If you are a fiction writer, by which I mean novels, how many significant, or central, characters do you feel is the limit for a novel, assuming you feel there is a limit?
To Kill A Mockingbird, by my recollection, has basically five. The Killer Angels, on the other hand, has at least seven and probably more like ten, if I recall correctly. War And Peace has enough of such characters such that keeping them all in mind is a bit difficult, even though it is, in my view, the greatest work of fiction ever written. The small Irish classic Durango has seven or eight. McMurtry's magnum opus Lonesome Dove is centered on two, but they interact with a bare minimum of eleven other significant characters, and at least that many minor ones.
Thoughs?
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