Too much character?

[rines]

I have problems with this one sometimes, can a character have too much personality or presence? Is it possible to make a character with so much character that they outshine others, or is it just that the other characters don't have enough character to keep up?

[Devon Drake]

If your protagonist is also your narrator, they can easily outshine everyone else. But whether your protagonist is the narrator or not doesn't change the basic challenge at hand, which is keeping all of your characters in balance with each other. I believe all the important characters deserve their own character "moments" in the story. If you don't give a character such a moment, then you're telling the reader that said character is unimportant. So balance it out by doling out the right amount of revealing moments to all the characters you want the reader to pay attention to. If one character hogs all the moments, how important can the rest of the cast be?

[rines]

Awesome, I'll keep that in mind when looking over my characters. Thanks

[FNAWrite]

"If you don't give a character such a moment, then you're telling the reader that said character is unimportant"

This seems to me to be silly. If characters do not have their own moment in a book, they would not be important, so the author must "give a character such a moment".

If important characters did not have their own moments to begin with , how did you know they were important in the first place? Why does the author have to write additional material about this important character?

This goes to my disagreement with those who say they create characters first. A character cannot be important in the story without being important in the story. Sounds like double-talk, but to me no less so than suggesting that an important character must be given an important part.

It's like: "He's a fascinating character; Special Forces trained astrophysicist married to neurotic daughter of former US President. Best character I ever created. I want to use him."

Yeah, but your book is about a family of Paleolithic nomads...

-- 27 Jan 2014, 16:36 --

As for the OP. let me answer your question with another that I hopes answers you:

Are all people alike? Alright a second - do you know anyone with a powerful personality?

[rines]

Thank you, I'll keep that thought-provoking answer in mind. I've just been looking at few of my characters lately and wondering if it takes away from the other characters to have some very developed and others more background-since some of them seem to completely go unnoticed. But thanks again, I will definitely use this when looking at the question of too much character in future engagements with my characters.