8
Feb
Well, okay. Maybe not all. Every story needs some supporting characters, but if (like me) you find yourself having ten dozen of them… well.
Give 'em the chop.
I've recently cut a supporting character out of a book. I didn't want to. I like him. My readers liked him.
He had to go. He didn't contribute anything. Originally he was the reason for discovery, he was a quirky kid who made the best of a bad situation.
Did I mention I really liked him?
Yeah.
I cut him dead, instead. Chopped him right out of the story and saved about 2k words, an entire chapter, and (hopefully) speeded up the pace.
So is poor Jack going to be dead and forgotten? Did I give him a tombstone? No.
He's safe. Safe in a file, alive and well in another story where he plays more of an integral part. He is part of the plot there, where in this story he was an afterthought, a filler.
Sometimes it is necessary to cut a character out of a story, even if it's a great character.
It's about word economy and flow. It's about continuance. It's about being ruthless.
Sometimes you just have to kill them.
What did I do to get around the plot part Jack played?
I had another character in there already (yes, another one), so he got some of Jack's plot parts instead. It still works.
There was a part where I had to rejig a lot of the story to make it fit, to have a different way of creating the conflict Jack had created, but again — all it took was a little reworking and it fitted nicely. (Okay, not as nicely as I'd have liked, but I'm working on it.)
Ask yourself if you need a character who only shows up occasionally with some pithy lines, but who essentially doesn't add anything to the story.
Do you really need them?
Can someone else come up with those lines?
Do they advance the plot?
Can someone else (already existing) advance the plot instead?
If you can cut them out, don't bury them. Save everything in a file, because that character won't just go away. (If it was a well developed character, they shouldn't, anyway.) He/She might fit as a more integral character in another story, play a bigger, more pivotal role.
Save their background, their traits and weaknesses. Save everything you can, preserve story/plot parts as intact as you are able, because you never know when you might go back to it.
Whether you keep a physical file for those chopped characters, or a digital one — keep it safe.
Just because he's not part of this story, doesn't mean your effort in creating him/her was wasted.
Like Arnie — he'll be back. 
So don't sweat it. If you need to cut words in a novel, take a good hard look at the supporting cast and cut with a hatchet, rather than lose a word here and there while you preserve a character that doesn't add anything to the story.
