Introducing emotion

That's a pretty good question, one I've been asking myself for a while. I recently read the works of one of my friends and was shocked at how emotionally vested I had become in one of his characters when he unexpectedly killed off that character!

Unfortunately, there's no simple answer (that I've heard so far, anyway). I've found, however, that stoic characters who occasionally succumb to the pain they're facing are easier to sympathize with than those that somehow push through it all. Having them be unappreciated but letting them press on is also a good method, but not always effective. It all depends on how you handle the situations, I guess.

Have you tried writing out a summary of the background/history of the characters? If you populate their past with a fleshed out set of experiences, circumstances, etc., the main things that made the characters who they are today are clear in your mind as you write. That might make it easier to come up with and then write the emotional aspect of the characters. This could also help with the actions/reactions taken by the characters.

I always say a character needs 3 things to be REAL: a past, goals, and fears. If you figure those out, the character is well on his or her way to being human.

This may not sound like it's on topic, but I promise, it is.

When making up my characters, I always try to have at least one thing that is like me in them - even something small like being afraid of spiders. Just something that I can relate to. if you as the writer can relate to a character, it's easier to write them and climb into their head which I think is essential to understanding how they'll react to anything you throw at them as their sadistic god.

Once I have a character I can relate to, it's easier to write that character if they're like you, but don't make them EXACTLY like you, so that you can torture them properly. The key, I've found to making both a good plotline and a good main character is being MEAN to them. I mean REALLY mean. Anything that can go wrong DOES, and spectacularly. Sure, the main character will get through it somehow, They'll have to, or they'd not have a story written about them, but their trials and emotional trauma are what I find interesting in a character.

Also, a character that breezes through everything is boring. A character that falls to their knees crying every time something bad happens is boring too. so endowing your main character with a sense of purpose - a personal interest in seeing the plotline through also helps. So, you can have your MC swept into the action by accident, but give them a good reason to stick with it afterwards. I take Final Fantasy 7 as an example - in the game, there is a moment where the entire player-party runs off to go find their reasons for fighting the bad guy and NONE of them were actually fighting simply to save the world. One wanted to make the world a better place for his adopted daughter, one wanted to save it for his hometown, one wanted to save it so she could have the party's money afterwards - hard to spend cash when the world's destroyed, ne? So in short, a character with a personal stake in the plot is more interesting than one that is just going along becuase they can.

third, like one of your other repliers said - make a past for your MC. but don't tell everyone everything about that character's past. Let it come out naturally in conversations within the story. The MC could react badly to a situation and later say something offhand (flippant, trying to play down the situation) that makes it sound like something really awful happened to him/her before and they really don't want to talk about it. Sometimes, the implication of nasty things is even better than actually describing them. (like horror films. The ones where you actually SEE the whole monster are more funny than ones where you only see suggestions of them)

If you need help creating characters and giving them personalities/backgrounds, I made a character creation tutorial that you're welcome to use.
http://demonicfangirl.livejournal.com/42052.html#cutid1

These are just things I've picked up from reading and writing, so I hope they help. ^_^

No matter what genre you're writing, I'd recommend Limyaael's Fantasy Rants here: http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=limyaael&keyword=Limy.... She has a lot of entries about character creation and how to make your characters interesting and human, which can be applied to almost any genre, they've helped me a great deal with making compelling characters. :)

Unfortunately, there really isn't any trick to it. It just comes with practice, lots and lots of practice. Not to mention observation. Pay attention to people around you and try to think about why they might believe/say/do the things they do.

Another thing you might try is to think back to the last really big fight you had with someone. Now try to narrate the fight in the first person, but from their perspective. Really think about what might be going through their head, how they might feel, why they might think as they do.

When coming up with a character, try to give them personalities. An easy way to do this is to think of a word (like "greed" or "love"). Then make a list of all the positive and negative things that word might imply. For example, love has lots of positives - loyalty, affection, tenderness, etc... but it also has negatives such as rashness or obsession. Use that word as the central theme of your character, keeping in mind both positives and negatives. Whenever you write a scene with that character, think of all the ways that word might apply (both positive and negative).

Also, don't be afraid to make your character think differently from you. For example, if your character's central theme is love and he has to choose between living a long life without her, or both committing suicide together, don't be afraid to pull a Romeo - even if you would rather he lived.

You can also set goals for your characters. These goals don't necessarily have to be the same as the "quest" of the story. For example, your character might just want a good night's sleep, but the quest is to save the world from some evil warlock. Make sure you let your character make his own decisions. You may want him to go after the warlock, but if he just wants to go to bed, you are going to have to come up with something really big to make him go on the quest.

Flaws are one of my favorite things about characters. In my opinion, if someone seems real then you sympathize with them on at least some level. Make them a little chubby, or have a gap between their teeth. I like it when people fail once in a while, too, especially when it's something entirely their fault. Quirks are good too, like if they can't stand the word "moist."

Thanks everyone for the comments. This is something I've struggled with in writing for a long time, and you've brought up some great points. I will definitely give them a go and check out those resources, as well.

Other people have mentioned giving a character flaws, and I'd like to expand on that, because it's not just coming up with a list of "negative traits." For one thing, the decision as to what constitutes negativity is subjective (many would argue "chubby" as not being negative, ditto "stubborn"). Secondly, readers don't care about characters. Characters are two-dimensional archetypes and/or literary devices. Rather readers care about people, individuals with thoughts, feelings, histories, goals, dreams, fears, quirks, and foibles. And while "relating to a character" generally means being able to recognize parts of yourself in their actions and motivations, that simply helps you identify with a character. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be more sympathetic towards them, or that you'll be better able to empathize with them vs another character that's less like you.

As a reader, I'm not really all that interested in finding parts of myself in the characters I'm reading about. Such comparisons might happen later, when I've finished the story, if I'm in an introspective mood, but when I'm reading I'm too invested in the world the author created (metaphorically speaking) to care about how much I personally have in common with any of the characters. To extrapolate that, getting readers to care about the people you're writing about (and by that I mean care about what happens to them in relation to the outcome of the story, they might love the character and want them to succeed or hate the character and want them to die, but they still care about what happens to them) is less about "identifying" on such a personal level and more along the lines of finding Truth in that characters actions, dialog, and whatever is revealed of their motivations. We don't need to recognize ourselves in the characters so long as we recognize the character as Human (or the relevant equivalent). That's a classification beyond the bland descriptors of what role the character plays in the narrative ("hero," "villain," "ingénue," "mentor," etc), i.e. beyond the characterization of them.

I've found that the trick to turning characters into real people lies in the Little Details--things that reveal something about the character that aren't central (or even relevant) to the plot. Real people bake, are addicted to caffeine, battle claustrophobia, are allergic to dogs, prefer wine to beer, hate baseball, love Chinese Food, refuse to date smokers, sing in the shower--the list goes on. Find these things about your characters, especially the ones that have interesting stories behind them, keep them in mind as you're writing, and reveal them in incidental snapshots as the prose allows. Having a character take the stairs up to his doctor's office instead of the elevator because he's afraid of enclosed spaces doesn't do a thing about the fact his doctor's going to tell him he has cancer, but the readers might care a little bit more, because the character is a bit more real to them.

Gah. Moist makes me cringe.

I'd advise against just giving characters cosmetic faults, though; there's a danger the character will become that characteristic, and also a tendency to say "No, they're not perfect even though they're brave and loyal and everyone loves them, they have buck teeth!" Give them foolhardy stubbornness or make them a little too whiny or horribly jealous of their best friend, along with not being physically perfect.

I'd agree on most of what you said, but I'd caution against letting a character become just a list of quirks. Creating someone who is claustrophobic and likes raspberry tea and is thinks bugs are cute is only some of what you need to create a character. I'd disagree that characters are all archetypes, at least in good writing; characterization is creating a person, not an archetype, and while quirks are all well and good, they don't give you an idea of a person's character. I would also disagree that characterization is telling what the character's role in the story is; good writing doesn't fall back on "this is the hero so he's heroic, this is the mentor so he's old and wise", etc. Characterization is showing us what a character does in different situations, how he interacts with people. Is he too easygoing or stubborn to a fault? Does she make up lies on the spot easily, or does she stick her foot in her mouth and end up blurting out things she shouldn't? A good character needs a balance of personality traits that make sense and quirks that don't necessarily.