Character development?? Need help.

So I write stories but what I've found recently that is missing from all of my stories is the characters personalities. Not to be cocky, I find myself quite good at coming up with intricate plots that make for good books and short stories but without characters the audience can connect to, you can see my dilemma. Perhaps I get too distracted by the plot but quite frankly I don't think I know how to develop characters at all. And most definitely not well enough to make my reader feel the emotions they are feeling or have any kind of sympathy for my characters. Well tips are welcome!! please help! :/

You're confusing a number of separate issues in this post.

(1) Your characters have no personalities.

This is a character creation problem. When you create a character, personality is among the most, if not the most, important aspects. Start with a few key words (eg. stubborn, outgoing), but bear in mind:

Personality is affected by background. Consider whether their upbringing influenced their beliefs, whether they rejected their parents' values, etc.

Personality changes, often due to events.

Personality is contradictory. A person can be bubbly and outgoing as long as everything is happy-clappy cheerful, but shut down at the first sign of emotional conflict.

Personality causes story conflict. Give your characters personalities that affect the story directly.

Passive characters are boring.

Perfect characters are boring.

(2) The audience can't connect to them/feel their emotions/have sympathy for them.

Audiences are fickle. There's no formula for audience engagement. But it might help if the character is:

Active. Making decisions, taking action and driving the plot.

Facing a terrifying antagonist and/or regularly in scary going-to-die situations. Readers love an underdog.

Imperfect. Allowed to be weak, scared, surprised or downright wrong on occasion.

Not a carbon copy of every other protagonist in your genre. I hate generic heroes, who are always good and brave at the right moment, and who have tiny little flaws that don't count for anything, and who never do anything wrong.

Earning their powers. If the character is born super awesome, with amazing spectacular powers of win, that's ... kind of dull. So they lucked out. Big whoop. Having to earn amazing spectacular powers of win, by being smart and brave and persistent, is sympathetic.

(3) You don't know how to develop characters.

Character development is about change. Decisions and choices are a big, obvious way of showing change - a character who chooses differently than they would usually have done, based on their experiences during the story, has changed.

Let's say your protagonist is called ... Roland of Gilead. And what conflict shall we give Roland ... he has to decide whether to save a boy or let him drop. And Roland lets him die. And later on, Roland has the opportunity to either reaffirm his decision by letting the boy die again, or redeem himself by saving the boy.

Your characters are now developing. Because the person they are now, taking decisions now, is different from who they were then.

Just my two cents.

Pick up the book Dynamic Characters by Nancy Kress. It really gives you a good idea on how to create characters and make them relatable.

Now. You say you're good at making plots. After you said that, I'm a bit curious as to why you're having a hard time with characters. All that your characters' personalities are is how they react to events. Say the MC's mom dies. What do they do? They can show their grief outwardly, resist all change after that, get really hyper, shut up and take it, or are so busy with keeping the house together they don't have much time to show how much pain they're in, but inside, they're crying buckets.

The above, deciding how the MC reacts to certain situations, is step one. Step two, then, is explaining the situation so the reader understands the MC. Say the MC resists all change after her mom dies. She's tied memories of her mom into every single item and situation in her life at the time of her mother's death. Going past the obvious of the MC disliking any girlfriends her dad brings home since they're not her mom, go deeper. Say she has an ancient stuffed toy that her mom gave her forever ago, or she associates very closely with her mom. This toy, since she's resisting change, now becomes one of her most treasured possessions.

Another option for resisting change is staying in a certain school, program or class because her mom loved it/ put a lot of value on this certain school/program/class. Does the MC grow to hate it, but doesn't want to let go because of her mom's memory?

Do keep in mind that for any emotional situation to work, you need to ground it in logic. Even if the emotion is very understandable, such as the MC missing her mom, you need to show why the MC is reacting this way. For her resisting change, she'd need to count on outside things to remind her of her mom. Have her hold the toy and remember the times her mom cuddled her to make her feel better. Have her go to the class and remember all the compliments her mom gave her once she'd finished. Maybe have her cry when her mom isn't there to say/do those things, but instead of pushing away the class/toy, have her pull closer to them so she can loose herself in the memory.

The above character, once her story is finished, would be really fleshed out and so long as her emotions are well explained (this does not mean infodumping how she's feeling. This means grounding how she's currently feeling in logic and her backstory) then she'd be a very fleshed-out character, and relatable for the most part. I say "most part" because not everybody is going to relate to every character. But if you work on making the character's situation and feelings understandable, then you'll get most of your readers emotionally involved. Which, hard as it may be to swallow, is a best-case scenario.

Hope this helps. ^^ PM me or post here if you have any questions!

~Rosey

I agree with Rosey a Character is created through their interactions. I especially like developing a characters personality by creating what I call a pot. This is when multiple characters sit in one place and talk. In a book this section would be a high point of conflict as personalities collide. I suggest doing this before you start writing. Choose one random topic and place your characters in a room where they must discuss it. (This won't go into your book) It's just a way of seeing how your characters act and what views that have. You'll be surprised how much you'll learn.

thank you all for your help! and now that i look at what i said its more that my characters did have personalities i just didn't know how to express them properly but your words were helpful. thanks again!!