I have a large cast of dozens and dozens of characters and I'm looking for any suggestions about how to balance them out, more specifically I'm looking for a way to properly pace a story with loads and loads of characters. Any thoughts?

968174 You may wish to start your education here. Let me know if it was helpful. That is if you ever get back out.

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My suggestion is to introduce the characters slowly. Maybe one or two at a time.

Do not introduce a new character EVERY CHAPTER, unless the situation calls for it, that would be called "Rushing through the story"

Might work out if your chapters are about 6000+ words per.
This is only my suggestion though.

968174 Don't have them all on-stage at once, unless you're re-doing the Apple family reunion, just bigger.

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NOOO!! What have you done! Someone linked me to that exact page two days ago, and I only just came out of it. I have to admit it was helpful, though, as I did manage to make, for the most part and varying levels of mileage for any given trope, a Magnificent Seven Samurai for my own main group (Mane 6 + OC), giving each one a specific role.

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Try not to work with dozens of characters at once. It's okay to have a large cast, but don't expect to be able to have them all contributing in the same scene. Even within the show, they rarely have more than four or five active speakers in a scene, or if there are more, they switch in and out of focus. Even when they have the Mane 6 all together, they won't all contribute.

I'm going to have the same problem of having lots and lots of peeps in my own Welcome to Demongate Academy, but most of the time, each scene will only focus on a select few characters interacting.

If you are going to have a large cast you need to make some characters more important then others. You shouldn't have more then 4 or 5 main characters. The rest can be background or secondary characters. If you do make them all main characters have them rotate so they aren't all present at once in every scene.

Consider why you have such a big main cast and what roles your cast members perform and remember that not everybody has to be in every scene just like every episode of the show doesn't always have all the characters in it

Break them into groups. You'll end up running multiple plot lines, and you'll have to do a lot of scene breaks - it will take work to keep that from coming off as choppy.

Good luck. Most stories with a big cast suck because you wind up forgetting who the hell everyone is. Not to say you can't do it right.

My advice: Don't.
Reason behind it is, you're not good enough. Nobody on this site is good enough to pull that off unless they're a published author. Maximum amount of characters you should have at any one time (alive and active) is around four. Any more and it becomes exceedingly difficult to care about any one of them.

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My big project in progress has the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Lyra, Zecora, Trixie, a bat pony Night Guard character, the Mane Six, Scootaloo's mom, Luna, Celestia, three 'arc villains' - at least two of which have a second in command, and various bit characters and mooks. The only way this story is remotely possible is 40-45 chapters, 250-350k words, and split into three parts with their own story arcs. The only actual main characters are the three CMCs and Lyra, while the rest go in a sort of descending order of recurrence.

It entirely depends on your cast calculus. If those dozens and dozens of characters are main characters, well... you're writing My Little Game of Thrones.

968174 Harry Turtledove has a lot of characters in his books, may want to go read those (they are also great, too!)

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Ouch. Tough one. But really, the relevant things have already been said.

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This is the unfortunate truth here, and indeed the crux of the problem.

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And really, this is the only particular solution.

Well, that and making sure that each character is very different from the others. It'd probably be extremely helpful if they had particular descriptive pony names, rather than nonsense ones, or proper human-sounding names.

It'd be much easier to remember that, say, Light Step is the sneaky one than Starshimmer, or Rose, or whatever.

Don't have more on the page or in the chapter than you can handle... Trust me Twilight's family reunion in my latest chapter, including Spike, was not easy. I almost wiped it out and just had Celestia's guards drop her off in ponyville.

Plz don't put more on the page than you can control

I've written plenty of stories with a huge cast and it's tough to manage, but SO rewarding when you figure out how to make it work, so my only advice is to rotate and give focus.

Personally, I think if they all impact the story in some way, shape, or form in a pretty damn big way, then yeah, you better introduce'em all. Doesn't matter HOW (YMMV on that). Just do it. And Keep doing it. Remind the reader of their traits and such whenever it's been a while since they had any spotlight.

For me, I only mentioned every character in a brief prologue, but when the plot kicks into high gear, THAT'S when the characters start to take spotlight. You want your readers to actually remember your peeps. Doesn't always work, but they'll remember if they impact the story somehow. And no, don't do it wrong.

Also, when you work with a big cast, They won't ever be EQUALLY important. That's too much. Some has to be more important than the others. What matters is how the secondary works with the primary to affect plot or whatever. If that makes sense.

See, best way to write is to separate your chapters from the plot-related chapters, to the Character development related chapters. And with enough experience, you can KIIIIIINDA mix the two up a bit. Just be careful how you go about it.

You wouldn't wanna confuse your readers, and sometimes, they don't wanna tell ya they're confused. =\

(YMMV on that one... the current fic I'm writing doesn't get much feedback.)

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I have a rather large cast of OCs set aside in my mind (I have developed an entire country in my main story that I have yet to describe) and to keep them all sorted, I have written down their basic descriptions in a notebook. After I figure out what they look like and what they might ACT like, I flesh them out until I feel satisfied, or until I run into a contradiction between them and another OC and I need to figure out a way around it.

You wouldn't believe how helpful that is.