I know what you mean. the more characters you have the more personalities you have to keep track of. I used to play an RPG called CyberPunk. I thought it was great especially because of the character creation. there is a section for the character's backstory. For certain number of years things happened to the character. These instances shape the character's personality. In other games there is alignment and the character can do nothing outside the parameters of alignment, lest they become something else. In CyberPunk that's not so. they have loves, hatreds, addictions and psychosis. One year they win the lottery, the next they're in jail for petty theft. Perhaps all that time playing that game then has helped me now in my writings.

Now you sit there saying "ok Snowfall that's cool and all, but what's your real point?" Well that's kind of actually my point. Characters have personalities. They will do or say certain things in certain ways for very specific reasons. If you change one of the characters for another then the whole dynamic does change. They will see a situation and interpret it differently and then respond in a different manner than the original. one word can change a paragraph. One changed paragraph can change an entire line of daily events. And so on and so on. you get the idea now. That's why I think the two most critical parts of story writing are 1) concept and 2) character development. work both of those as much as you can before you write the words "Chapter 1". So yeah I can really relate to Shiraz' problem. For those that don't, maybe I helped you. Maybe I helped others. If I didn't, not much I can say about it. *hugs for Shiraz*