One of the things every writer needs are characters that readers can identify with and believe in.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of making heroes too good to be true, and villains totally evil. People are not like that. We are all a mixture of good and bad. A loving family man can be a nightmare boss at work. A murderer may look after his aged mother, and so on.
The fact is that everyone behaves differently according to who they are with. Imagine you are at an interview. That might affect the way you dressed, or spoke, or even the way you sat in a chair.
Maybe you have a temper at work, and like to let everyone know who’s boss, but at home you never raise your voice.
These differences can be used to make your fictional characters more believable. It might help if you think about their emotions. Who do they love? Who do they hate? Is there anyone or anything that scares them? Fear is one emotion that we all feel in pretty much the same way, and that makes it ideal for use in fiction.
Say your villain is six feet two in his socks, and thinks nothing of using violence when committing his crimes, but he is scared of spiders or mice. That fear immediately makes him more human and as a result, more interesting to the reader.
Another vital thing to remember is that people change as they learn and grow from their experiences or mistakes. Each new relationship we make affects us in some way. Think about yourself for a moment. Did becoming a boss, or wife or husband, a father or a mother, change you in any way? The answer is almost certainly yes.
Your characters need to change too, otherwise the reader may grow bored with them.
