When it comes to crafting your story, one of the first things you need to do is develop your character. That does make sense, being that without a character you have not story. So, what is a character?

A character is any person, persona, identity, or entity that exists in a work of art. The process of conveying information about characters in fiction is called characterization. A character can be entirely fictional or based on real, historical entities. Characters may be human, supernatural, mythical, divine, animal, or personifications of an abstraction.

It is necessary to repeat that developing your story’s characters is critical to the success of what you are writing. If you have a weak or wishy-washy character, readers won’t like them or will find your story unbelievable. This can be detrimental to the success of your book.
Characters need to feel real, credible and readers must be convinced of who they are and where they come from. There is nothing like a good story where characters are easy to fall in love with; even the characters that readers love to hate make a good story great.

The keys to creating believable characters are commonality, originality, dichotomy, desire, and peculiarity. If you take care in giving your characters life and breath you will be closer to creating a story that someone will read and characters that they will believe and identify with.
Developing a character can be easy, as long as you have a clear vision on what you want to achieve. Establish who your characters are, what they do in life, their personalities, and their responsibilities. In the beginning, you don’t need to fully understand who they are, but at least get a good sense of them.

When you are writing your story, be sure not to leave out developing your character. In doing so, you miss the opportunity to catch the readers attention. The people in your book should resonate with people and their lives in some way. Be sure to create the character with an image that readers will remember.