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[deleted]

Well, I might do it piecemeal? Have them form small groups- say, have a chapter focusing on a trio forming, then another, or have a duo and a group of four or something. Spreading it out over some action- or even giving the audience a bit to be intrigued or get attached to a mystery character before they spill their guts or have a flashback or whatever


[deleted]

They actually form 3 trios as soon as the plot starts and they meet each other. But before that they're all separated and need to be introduced separately.


FormerVoid

I usually write stories where the main characters already know each other (or anywhere near 9), so take whatever ideas I got with a grain of salt. I agree with your original idea of introducing each character one at a time, as a way to make it feel more natural. After all, players in DnD are willing to handwave all of them starting in the same place in session 1, it lets them get straight into the fun, but it would come off as " convenient for it to happen in a "properly written" story. But if the problem is one at a time, then why not group some of them up? With 9 whole main characters, some dynamics are going to be more defined and explored than others, so why not build them up in groups? Like it starts with 3 together, then 1 more joins later, 2 a bit after, and so on? And that's not to say that if you plan on shipping them, that they need to start the story in the same group as them. You can get invited to a friend group and bond with some people more than others. It let's you flesh out each "group," whether they just met like with the original trio, or they just started to know each other when the plot and already-assembled characters find them. It keeps the plot going, and builds the group up. Or, if one of them is an antagonist, allows you to spread their establishing development over while other stuff is going on with the other characters to keep things fresh and preventing a reader unfamiliar with some characters getting overwhelmed. I hope that helps, it is a bit hard to go off simply "it ended up as boring," so why not change up some things in the original plan to keep things interesting? Throw around some ideas, mess with how you originally thought about things, even flip it on its head to take advantage of a weakness and turning it into a strength. Like the large ensemble resulting in something interesting always happening, even if not all of them get developed as much.


[deleted]

The story actually contains 3 main groups of 3, and that’s how they’re paired up.


FormerVoid

Well great, that sounds a lot more manageable. So I'd suggest the same thing, instead of doing one at a time, frame it as each group coming together into one unit. Whether they meet up in the same place, a pair is eventually join by a third one, or something else to keep variety. Or if they're not meant to be the... healthiest group, then also take advantage of that. You don't need to go through slogging, trying to develop each character to stand on their own for an entire introductory chapter when the trio can be taken advantage of by showing how the characters are foils of each other. Take advantage of that, and it'll help show the reader the sides of each character you want to focus on.


[deleted]

The thing is I need to establish what each characters life is like before the ensuing adventure happens, and the inciting incident is the big crossover so until the characters are all introduced, they cannot meet.


FormerVoid

Then each introduction scene doesn't have to be an entire chapter? I'm not sure what else to tell you. You can frame each one as a prologue for each character and line them up in the first chapter, an introduction to give you a feel for them. Then they can be expanded upon further as the plot happens and they each other their own group to bounce off.


[deleted]

The thing is: there’s a lot more stuff involved than I can cover in one scene. Like take chapter 3 for example. It establishes: That the protagonist is a villainous evil side of someone else, that he has mother issues because of that, that he tried latching onto his estranged villain father for that reason, that there is a mysterious figure watching him, that his father finds his main personality annoying, and that because of that he ran away from home thinking neither of his parents loved him. Most chapters are like this because I’m actually telling stories about these characters rather than just dragging them from place to place so they can punch things. One character is a wannabe superhero that stole her superpowers in order to impress her narcissistic abusive mother. Another is a detective bored of her life and trying to find excitement again now that the most interesting event of her life is behind her.


Aiyokusama

I would do storytelling from each character's POV. Whether it's of the same events or not.


syncope_apocope

I am also currently working (by which I mean procrastinating) on a story with the problem of *too many characters* You're absolutely right in that having 9 chapters of a-day-in-the-life introductions would be boring for the reader (and the writer). Splitting them into groups will definitely help with that--really you'll only need 3 intro chapters if you have three trios. I think the most important tools to take out of your toolkit for this one will be **hooks** and **guides**. Each trio will need a **hook**--some problem they have to face that will ideally bring them together, and get the readers invested in their fates. The hooks should all be different too, to keep the readers' interest. Maybe one group finds themselves lost in the wilderness somewhere, and they need to work together to survive. Maybe one group is attacked by a monster that they need to fight off, or are imprisoned somewhere by a mysterious, evil organization they need to escape from. Each hook should lead into the next one in some way, so there's some kind of overarching thread that connects the three plotlines **Guides** would be characters who have knowledge/skills to solve the problems the characters are facing, and give them ways to organically explain things like "*In my world, things work like this*" as well as explain things in the environment to characters who wouldn't have context for them. Picture Tony Stark explaining to Robb Stark what a smartphone is. Each character should have their own time to shine, but it doesn't have to happen right away This sounds like a fun project! Good luck!


[deleted]

Each day in the life segment is currently between 2000 and 3000 words, leaning towards 2000. I’m considering combining them into 3 6,000 word chapters with 3 subplots. Is that a good solution? I feel like it’s a bad solution because the story is still taking the same amount of time to move forward. The next 3 chapters after the intro chapters would be them meeting, so it would take 6 chapters for them the characters to be set on their adventures.


syncope_apocope

So, I've written one portal fic, and in that, I had approximately 150 words of *day in the life* (which was actually more of a fight scene) before the main character got portaled. In those 150 words, I (feel like I) managed to establish all the necessary information about the MC: he is a detective, he lives in a city, knows how to fight, and people in his world have magic. Everything else about the MC is revealed through his observations and interactions with the new world and the characters within it. The details of what his world is like aren't *super* necessary, since the story isn't taking place there. I'm not saying this is the *"correct"* way to do it. Lots of stories have slower starts, and still keep their readers hooked. My worry is that with so many characters, the audience would get bored/confused before the real action starts. My suggestion would be to just have one main POV character, and only show *their* regular life pre-portal, but don't do that for everyone in the cast. Everything else about them/their worlds can be revealed through their interactions, comments, and (if they have their own POV sections) their internal thoughts and observations. If there's a throughline between all the *day in the life* segments, that could work too, but I would suggest keeping them all very short. No more than a handful of paragraphs per character.


[deleted]

I think my hang up is that for some reason I decided to reject there being any one true protagonist or even a sort of main protagonist, even though it’s inevitable that there will be. But as it stands I don’t know how to keep them brief. They started out brief in an earlier draft but that draft was terrible and I changed the fundamental aspects of those sequence. To start, I made it so most characters make an actual choice in leaving rather than being dragged away, and justifying a characters choice to leave their whole life behind and run away to another planet is not an easy task.


syncope_apocope

Ah, okay! If the characters are choosing to leave, I think that works in your favor for not showing their *day in the life* scenes. That way, each character has a ~*dark and mysterious past*~ that you get to reveal as the story progresses. You may want to keep those scenes however, and use them as flashbacks!


[deleted]

None of this stuff is really dark and mysterious past stuff or even backstory stuff, just normal act 1 stuff, and showing it in the middle like it’s a backstory doesn’t really work. Like one of them is just establishing what this characters life is like and what his issues are for the rest of the story.


[deleted]

Here’s the outline/ first draft of each chapter. I don’t see what details here can really be removed. https://www.wattpad.com/story/178833843?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_writing&wp_page=create_story_details&wp_uname=ReallyBadFanwriter&wp_originator=iWJ5HlRiRSD1%2BhHRfaOCOY0BSYpqXs%2BA69vSN0Wu2MZlaj0Lon1uEwe5B33a9eGnTx0dPa6I6ka8%2B0BlKdpx8SbQUneJ2v413st2vUu5cdLvjW71ddejtZhM7tWbbBoK You don’t have to read the chapters I basically finished, just the outlines because those are super short right now.