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Meredith Rankin's avatar

You may have covered this in a previous chapter that I missed, and I apologize! But how many suspects would be sufficient for a mystery? For my traditional whodunnits (with thriller elements), I have multiple suspects, five who are obvious suspects, along with a few more characters that avid mystery readers might see as suspicious, simply because they exist in the world of the novel. (You know, the too-good-to-be-true, fly under the radar types. When I read, I wonder about those characters, even if nothing really points to them. And yes, those characters need to be in the novel because they'd be there in real life. For example, the child victim's guardian, the nosy/gossipy neighbor, ectera.) Since my protagonist is a journalist, I also have to add her boss and colleague, who both influence the plot, and the lead detective. When all these are totalled up, I have about forty characters.

But all my beta readers have said that it was a lot of names to keep straight. I agree. I did my best to give them different personalities, among other things, but I can still imagine readers could potentially be confused. I can't do much to delete any of the characters in this novel, and the beta readers agreed that it didn't diminish their enjoyment of the book.

But I'm working on a sequel, and I'd like to figure out in the first draft phase if there's a good way to tell if I have too many suspects.

Sorry for the long question. I'm a long-winded person! Thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us. I'm a pantser but I've still found your planning tools and insights helpful.

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