Obviously 
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Habitually? 2. Generally MC and ML. As for other things? As long as I work hard on it, it’s not an issue to write.
To read? No problems at all.
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Hello to everyone!
I come to inform you all that Anjan is my one and only focal character, my real MC.
I’ve changed the story’s plot to what it should be about and I found the right inspiration for the project.
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I think it depends on what you mean by “main” characters. Like, people we follow through perspective changes or secondary characters the story happens to follow as well but only through a single person’s perspective?
I think five is a reasonable amount… if only using as secondary characters. If you have five people and we see their point of views, then it’s too much. For a perspective change, I think two, maybe three people would be it. But if that’s not what you’re talking about… then it can be even more.
My sci-fi fantasy series has a single main character in the first book that you follow, but there’s a bunch of secondary main characters.
Since the story centers around the MC and his crew of soldiers, I had to choose enough that seems reasonable but not too small of a group. Besides the Captain, the MC, there’s seven on the ship.
Then we meet another main character, Hiroko, after a hurricane, who then gives the crew directions to head to a certain place to meet another main character, a princess. There, you technically meet two if you count my MC’s new pet dragon who plays a part in everything. But the princess gives them powers and tells them they need to speak to another person about the location of the villain, and when they go, they meet another two main characters. An alien species that doesn’t have a name (the species is non-binary and refers to themselves as their species name) and Fara, who is part of the enemy but is a run-away rebel. Toward the end, you’ll meet two more people who will eventually become part of the main cast—and they’re both villains: Talura and Viknora/Victoria (our main antagonist). There’s a few other characters along the way that you meet, but aren’t entirely main characters—they’re more like part of the re-occurring cast.
So… when you add up all these people, that’s another seven people which makes fifteen total. And that’s spread throughout a single book. The rest of the series will include even more, and I have plans of perspective changes as well. The sequel will only have one extra perspective change. The first book ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, so the next would start in Nicolas’s (the MC) point of view again, and moving on within part one. Part two will feature Fara’s perspective which would talk about what happened after the war and after Nicolas got captured, and how they can save him. Then part three will be in Nicolas’s point of view again.
And I may add other perspective changes to show Hiroko and Viknora’s point of view. But other than this, it’s pretty much one to two people, and at this rate, probably another ten or so main characters. I mean, I know the sequel will feature a lot more new characters, too. xD
I think it isn’t too bad to have like ten or so people, but you do want to make sure they aren’t all introduced at once because otherwise, it’ll become too confusing. But if you introduce them gradually and make sure they each get enough screen-time, it shouldn’t come to a case of someone stealing the spotlight more.
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