Big Cast vs. Small Cast

Potentially hot take: The most important part of a book is the characters. Yes, plot and prose and all the other things are very important. I’ll dive more in depth about why this is my stance in another post, because today, I want to talk only about characters.

Specifically, how many characters. What’s the right amount? Should you have a lot, or just a few? What are the benefits and downsides to each of these “casts”? Is one better than the other?

When I say cast, I’m referring to the characters that show up in a book more than once or twice. It’s enough that we know we’re going to be seeing them again in the future. Inside this loose definition, you can break down the characters even more, such as including side characters who only show up once or twice at the beginning or end and never again, but for now I’m just talking about characters we know we’re going to see again, probably more than four times. 

Big Cast

A big cast of characters, in my opinion, is fifteen or more. An argument could be made for ten, but I’m going to stick with fifteen, give or take a few. Books like Keeper of the Lost Cities and Harry Potter and Percy Jackson have big casts.

Going off of my above definition, a big cast of characters means that all of these 15+ characters are showing up not once, not twice, not even three times, but consistently. So we’re seeing all of them a lot. 

Pros: Your reader probably won’t get bored with the characters you have, because there are so many. This is going to sound a little messed up, but when a character dies, it won’t be quite as big of a deal if it’s a book going on during a war or something. You can increase the number of deaths (*cough cough* Hunger Games *cough cough*) to have a greater impact on the audience. Or, if you’re J. K. Rowling, you can gut punch your audience with every single death. 

A big cast gives you the chance to show off your character skills by creating a bunch of unique ones. You also don’t have to put quite as much effort into each character. That doesn’t mean you can just slap them together, but the supporting people don’t need to be four dimensional. 

Cons: you have to keep track of and not mix up all of these individual characters. This is the stumbling point in a lot of these big casts. The authors get overwhelmed with all of the characters they’ve created and the arcs, motivations, fears, and attributes they possess that make them an interesting character. And quite frequently, authors sacrifice development for numbers. 

I’ll take Keeper of the Lost Cities as an example, because it accurately shows how a series can go downhill with time. This is a 10+ book series that is, as of 2025, still being written. It has an absolutely enormous cast, upwards of forty characters. And keeping track of everyone’s arcs is a nearly impossible task, which means… it doesn’t happen. Characters stop growing, stop developing, stop feeling like people. And the book goes downhill, because characters are the lifeblood of a book. 

However, Harry Potter is an example of how a large cast can be great. This shouldn’t be a standard though, because whatever your opinion on J. K. Rowling, she is a prolific author and excels in just about every facet of writing. Her characters and plots are extraordinary. Anyway, she also has forty, fifty, potentially sixty plus characters. But they are all full of life and constantly changing. None of them feel flat, because she can keep track of and handle all of them. 

It comes down to the author, honestly. A big cast is hard to tackle intimately, but it does have its benefits. 

Small Cast

A small cast is less than fifteen characters, potentially excluding characters that only show up once. It’s up for interpretation. Artemis Fowl has a small cast, as do the Books of Bayern. 

Pros: You get to go deep with each character, and it’s much easier to keep track of all of them. You only have to worry about ten or so different arcs and growth journeys as opposed to twenty-five. You have the chance to really flesh each character out and get to know them, as well as get your reader attached to your MC. 

Cons: You have got to have good characters, or your story is toast. If your main character feels like a cardboard box and there’s nothing else making your reader stay… they won’t. There is much less room for poor character development. You also must make sure every single character is good. If even one of them is poorly developed or boring, your reader will know. So you’ve got to do your work. You also have less to work with, simply because there’s fewer characters.  

However, a small cast gives you the opportunity to have really great characters. I’m not saying big casts don’t give you the chance to do that, but instead of having to juggle these twenty side characters, instead we get to go on a journey with a really good set of six. When done well, a small cast means that each and every character is good. The author has put enough time into them, and (hopefully) the reader can at least enjoy all of them. 

In-between Casts

I felt that I couldn’t ignore this last group of casts, because not all books fall into big or small casts. Sometimes there’s a book that has a lot of characters, but the main six or seven are really well developed and the rest have enough beef to feel real. No, this is not just a book with a lot of characters that have a great trio. That’s a big cast. An in-between cast puts together big and small casts, placing most of the focus on the main characters but using the power of small cast development on a larger scale. The Penderwicks series comes to mind when I think of in between casts. The author, Jeanne Birdsall, has a central cast of a group of four sisters and a boy. This cast grows over the series to include many more side characters and a handful of additional main characters. And yet not one of them feels flat. 

Birdsall has an in-between cast because she treats her characters like they’re a part of a small cast –i.e. developing all of them enough that they feel human– but in reality has a large cast. This is not an easy thing to do, because developing characters is a time-consuming activity. But it’s very much worth it. 

What do I use?

I would be remiss if I didn’t give you an example from my own writing to explain some of my thoughts on these two (three, technically) casts. Personally, I tend towards small casts in my books. Tiger Lily has five main characters by my definitions (main meaning that they’re the core cast, not meaning that they’re the actual main character of the book. There’s just two of those) four or five supporting characters, and just a couple of characters that are only mentioned once. Leopard’s Strike, the sequel, follows that same cast of five primary characters and five or six supporting characters. 

Most of my books have leaned this way. The Traitor’s Daughter trilogy had a main trio, a villain, an anti-hero, and maybe five supporting characters. 

I’m not saying that this is the better way to do character casts, or even trying to guide you towards one or the other. I simply prefer smaller casts for two reasons. 1. Because it’s what I naturally tend to, it’s what I’ve gotten good at. I know how to handle a cast of five or six primaries. 2. I prefer to make those five characters extremely well developed and let their backstories handle all of the roles that the story requires. If I were to have twenty or so supporting characters, much of the things that the five mains do could be passed off to them. I wouldn’t need to connect my mains so well, and that’s my favorite part. I love making the characters more and more connected with every chapter, especially for Tiger Lily. A small cast worked so well for that series.

In conclusion…

I hope you understand the differences between the kinds of character casts now, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Drop your favorite kind of cast to read or the cast that you’re currently writing with in the comments!