Authors' Helpline discussion

Think of the word character. Character means, according to my Oxford Dictionary, ‘qualities making a person or thing what he or it is’.
Try to keep this in mind while creating characters for your story. If you do not give your characters qualities to make them into something, then they will be nothing, they will be words on a page only. They will not be anything that your reader will care about.
Of course, characters should keep to their character. Unless a character has serious mental or emotional problems, he or she should not be caring, vindictive, outgoing and a loner. That is just going to confuse the reader.
In the newest book I have just such a character, but yes, she has some serious issues that come out in her back-story, and she is anything but mentally stable.
I don’t think a writer should decide, before writing the story, what the specific characteristics of every character should be, for the simple reason that most characters reveal themselves as the story progresses. Then they can be reinforced during the second writing.
Of course a character can, and should, progress through a story. A woman who starts out as shy and lonely might by the end of the book be outgoing with a ton of friends. An innocent everyday kind of guy might turn out to be the killer who takes out half the population of earth, that is character development.
Characters should have little characteristics, such as sucking on their lips when worried, or smoking, or drinking, or patting their hair down every few seconds. They should be human (well, if they are human, because dogs can also be characters!). If you want to learn how to create such characteristics, treat yourself to a cup of coffee.
Grab your notebook and pen, and head off to the coffee shop. Order your favourite Latte and then simply sit and watch the other patrons in the cafe. Write down the little nuances you can see. That fat old lady who keeps on pulling her dress away from where it is sticking against her body, write her down. Ditto the four year old girl who is fidgety while mommy tries to talk to some strange man. Write down that strange man as well, because he seems nervous, he keeps on having to wipe sweat from his forehead.
These are real people, and using what they do will take you a long way to creating real people in your books. I’m not saying to use the actual people you saw in the cafe, but to create your own characters based on their little nuances.
Make your characters peoples that your readers can relate to, and they will keep your book alive.

Thank you for this, I truly believe characters are one of the most important things in books, if not the most important. I have read books with much potential and the characters ruined it.

Will do, thanks Leon. I shall head to a coffee shop as soon as possible.