My current longfic all feature quite sprawling character casts, which I spend a lot of time developing, but nevertheless all my stories have a central character. The central character for my three longfic are as follows:
*Ascent: Ghirahim
*Cut Strings: Grievous
*Heart of Shadow: Palpatine
I find this way of structuring stories helps me make them cohesive while still allowing me plenty of room to develop other characters. All these stories are multi-POV and feature multiple important characters and a world that operates independent of the central character, but the 'camera focus' of the story spends a lot of time on that central character.
*Ascent: Ghirahim
*Cut Strings: Grievous
*Heart of Shadow: Palpatine
I find this way of structuring stories helps me make them cohesive while still allowing me plenty of room to develop other characters. All these stories are multi-POV and feature multiple important characters and a world that operates independent of the central character, but the 'camera focus' of the story spends a lot of time on that central character.