Creating characters in a novel is actually describing each of your characters appearance, likes as well as dislikes, type of personality, and providing history of your character.
Type of personality refers to your character being dumb, intelligent, in a pensive mood, observant, sensitive, serious, moron, always happy, reclusive, and outgoing or does not care for anything at all.
Reveal your characters personality in bits and pieces in each section often through action description and dialogue.
This is the most tricky but interesting part.
The best way to create novel characters is to use real people you observed along your life and develop the rest of the description in your mind.
Writing believable characters is simply a matter of writing character driven novels.
The reader's attention center on the main character or other characters to which they can easily understand, feel, connect, and at the same time empathize.
The readers' empathy or emotions play a crucial role to the success of your novel.
This goes with the cause and effect theory that we can describe as phenomenon and reaction.
You give the phenomenon and let the characters react in their own unique ways base on their personalities.
The novel author must have full awareness and understanding of his own emotional makeup.
It would be difficult to write about a characters thoughts and feelings about separation, divorce, relationships, or friendships if the author does not have first hand witnessing or personal accounts of the situations involved.
You are right! You may have guessed that the best way to build characters and their life experiences is to witness them your own.
Popular movie authors actually spend time experiencing the life experience they give to their protagonist.
Create and define your characters from the onset of your novel to avoid considerable rewriting later on.
Make an outline of your plot and put side comments about the character role in that particular section.
This way it is faster and easier to edit and redefine your character's personality.
When you create novel characters, it would be advisable to create believable, memorable characters that may fulfill dramatic functions later.
Not all of your characters may assume the memorable character criteria but this is a requirement for the main character.
Impressions are lasting and creating memorable character is a lovely technique to create one.
Let the reader's impressions linger in their minds making it memorable for the rest of their lives.
The list for a memorable character can go on to as long as defining physical traits, stating clothing preferences, habitual mannerisms, hairstyles, speech habits, or anything that could make him stand apart from the rest of the characters in the novel.