might get bogged down, especially if I give them the odd detail. I'm trying to create a lifelike situation where we generally all have multiple people on our peripheries.
Answer
Unless you are writing a screenplay or stage drama the specific number of primary and secondary characters (ie: speaking roles) doesn't matter. There are no budgetary concerns from too many characters.
If you say the characters are necessary then they are necessary. Otherwise you must change your story, skip scenes, or combine characters. If these characters serve a logical role in their scenes, and the scenes are logical in progression, the readers won't be confused by their presence.
Just so long as they are not all in the same scene at once while the reader needs to recall specifics about their backstories by name, you should be fine.
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