Burning is tempting, but right now I'm trying to do a lot more outlining and note-taking about each of these characters and precisely what path they'll follow. Give me a day or two to figure out if they'll all fit, or if some of 'em will be going away...

Spoke too soon. The elf is redundant in terms of plot arc and role in the story. Looks like he's going bye-bye.

Like a lot of things, it depends :-)

The first one I'm planning to cut is an elf character. He and the human princess both start out with a strong distrust and distaste for goblins, but as they observe Jig and eventually fight beside him, they both start to respect the goblins for their (odd) strengths and cleverness. They eventually stand up for Jig and the goblins against the king.

In other words, they both have pretty much the same character arc through the book. The princess is more important, because of her ties to book one and the human king, and the elf doesn't bring much by himself. He gives Jig a sword and allows me to make fun of elves, but I can do that without the character. So he's the first one to go.

But for those characters who stay, I try to go with the theory that if they're important enough to appear in the book, they're important enough to be a fully fleshed character, with motivations and goals that they either achieve or fail.

One of my editor's comments on Goblin Hero was that my head villain, who doesn't appear until the very end and is only in the book for a few pages, was pretty cardboard. She was right. The villain needed her own conflicts and struggles, even for those few pages.

Is this making sense? Generally the nameless characters aren't around long enough for a reader to care about, so they tend to be a bit more two-dimensional ... if only because you don't see them enough to see more than a glimpse of their character.

And I'm definitely babbling now, so I'll stop.