Building a character is harder than making a friend (which is not a small statement for an introvert to make). This is, of course, if you don’t make a habit of analyzing everything about your friends and their every action, which would be both presumptuous and rude, at the very least.
But that is exactly what you need to do to your characters. You need to understand their backstory, their goals, their weaknesses and their strengths. You need to know how and why they would react to varying circumstances. You need to know where they came from, where they are and where they’re going. Knowing the circumstances of their life allows you to place them in your story realistically.
This means going beyond the surface details and diving into the psychology of the person, not with calculation and judgment, but with kindness, compassion and understanding. The point is to create your character as a whole person on the page. This doesn’t mean you will include everything in the story, but knowing the details will help define how your characters move about the setting and how they interact with everyone else within that world.
It’s best to work toward accepting the different characters for who they are, no matter whether villain or hero, side kick or minor character. Characters need to be individuals with multiple traits, backstory, motivation, biases and all the other things that make humans full people. The moment you assign superficial traits to a character you fail as a writer. And every character is important. If you have characters who serve no purpose, remove them. All of your characters, even those in the background, should serve the story in some capacity.
Remember that people are contradictory. They believe things that sometimes don’t make sense or include flawed thinking. They make mistakes and take wrong turns. They love and hate. Regret and remember. Learn and forget. They are never the same. Even two characters who share a lot in common will be different just as two teenaged girls who are cheerleaders will be different from each other. They have to be because people are. Even when we join a group, we remain apart. We come to it with our own ideas and reasons. We want our own version of success from our efforts. But rarely is there a single motivation for the members of a group. And there is never a single member profile. Groups are varied behind the cause that binds them, which is why group mentality is such a fascinating dynamic.
The point is that people are complex. Characters need to be complex too. They need to be flawed, illogical (at times), and emotional. They need to be closely drawn—not broadly. There needs to be many parts to the whole—not a single trait that defines them. We are not what we wear, what we do, what skin we’re in. We are so beyond that.
People grow and evolve. Their opinions and choices change. Even their backstory changes as their perspective changes. Haven’t you ever been in a situation where something bothered you until you understood it? My uncle once told me a story about being in a college class where someone who sat behind him was constantly make clicking noises. It drove him nuts, that incessant clicking that never ended, until he learned it was from the braille machine being used by a blind student at the back of the class. It never bothered him again. Why? Because he understood the context.
Character without context is like defining someone by a single trait, which is superficial and a disservice to the individual. Context is what defines us. It’s the culmination of all of the factors that formed us. It’s why we react the way we do and the motivation for our actions, the trigger to our rage.
In the end, like in life, you will either like your individual characters or you won’t. They’re like people in that. Once you get to know them, beyond the basic traits you’ve assigned, you will react with them as you would with anyone. That’s okay. It’s natural. I feel that way about people too. It doesn’t matter whether someone is famous or a farmer, a scientist or a dropout, privileged or poor—I either like the person or I don’t. The individual traits or stereotypes never reveal the true person. You have to dig deeper than that to find the core of the person. You do that by listening to their backstory and trying to understand who they were then and who they are now. You have to listen and approach characters with kindness. (People too.)
As writers we have to explore all types of people. We have to get to know them and understand them beyond the color of their skin, the god they worship, the lifestyle they choose. And we have to do a whole lot better than tolerate our differences. As far as I’m concerned, the verb “to tolerate,” and all of its conjugations and forms, is the worst word in the English language, especially when used in conjunction with people. We shouldn’t work toward “enduring the existence of” anyone or thing. That is too low a bar. People and characters deserve far more than that. We need to understand or attempt to understand. Acceptance would be nice too.