One of the things I've discovered while writing is the need to be stingy in introducing new characters, because such characters can be difficult to keep track of and can be incredibly disrupting. Yes, the real world is full of people, and those people don't always play by the rules you'd like them to, but I like to control my story a bit more so it doesn't get out of sorts.
With this in mind, keeping track of characters and fitting the into a story is incredibly difficult. Sometimes they make more of an impact on the audience than you think they did(Gary in Salvation Day is a great example of that...a few readers asked what happened to a person meant to be a throwaway character). Sometimes they make more of an impact on you as the author than you thought they would(Ethan in Akeldama did that for me...he was meant as a tag-along, and he ended up having a tremendous influence on the novel).
This means judiciousness is called for. New authors tend to introduce minor characters like they're nothing more than part of the setting, only to find themselves in a pickle when that character ends up doing more than they thought they would(I'm working through this right now with a character in my newest work). We have to think through introductions in much more detail, or they'll tie us in knots. Or maybe they won't and we'll just never mention the character again, only to get yelled at by readers who wonder where they went.
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