Writerly Ways

It occurred to me late last night that maybe one of my problems with the last two novels I tried to write and set aside was that I had too many characters, especially the monster hunting one. I was writing it more like a military operation with a couple of commanders and a team of at least six. (ditto the mystery one).

I think you can do this easily enough in scripted tv where you have 20 shows a season to highlight everyone but this is much tougher in a novel. Yes, certainly Lord of the Rings manages it. It's not impossible but it is harder.

Have you tried to do it? have you seen articles on how to do it well? I'm not sure I have. Maybe it would work better if I pare the monster hunters down to a team of four instead of six. I'm not sure.

What I do know is I need to stop abandoning stories and I wish I knew how to do that.

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