When writing a novel, how important is it to have one main character? (I currently have 20)

Writing a novel can be quite difficult, there is no magic formula for novel-writing.  Every novel demands its own structure, its own pace, its own way of looking at  the world.

It can cause you utter frustration and despair, however it can also be one of the most thrillingly creative thing a person can do.

With regards to the characters.  There has to be someone in the centre of the action (protagonist).  Generally, this will be someone that your readers will end up rooting for, not matter how flawed the character may be. They must be flawed to make them realistic.  One of my favourite characters is Dexter Morgan and Forensic Blood Splatter Analyst by day and a serial killer by night, even though I completely disagree with what he does I still do not want him to get caught.  Every great novel is character-driven; your protagonist must be a character worth caring about.

I think you may have to look at your characters and decide which one will take the centre of your novel, 20 lead roles could leave your readers confused.  In reflection I am sure that one character will stand out as the protagonist, and the other 19 characters interact with them helping to build and mould the story.

When you begin your novel, it is less important to know where it is going than it is to know who your protagonist is.  It is easy to start writing without a thought of what events will occur, but it is almost impossible to start a story without considering who will be at the centre of those events.

Just remember that your characters create the plot, it is their natural motivations and desires which will drive the conflict in your novel, and their reactions which will shape the events in your story.

Or another way of thinking about it is like the solar system, your main character is the sun, without it no other element of your story can survive.

I don't think it's feasible to have twenty main characters, unless these characters are part of a unit or a group - The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis is a good example of this.

It's great that you feel you know all twenty characters so well, but that doesn't mean they all have to be main characters.

Knowing Your Characters

You should know your supporting (or secondary) characters almost as well as you know your main character. If you don't, the secondary characters will seem like two-dimensional cardboard cutouts who only serve a function - for example, the 'best friend', the 'love interest' or the 'rival'.

In real life, nobody exists just as a best friend, love interest or rival - they don't just serve that one purpose, or exist on the peripheries of somebody else's life. In good fiction, characters are no different.

Books With Plenty Of Main Characters

A Game of Thrones has dozens of important characters, and despite how important most of them are, you don't consider them to be 'main' characters, purely because there are so many of them.

The same goes for the Harry Potter series - and it's not just a coincidence that both of these examples are fantasy.

Instead of counting each important character as a 'main' character, you split them up in your head into allegiances, or into characters you like and characters you don't, or into interesting and dull story-lines (which is very fluid, and therefore quite difficult).

Writing A Book With Twenty Main Characters

If you write a book with twenty main characters, the reader will automatically 'discard' the ones that are of little interest to them.

In a novel, you just won't have the space to make the reader care about all these characters in the way that you do - or at least, the reader won't care enough to consider them 'main' characters, because they won't know them well enough.

My immediate concern would be how well the reader could actually hold all these different characters in their head at once. They'd have to be very different, without being caricatures, for me to remember who's who.

Add the peripheral characters into the mix, and there's just far too many characters, and not enough space for you to write about them in any great detail.

With writing, less is more, so I'd recommend you ask yourself the following questions about all of your main characters:

• Is s/he crucial to the plot?
• What is their role in the story?
• Could this role be feasibly given to another character?
• Imagine the story without this character. Would there be a huge loss?
• Could I 'match' this character with several others, and write a book just about them?
• Why is s/he a 'main character', as opposed to just a 'character'?