Mandy Eve-Barnett's Blog for Readers & Writers

Sacrificial – definition: pertaining to sacrifice, or short-term loss for longer term gain

Once in a while we come across a character, who for whatever reason needs to be sacrificed. This is a hard choice because we have invested time and effort into their development. This link explains some of the reasons.

http://www.annastan.com/2010/03/cutting-characters-you-love/

Again this link views the number of characters we populate our story with. Can we have too many?

http://marlamadison.blogspot.ca/2013/04/0-false-18-pt-18-pt-0-0-false-false.html

Have you struggled with cutting a character?

How did you choose?

What factors did you take into account?

My novel, The Twesome Loop, has quite an array of characters, mainly because it is dealing with two time periods. There are four main characters, which ‘overlap’ in each era. I had to apply similar characteristics to each of them, so my readers would come to realize who was who in each era

I detailed their personality traits in similar ways, taking into account the differences expected in each culture. It was the obnoxious male character that became the easiest to recognise!