Creating characters is an essential part of writing fiction.
If you want to have characters that seem real to your readers-characters they can relate to, a certain amount of effort must go into their personalities.
Of course the best source of realism is yourself.
It isn't a matter of simply placing yourself inside the story.
That would be extremely boring to you and probably to your readers as well.
Take one aspect of yourself-your interest in gardens, your ability to play the guitar, your love for Chinese food-and amplify it.
Give this facet of your personality to your character as a side-characteristic.
A standard-issue detective will have a much more realistic presence if one of these personal quirks becomes part of the detective's own preferences.
An intense version of the quirk helps to draw your character in stark lines-making that person much more effective and memorable.
Using other people is an option.
It might be someone you know well or someone you glimpse as they enter a building.
Both have been sources of famous characters.
If you use someone you know, it is often recommended you don't use the whole person.
Make a composite of two or three different people.
This way your character ends up being unique.
You also avoid any awkward encounters if your friends recognize themselves in your story.
Pulling from the personalities that surround you can make your characters far more real.
Give your characters legitimate motivations.
Real people do things for real reasons.
If your protagonist suddenly wants to ignore all warnings and enter a house, give your protagonist a real reason.
Don't resort to "I just know that this is what I need to do.
" Many professional and successful writers resort to this, but nevertheless it is an indication of only one thing-bad writing.
Don't use convenient bursts of unexplained intuition to move your characters through your story.
Give them a real reason to go into that house.
One of the best things you can do for you characters to make them more real is to not make them perfectly good or perfectly bad.
Real people usually have a little of both.
Good people have shortcomings.
Bad people have admirable traits.
If your characters are purely one or the other, they have a tendency to be caricatures or even worse-melodramatic.
Inevitably, they will be less interesting if they do not have conflicting facets.
You want characters that seem real.
If your readers are going to relate to your protagonist, you have to research yourself and the people around you.
But also give your characters genuine motivation and genuine flaws.
All of these things can bring your characters to life.
These are what can make your readers feel like they are reading about real people.