It's time to meet... Character Development!

Bad character development is detrimental to a story. You take away personality and where is the flavor of the text? Nowhere.

The personalities that are created for you story, however, must not be too built upon. You try to thrust a life upon them and everything will fall apart. As time will teach you, characters tend to grow and change as the piece moves. They have a life of their own. This doesn't mean that you can't help shape them however. And there are several important things to do for this.

Choose a point of view, a distinct personality sphere to start from: the jock, the geek, the baddie, etc., etc. Go from there. What makes them unique? Do flowers scare them? Do they have a deep, dark secret they can never tell anyone? Is there a secret crush?

Don't forget to know what your characters look like. Develop a mental picture in your mind. And it's not just the physical appearance that you need know, it's everything about the character. Behavior, weaknesses, a quick history...

Remember, the characters help build the story. How could it move from one point to the next if there were no characters? So add some spice to the journey. Why have a bland dish, when you could have the most extraordinary work, full of mouthwatering flavor? Give those characters some personality and dish it out; just not too much, or you'll stuff the readers full to where they can't take anymore. ;)

Happy writing!
~Mira