Here’s a question: how many characters in chapter one? How many does a novel need to get the story going? One? Five? Twenty? Are they main characters, archetypes, or ‘extras?’
Humans typically remember between three and seven items in a list. Or in my case two. Possibly only one. The same goes for characters. Think of The Three Musketeers, The Fantastic Four, The Famous Five. Readers struggle with The Secret Seven, The Seven Dwarfs, The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven (my favourite pub quiz question). Nobody remembers The Hateful Eight or all of Ocean’s Eleven.
When it comes to opening chapters, most writing craft books and coaches advocate:
- the fewer the better
- as few as necessary to get the plot moving
- no more than [insert number between three and eight]
How many does a novel actually need? Enough to get the plot moving. But no so many the reader can’t keep track of them.
Get the party started
Every writer has to understand:
- how big a cast of characters they need to tell a complete story?
- how many of them does the reader need to remember?
- by name?
- by their relationships to other characters?
- how many can you expect the reader to assimilate in one chapter while also getting along with the plot?
Think of the Reader
Is it reasonable to throw twenty characters at the reader in chapter one? Harry Potter and Twilight do just that. But genre-fiction fans stuck with them.
Jane Austen’s social satire demands a society to satirise. Tolstoy goes all-in for War and Peace. But neither of them throws twenty characters into Chapter One.
Who do you really need in chapter one?
The protagonist.
A selection of: friends, family, authority figures, and maybe the foil or antagonist
They all have to be identifiable and distinctive, easily distinguished from one another in the reader’s mind. Any confusion and you’ve lost them to a DNF.
Each has to have a beginning role or purpose.
They all have to help frame the narrative around the protagonist: help, hindrance, support, opposition.
And the bad news?
There’s no hard and fast rule.