So, how does one ensure that the characters in any piece of fiction will enrich the story? How can we make sure that the characters are ones that the reader will believe and care about? The most important thing is -- always think of your characters as human. Unless you are dealing in sci-fi, fantasy, or personifying inanimate objects, your characters are real people. They are living breathing beings with feelings and personalities just like ours. If we think about ourselves and the people around us, we realize that we are more than just nerds, queens, career persons, mothers, fathers, snobs, and happy-go-luckies. There are reasons we become who we are, and that is what a lot of writers neglect to take into consideration when creating characters.
Take for instance Huck Finn in Mark Twain's, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Why is he considered by the townsfolk to be uncivilized and troublesome? Because, his father was a deadbeat alcoholic who could not take care of him the way other families in their town took care of their children. (Think about what made Huck's father the way he was.) But, when we as readers really get to know Huck, we find that he thinks more about important things than any other character in the novel. We also find that he has faults that are his own. Huck is neither all good or bad. He is likable and real to us. Despite his downfalls, we stick with him as a reader because we know his background and we have seen all sides of his character.
If a character is a villian or generally bad, is it enough that they be just that? For example, say I had a father who rapes his daughter as a character in a novel. I portray him as ill-tempered in the piece, but I neglect to give him any motive or prior experiences to lead up to the rape. Is the ill-temperedness enough to establish him as an incestuously violent man? I can think of many parents who are ill-tempered with their spouses and children, but they would never lay a hand on them in that way. So, no, the character would not be believable. But, how would it change if I established him as a victim of incest, or someone who has a violent and sexually frustrated past. It may make the rape seem more within the characrter's ablility then. In the same way, a character cannot be totally good or without faults.
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