I find its something of a balancing act. In order to create a 'real' character, I need to know everything that I can about the character. From "do they prefer Pepsi or Coke" down to "are they a visual learner or tactile learner." And everything in between. The reason for this is that I have to be consistent for the character not to strain credibility... though, its important to note that a character can be terrified of heights but still go up on the roof to save the cat to impress a potential romantic partner. You just have to let them collapse in spasms afterward, when no one will see. It's also important not just to pick details arbitrarily... no matter what combination of nature and nurture you personally think is what we're made of, everyone makes choices and has likes/dislikes based on those things that have happened previously. I might be naturally inclined to like dogs over cats, but if I got mauled by one as a child; I'm probably not going to keep one as a pet. Even if (on the street), I'm capable of stopping and petting one while talking to its owner. At the same time, if I like dogs more than cats; that stigma associated with dogs isn't necessarily going to make me choose a cat as a pet. Knowing your character to that degree... keeps you from writing things that the character would never do. Which keeps your reader from asking 'why?' and getting pulled out of the story emotionally.

At the same time, there's a level of ambiguity necessary in writing any protagonist. The reason for this is that for your reader to put themself into the story with your character; there has to be 'room' in the character for the reader to fit. This is how you get real depth of sympathy... when the reader engages with the story as if your characters are embodiments of them. To accomplish this.... you have to leave room for the reader to fill in the blanks. How do you do that when you spend all that time making sure you know every detail about the character? That's easy... just because you KNOW the details and use them to keep you on track... doesn't mean you have to put them into the story.

And that's how I try to work. Right on that line between brilliance and madness. :)

At first in my stories I wrote about an abused and unwillingly feminized protagonist and got some some good reaction. But when I wrote about an inadvertently transitioned man who became a really hot babe, that could get really pissed and rip her enemies hearts out and had a tiny pistol that had the power of a tank cannon and was sassy too. The readers liked her very much more. Hmmmmm.

.... since my main character (Julina) is a young adult and is still very much learning.....

This has enabled me to make her make mistakes. And so I can screw things up, but blame it on HER

*grin grin grin*

I sort of agree with a lot of stuff above.
I see Julina, I see her family through HER eyes - sometimes I hve to stop her being too good, though. It is only through mistakes that anyone really learns.

I think having spent a lifetime reading books has helped me.
When I was young, growing up in the hard times after WW2, there was a series of books that grabbed me. It is fashionable to demean, put down, make snide remarks at things that (have) become (became) institutions, but the Biggles books awakned a lifelong interest in geography, maps, flying, and so on. From these books I have an excellent basis of where countries are, what perceptions most people have about these countries and so on.

The Biggles books always had the 'goody' triumph over adversity - many were updated versions of earlier books (first posted as WW1 storylines, then revamped into WW2 storylines). There were 101 Biggles books in all. And there was a female character in parallel - "Worrals". There were 11 books in that series.

So I leant an enormous amount by reading stories from a young age.

I have just had to dump my collection of hard and soft back books --- advertised for over 6 months and no takers, no-one wants real books any more. So over 3000 books have been tossed into the "old paper" collection at the local dump.

But to get back to characters, reading all these books has given me an idea of what works.

One really chilling novel I read once was chilling because the story was written from that character's point of view, and her actions, appalling as they were, were presented as being normal, logical behaviour. It was just the logic circuits weren't quite as others are.

I write as I believe that Julina would act, trying always to remember that a) she's young, b) she's from a very sheltered community and c) she is in a what we would consider a backwards society some 2 or 3 hundred years older, when seen from our point of view.

Julina's #001 is actually a complete story about someone else entirely and I tried to imagine myself being that character. I think it worked.

Okies, enough rambling from me, I need to get back to polishing the next Julina episode....

My advice would be to "not try too hard" --- write it first, leave it a little while, then go back and reread it. Your gut-instinct will tell you more than anything else.

TTFN

J

That's a Dolly Parton quote: allegedly,from the movie A Walk To Remember.

Myself, having written some interesting characters for nearly twenty years now(at least that's what folks tell me :) ), I still tend to allow them to discover themselves by accident. They know as much about their world as they need to; which is often surprisingly limited because we're not all world travelers(which I have been.) or grand historians(not so grand, but I get by). However, as the author, I have to know more than that, so each person (or even nonperson)can increase in experience at any given moment in the larger story. Sometimes they refuse to learn, because that's their nature, but there will be consequences; always.

But understand that this is a learning process for the entire course of your narrative. Like with my Kolchak;Nylon Stalker stories, where the heroine is not stupid(relatively few of the characters are, because it's more interesting when smart folks screw up.), but because her mentor is holding back crucial bits of information, often her conclusions are wrong.

The other aspect of this particular series is that Kolchak was originally an old reporter and a professional cynic who: once his soul transferred into a young woman's body, was already on a mission. His/her actions were therefore determined by the parameters set by that quest: in this case living the life of Karen Klein exactly as she would have. So the fun part of this was deciding whether Carl/Karen's occasional deviations were off-point or predestined.

But this is just one means, where you might make another choice with your own creations. My only real advise is don't overwork character points, or labor so hard on the how or why of each action they take. Otherwise they'll be stick figures, not fully functioning beings. Trust that you can give them enough info to get started exploring their world, and an end for them to reach, then just have fun.