Handling a Large Cast of Characters

As I weave the story for Book 2 of my Heaven's Wait! Tales from Vowella series, I am conscious of the fact that many new Vowellan characters will be introduced to the reading audience. On a few occasions, readers of R.J.'s Story have told me that they struggled to form relationships with the Vowellan characters because there were so many of them. Now that Book 2 has jumped thirty years in time, the population has grown significantly. The Vowellans are still comprised of five distinct clans, but within those clans, the characters from R.J.'s Story are now a generation older, and their offspring are also players in the evolving tales of Heaven's Wait.

I recently finished reading Clash of Kings, Book 2 in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. There are literally hundreds of characters woven into this series, and, in many cases, their names are their only reference. I'm sure the majority of the characters were strategically placed and that their significance will be revealed somewhere within the series. But when numerous lesser characters were listed, such as knights and commoners who were brought into a certain king's court and seemed to do no more than populate the stage, I found myself skimming over those lists and losing some context from those scenes as a result. Yet, Mr. Martin's stories work, so much so that they have been developed into a smash TV series. New characters walk on a scene with no introduction, and the story proceeds. My husband, who has yet to reads the books, constantly quizzes me about the characters and their relationships in Game of Thrones in order to keep up with the story. I am sometimes unable to answer his questions because the names were lost to me as I read. He says Game of Thrones is one of the most intriguing series he's seen where he often doesn't know what's going on because he doesn't know the identity of the characters.

Keeping all of this in mind, I want to make sure that as more and more characters are introduced into Vowella and the world of Heaven's Wait, I take the time to clarify their presence and give them enough personality so that readers are intrigued and curious enough to follow their journeys within the stories. Part of my fun in writing this series comes from being free to create as large a cast of characters as I please. But my challenge is to develop purposeful characters without making the scenes drag on too long and to weave them into the community, where they can impact the outcome of the stories. Wish me luck!

Note: I was glad to find that Clash of Kings included a lengthy appendix that listed all of the characters to date and their connection to the category/family/house under which they fell. I will most likely do the same at the end of Book 2.