One of a writer's many goals and responsibilities is to make their characters seem real. In my earlier writing days creating characters to look, act, and feel real was a giant challenge. It took me quite a few mess-up, backspaces, and crumpled up works in the garbage until it finally hit me. It is really quite simple: To make characters seem life-like, look at life itself!
Here are five ways that might help with development:
1. Everybody's got a story.
In real life, every single person has their own story. Think about it. Every single person. What's more, is everyone's story is different. Do the same with your characters, even if their back story is never revealed to the readers. If you make up an entire background for them, the way the character acts and talks will be different than if you just made a character whose life started only when the story started.
2. If you're writing from the perspective of a character of the opposite gender, get advice.
Say you are a female writer, and you need to write dialogue or perspective from a male character; but since you are a girl, you don't know how a guy thinks, or would respond to certain situations. Talk to a male friend, or show him what you have written. Most likely, he'll know if it looks or sounds like something that a guy would actually say or do.
3. Add proper effects to traumatic situations
This is a huge pit that many writers fall into. If a character goes through something traumatic, chances are, they won't come out of it the same way that they were before. It is unrealistic for someone to go through something life-changing, and come out and continue living as they always have.
4. Everybody has limits
This piggybacks on #3. Everybody has limits to everything. Emotional, physical, mental, and so on. This is something very important to look into before writing a scene. For instance, you couldn't have a character jump into 15 degree water, and swim around for ten minutes and then get out and be fine. Okay, so that was pushing it a little, but you get the idea.
5. No such thing as a perfect relationship
When writing about any type of relationship, there will always be problems! There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, whether it is a family relationship, romantic, or friendship. Show the conflicts in different relationships, and how they work through them. This also works great for character development throughout your story.
I hope that these five points will help with some of your writing!
-The Bandit
