What an exciting topic and thank you for inviting me…I am addicted to both coffee and writing so I should fit right in.
To say that creating real characters is the most important thing in a story would be an understatement. Books are about people and we need them to be real, even if they are not. Your characters drive the story and in the end, are the people who will make readers love your book.
What do I mean by that? Sara Maple is the lead in my newest novel "Maple Express." She became a real person in my mind long before I put her on the page. I started by giving her a complete backstory. I wrote up a list of her family, her likes, and dislikes, where she lived, her grades in school and so on. I left nothing to chance. By the time I wrote her into my story, Sara had become a young girl that both appealed to me and repulsed me. She loves her friends but treats them terrible when she doesn't get her own way. She can be sweet when she wants to be but acts like a spoiled brat and is a bully at times. Yet, she shows her compassion by working at the Alzheimer clinic as a volunteer. In the end, she has a mother and father, a best friend, and a boy she has a crush on, just like every other girl. As well, Sara suffers with the same insecurities we all face in life.
In Alan Watts 90 Day Novel Alan discusses how important it is to sit down and write extensively about your character. Your character needs a full life. This is necessary to bring your character into the real world because readers are good at identifying a fake character.
"No one would do that," or "no one would act like that," is a sure sign something went wrong during your character development. I once wrote a semi-biographical novel about things that actually happened to me while I was growing up. A publisher reviewed my book and sent a nice letter to me explaining that the writing was fine but that no real character would do that. My wife and I had a great chuckle over that. I agree my younger years were a little bizarre but the things I wrote about did actually happen.