What advice would you have with a story that doesn’t necessarily have one set main character, but rather a group of important characters that influence the world around them? Is one set main character necessary?
Hi, thank you for the question!
Managing Multiple Main Characters
One main character is definitely not necessary. However, it depends how you define a main character. Are main characters just characters that have their own POV and arc? Or are they the point of the story telling? How significant does their impact on the world need to be?
Typically, even stories with multiple main characters (characters with POV and their own major arc), still has one main arc to follow that the others work with.
To make this point clearer, imagine a story with two main characters--one is a ballerina trying to land the main role of the show. The other is an astrophysicist discovering new things about our universe. At the end of the story, the ballerina lands the role, and the astrophysicist lands their promotion. One might wonder why these stories couldn't have each been their own novel, right?
So imagine instead, a ballerina is trying to land their dream role, and an astrophysicist is discovering new things about the universe. The theme for the upcoming ballet is space, so the ballerina goes to the astrophysicist for inspiration--leading to a blending of discovery, dance and science that leads the ballerina to landing the role and the physicist to opening their perspective on the universe.
Two main characters, but one 'story' that draws them together.
This is the most important part about writing multiple MCs. Readers typically expect--at some point--for the arcs of the MCs to intersect and work together. That's to say, if you have two characters who are both going through their own individual arcs completely separate from each other (such as the ballerina and physicist), at some point, they will have to interact or impact each other, and typically finish the story together, strengthened by their connection.
In cases of more than two main characters, it gets a bit more difficult. The more arcs and MCs your story has, the longer and more complicated it becomes.
To help with this, you can do a few things:
1. Have several arcs work together
Just like with two MCs, you can combine several of your MCs to going through arcs together. They may have the same objective (maybe for different reasons/motivations/goals, but the same 'end-game'), or otherwise they have to help each other or bounce off each other to get to their goal.
Romantic subplots are a really easy example of this. Two characters have an arc that both contribute to the same thing: the relationship.
2. Make some arcs 'weigh' more than others
The project I'm working on right now has five major characters who all have arcs and POV chapters. Character A and B are the protagonists, but character A is the 'more main' character out of the two of them. Then characters C, D, and E still have arcs, but theirs are much smaller than A and B. They still take the entirety of the story to fulfill their arc, but require less chapters and scenes to do it.
Thus, the breakdown in amount of time spent with characters is easy:
A - 40%, B - 30%, C - 15%, D - 10%, E - 5%
It's a bit less common to find a story with a lot of main characters that are all equal in their main character-ness. They may all impact the world and the story, but they aren't necessarily equal in doing so.
3. If all your characters are equal, they probably all have the same objective
Now, characters all having the same objective doesn't mean they're all going through the same arc. Objective may just be 'save the world from evil', but character A wants to save it for their family, character B wants to save it to have some control over it, character C wants to save it to promote their podcast, etc. etc. Their goals (or what they want out of achieving the objective) will be different, but they can band together to accomplish the same objective.
This keeps your astrophysicist and your ballerina together. Your characters' stories have meaning to each other, and a point to being put in the same novel.
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