Articles·People, not labels
Characters
A name and a description produce flat writing. A character needs a life that was already underway before your chapter began.
Do not merely think of a name, attach a description, and put words in the new person’s mouth. That produces flat, drab writing: characters who exist to deliver your plot and then stand against the wall. As a writer you should always be on the lookout for interesting people in real life. Use them for inspiration — their rhythms, their vanities, the way they hold a glass when they are lying. If you end up at a party full of strangers with whom you have nothing in common, do not be disappointed. Be thankful. You have been handed eccentricities and speech patterns you could not have invented while staring at a screen.
Good writing stands above the rest when every person on the page has a life, a vocabulary and an agenda of their own. Even a minor character has been living until the moment they appear. They do not want to abandon that life and simply assist the protagonist. Give them an ambition, a need, a small loyalty that is often in conflict with what the main character wants. Life is like that. Fiction in every genre benefits from people who are rounded and particular, including the ones who only have half a page.
Show, don’t tell
Show, don’t tell. Repeat it when you sit down. It means you must not hand the reader a label and expect them to feel a person. Use the drama, and a few chosen details, and let them interpret. If a character likes to rebel against authority, do not announce the rebellion. Show the bad attitude, the can kicked down the street, the rule broken in a way that costs something. If a character has a crush, do not say so. Show the body language, the breath, the double entendre that goes slightly too far.
Showing instead of telling is a mark of elegant, mature writing. It is one of the first signs an editor uses to separate a publishable manuscript from an amateur one. Learn it until it is boring to hear, and then use it anyway.