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Step 1
Research your target audience. Know the demographics of the people you are writing for. Meet their needs and expectations. Children will not be interested in high-strung, overextended attorneys. Chances are that elderly readers will not want to read about a hip-hop artist who made it big in the music biz. Target your audience and write for them.
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Step 2
Research the specific characters you are writing about. Dig deep into that writer’s mind of yours and learn if your high-strung, overextended attorney worked in an ice cream store while in law school. Figure out if that hip-hop artist you created came from a middle class home in the burbs.
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Step 3
Pay attention to the smallest details. Perhaps one of your characters stuttered as a child. Maybe another character’s favorite foods are tacos and peanut butter. Write a complete dossier about each of your characters. You can even keep a journal as your character. Learn their fears, dreams and history. Those are the things that make them tick. Readers want to know these things. Remember that Scarlet O'Hara would "think about it tomorrow" and James Bond's martini was always "shaken, not stirred."
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Step 4
Make each character unique. Even if you are writing about four kindergarten teachers, they should be different. One way to do this is by their speech patterns. One can talk fast and tend to ramble. Another will barely say a word. Perhaps one has a strong Southern accent. Physical differences do not, necessarily, make the characters different. Give the readers differences in your characters they can sink their teeth into and can compare to themselves and those in their lives.
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Step 5
Give each of your characters at least one redeeming quality. Even that evil, scheming hit man who killed the family of five has to have a redeeming quality. Maybe he has a family he must protect or feed. Remember, just like the rest of us, there must be something about each of characters that is likable. If possible, do not wait until the end to bring up that quality. Even the bad guy or girl needs to have someone rooting for them.
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Step 6
Make their actions fit their personalities. Your characters have their specific personalities because of their pasts. They do certain things because of their personalities. Keep this in mind as you write them. There are times when your characters will act out of character, do something unexpected or strange. You must give them a reason to do this. If you leave out that reason or keep that reason a secret for too long, your reader might lose interest because the character is no longer believable.
