I am throwing around character ideas right now and for my graphic novel, I'm wondering how few characters I could get by with and still spin a great tale.

How many/few characters do you have for your graphic novel?

Are you expecting any "other" characters to pop up and have to be created for your story?

jade

at the moment?....ummm....about 5 if you count EVERYONE. *^^* but its still undergoing serious rehashing.
Good luck though. I found the less characters you try to use, the more you come up with....its a curse to all us writers.^^;

Three main characters.

And of course, one lead out of that trio.

As for villains, well.. I'm not set on those just yet.

But I know there will be quite a few minor important characters in the mix, regardless.

Mine has two main characters and some bit characters (10?). Most of them don't last long or have very important parts other than to make it feel a bit more like a real world. Only twp secondary characters.
I think you can have a great story with a single character, it just depends on what you are saying.

I have 5 main characters. I also have a pretty decent cast of villians too. Right now it's 2 main big bad and 3-4 minor ones along with a few fodder. Also several bit parts and extras basicly. I'm not lacking on characters. I also have a couple of support/plot device characters too. Not villians but kind of crutial, even if they aren't the focus. Plus in flashbacks there are the parents of the 5 main characters too. So it's a pretty massive cast.

4 mains, but they're all "fish out of water", so I think I'll add another to be their link to the rest of the world. Unless I go with my Really Crazy Plan in which case I'll need to add another 4.

Oh gosh.

Too many. At the moment I've got this entire chronicle of spinning players in the plot that come back at multiple points, but I want to diverge away fromt he main character as well to the other groups working behind the scenes (even the main antagonist will get his big, shiny spotlight often!). I suppose I want a story that spans across miles of territory where everyone has their own personal story and outcome in the events. The main character is more of an initiative to the seperate stories as well as impacting them. All these side stories will be good fillers instead of simply making a transition - "A few miles later!"

I have four main characters, another six or seven with names, and perhaps a dozen that are more titles and bits of set pieces than characters. Of course I'm also trying to do at least a few pages of action every twenty pages or so and that effects how many characters I can give any sort of personality.

Wow. These answers were way more than I expected. I've actually learned a few things reading these posts.

I have 6 characters setting out on a journey. And I have a talking pet. Hehe. So that's really 7. I have 6 or 7 villains or obstacles as well. I was thinking I was in over my head but I see now that anywhere from 1 to more than a dozen will be workable.

With this being new to me, it's a shame that I would have changed my ideas going forward if the responses were different. I see that I wasn't feeling very brave on this endeavour. Alas, I must change that and do what I want. I AM THE CREATOR here!!!

jade

I think I have eleven at the moment, not counting the school announcements or the flower that quotes the Wicked Witch of the West before dying. And I'm sure I'll have more soon.

I'm not sure, I've got an MC and a good guy antagonist [an honest cop], some bad antagonists but nothing planned for them and a love interest [I think]

As of right now, I've technically got five, but one of them is really minor. I've got plans for at least three more (though additional ones could creep in - I've really got no control over these things, you know).

I'm doing multiple shorter scripts. So far I have...

...four important characters and one more minor speaking role in my first story, plus a couple of people in the background. Of the four there is one hero and his friend (sidekick), one victim and one villain...that turns out not to be a villain after all. :)

My second story has three characters total and more or less one set. One is the main, but the other two play big roles throughout. I'm still working on it and it's turning out to be more difficult than I originally thought. Working within these limitations is very interesting though.

For the remaining stories I don't know yet. :)

I have four main character, one "side" character (a main character's guardian), and I have an antagonist who has yet to show up in the story yet. Right now the current "love interest" is playing the bad guy. Girl. Thing.

And I have a lot of people in the background. And most of them have a lot of detail. A couple of them even have speaking roles. I had to let the main character's classmates talk, and two of the ones I didn't intend to have much of a role are all of a sudden messing with my plot. Luckily they aren't tearing it to pieces yet, but they are definitely weaving themselves into it.

Which gives me four main characters, one adult side character, an antagonist, a teacher, four classmates, and a classmate's soon-to-be significant other. Twelve characters. So far.

Oh, good grief- I have LOTS of characters. For starters, there's my MC's family. They're a bunch of vampire slayers, and slayer families tend to have lots of kids to perpetuate the family business, lol.

Scarlett Tynte (my MC)
Her Mom, Dad, and Grandpa
Her older brothers (from oldest to youngest):
Sterling
Indigo
Jasper
Noire

Then there are the people that she goes to school with:

"Normal" Humans:
Christian Forrest (hot friend who has a crush on her, but he's a total idiot)
Allison Tanner (sarcastic, somewhat bitchy best friend)
Molly Bradford (irritating, obsessive-compulsive roommate)
Amy Foster (theatre teacher)
Dr. Brandon Raye (principle)

She also attends school with her evil, vampiric great-aunt, aka Heather Ridge. Heather has this cult of vampire-wannabes who basically worship her:

Jack Kennan (eventual love-interest of Scarlett- he has a crush on her because she looks like Heather, but is nicer)
Isabel Tanner
Cedric Rossi
Helen Black

On the outline that I wrote up, there's also this random character named Harrison Brown, but I don't remember what his purpose is, as well as an unnamed evil vampire lord dude.

So it looks like I'm up to 20 or so characters. *headdesk*

Let's see.

Four main characters, one minor.

Oh... and tons of nameless extras.

Everything's about to change, though, so more characters shall come to end the day... or maybe even save it! xD

So right now baisically I have 5 MC's (who each have an alternate idenity as both normal and superheros), 11 minor recurring characters (including 3 of them who have alternate identies), 2 villians, and 18 extras right now. And that doesn't even include the couple of scenes where there is a massive crowd that has to be drawn. Also that's just issue one. There are another 4 villians that aren't shown until issue 2, and more extras too.

So a total of 36 characters just for issue 1 (not counting the crowds or the hero id's).

Am I crazy or is an artist gonna want to kill me for this?

If your artist wants to kill you, than I would be in the same boat- my list is a few posts down. I have like 20 definate characters so far, and that doesn't even count all the random students at the school. ^_^

My first issue features six characters and my second issue will introduce 5-10 more.

However, many of the characters will be killed off and I'm going to be back down to 4-5 by the end of it.

Plus tons of zombies. But who doesn't like to draw zombies?

I only have 2 main characters... and both of them are dead.

So far there have been two other minor characters that help Charon learn French and get a job in the Sorbonne in Paris.

So a grand total of... 4.

I honestly think it's better to have a small number of characters, though.

Unless you're doing a zombie-thing (or similar) because then you get to kill loads of them off!

Yeah most of mine are supporting cast members at least. So for the most part they are only around for a page or so here and there. Tho the villians will be getting a bit more time esp in a couple of issues. Cause what the heroes and everyone thinks is going on is just surface. I have a big plot twist planned for 1/2 through the I think 10-14 part series. So somewhere between issue 5 and 7 gonna have it come out that there is actually another villian who is really pulling all the strings. May even do a whole issue from the villians POVs.

I have a zillion (eleven) characters right now. Of course, five of them have (and probably will) only appear in flashbacks, and three of them are just random classmates of my FMC whom I need simply to populate the scenes. Yeah, so far, I've only introduced my female main character, a past-antagonist (it makes sense in context), and a friend of hers who I might have to make into an antagonist as well. I've still got at least four important characters to introduce, one of whom is the male main character, and there will probably be even more than that-- not even counting bit characters (who I can promise a ton of). It's probably a good thing I'm making a list...

A main character, two teammates, two murder victims, one antagonist, and one who I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her yet.

So.. seven. But that's only for what I'll be writing during Screnzy. I'm planning on continuing this for a while, and making it an ongoing series. This is just the beginning.

Let's see... when I started, I had three characters. Then I wanted to add another antagonist (who hasn't done much antagonizing yet, I must say), so it was four until a very minor character started to have more and more lines so that now she's pretty much a second lead. So, five major characters and there there's one or two supporting characters running around. Well, I say running around, I really mean making out with my main character. He turned into kind of a player without consulting me at all.