Creating a character can be pretty complex. There is a lot that can and often does go into it and sometimes you just don’t know where to start. You want a character who stands out and is memorable without becoming an improbable being who is boring to read. Your character has to be someone who not only you like but also your readers find interesting and want to know about. And that includes more than just your main character.
Of course if your main character is uninteresting, you probably won’t have too many people interested in finding out what happens to them, unless of course the whole point is to show case how they react to extraordinary situations outside their comfort zone.
You might find that creating interesting characters is proving difficult, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are a lot of ways that you can create characters of substance to share with your readers in your stories. It’s totally possible to make interesting characters without giving yourself a headache trying to keep them from becoming special snowflakes that annoy everyone. You want people to be interested in learning more about your character, not less.
One thing you can do is go to a place where a lot of people gather such as a mall or a busy park and to observe people. You will find that people show traits you might want to use for your characters that will help you learn how to write those characters to act more like humans and less like robots . . . unless of course they are robots in which case, disregard.
Another thing you might find useful is to interview your characters or have other people interview them and answer the questions as your character. What kind of questions would you like to ask someone else’s character to learn more about them?
