AFAWN - Character Development
All right, so you’ve made up a character, you’ve given him or her some basic personality traits. Now it’s time to give them life and make them interesting. So the first step to doing that is to give them a flaw or multiple flaws. The reality is that no one wants to read about someone who’s perfect. They want to read about someone they can relate to, someone who’s human in nature. And so giving your characters flaws is a simple way to do that. Some examples could be someone who’s too trusting or trusts no one, someone who is selfish, someone who is greedy, etc. And if you really want to engage the reader, it helps to connect that flaw to their backstory. This will explain how they became the way they are.
Now once you’ve established their flaw, the next thing to keep in mind is that you want to stay consistent with your characters. This doesn’t mean that your characters can’t change (see next paragraph), but you don’t want them to speak or act in a way that will make the reader scratch their head and say “Wait a minute, why did they do that?” This will take the reader out of the story. This means if you want your character to change throughout the story or series, you either need to make small gradual changes OR you can put in a significant or traumatizing event that causes a larger change. But from scene to scene, you will more or less want to maintain a level of consistency with your characters.
Now, for the last part, if you want to have interesting characters, they need to be dynamic, they need to change. You may have heard of a character arc which is a path of change for a character to follow. Some examples might be the bad guy who turns good, or the good guy who betrays his friends. But remember that on the small scale, you want the character shifts to be consistent and logical. So if someone is betraying his friends, make sure the reason is damn good, otherwise this will be viewed as a plot device (a character change introduced only to further the plot). Here are two examples of character arcs, one good, one bad.
Great example - Walter White in Breaking Bad. The change in this character is so well done I struggle to think of a better example. Walter goes from one extreme to the other over the course of the series, making gradual changes throughout, but also having moments of truth where his decision pushes him further toward darkness. Another reason this is an excellent example is because even at the end when he’s his most evil, you still get glimpses of his original early self.
Bad example - Daenerys Targaryen in the final season of Game of Thrones. For most of the series, her character development is pretty solid. She is a strict ruler who seeks to free the innocents from the tyranny of others. She does not tolerate betrayal or underhandedness. So she is formidable but also fair. In the final battle at King’s Landing, after her enemies have surrounded… Daenerys “loses it” and flies her dragon around the city murdering countless civilians. This is a MAJOR departure from the way they had built her character for seven seasons. And despite the hints dropped about “Targaryen’s going mad,” they did not do this character justice. Going mad is not a switch that gets flipped. This was lazy writing where they simply skipped the transition of her supposed descent into madness.