Honestly, how much of an idiot am I right now?

I've done this. My protagonist is part of a large family and familial bonds are important to her. She doesn't interact with every member of her family (absent from the story) but I have notes on each. It helps me visualize her role in the family, as well as how she reacts to certain people due to her relationship with another. I even have notes on her ex-boyfriend so I can tell how she will relate to her new love interest.

If it feels right, do it.

I don't think you're being an idiot.

I mean giving other characters names and history gives your story depth. Instead of having nameless and faceless strangers buzzing around your protagonist and minor characters, you have real people and people you care about. You're not wasting energy by mentioning them -- you're giving your characters a populated world.

Stick with it. These characters obviously serve some purpose or they wouldn't be in your novel. Even if it is just that they flesh out your scenes and give your characters more depth it's fine. These extra characters often help readers see how the protagonist acts when not around friends -- good character development.

No, you aren't. If you're free-writing the story and decide you want to develop one of the characters, but you've only mentioned a name and have no backstory of any kind on them, how will it be for you? Not very good. I like Rowling's choice of making notes for every single name, and even names that were never mentioned. Card's method makes me feel detached from the story, and makes it clear to me that it's simply that - a story. Rowling's method lets you get lost in the (excuse the upcoming pun) magic of it all.

There is nothing new under the sun. Even Shakespeare was riffin' off older authors. As long as you make it yours, it's OK.

Unless you really don't want to do the work. In that case, just write the fun parts. (-: Better hobby than a lot of things you could do with your time!

Well, producing names, descriptions and so on for sixty characters, many of whom you may not use, or only mention briefly could be a way to avoid getting down to writing the actual story. Some writers make tea, do the washing and run the vacuum cleaner over the carpets some do elaborate world-building, or plan out their story arc...all of this could be useful, could be an avoidance strategy.

It's a good practice to do it and useful for you for planning and the like, but I would not suggest telling the reader every single character's name unless they appear more than once or are important to the story. It usually bores the reader and makes them forget the more important stuff in an attempt to remember all of the names.

Dude, relax.

Are you having fun writing? Come on, get in there and make things happen. Raise up armies and bring down empires. Destroy lives and dreams and build heroes and villains and be the god of what you create and know that nobody can do what you do.

Seriously, I think you know what good writing is made of and from your question, I think you're like me where you might be overthinking things. That's why I say relax and write.

100% idiot

With verisimilitude & bruteforcing I think you'll be OK.

dead man walking