User blog comment:Magical Toddler/Unsolicited Advice on Characters!/@comment-24101790-20170826051910

Seems like some helpful advice, I will add this though: While it is VERY important to flesh out your characters, you should also be restrictive with the information that's being relayed. Avoid situations where you come off as expository (either in conversations or in the introduction). While knowing a character's dreams, aspirations, and fears makes for a fleshed out character, that information should be pertinent to the story and not read like a bio. I know Tot wasn't implying anything like that, but it's a habit I have noticed quite a bit in stories (generally Proxy, CPC, and original monster stories) recently. Avoid situations like this:

"My name is Jeff (meme). I am 15. I live in Proxy-ville. I wear a black hoodie and I have black fingernails that are as dark as my soul. I hate bullies and I love My Chemical Romance. I'm scared of water because I once fell into a pool. I was saved by Slender- ... ETC."

In other words, try to avoid a Bio/Introduction like this (this is a story I recently deleted off the blogs):

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if this information helps you understand the character or if it distracts you from the plot. Does knowing that Jeff loves Asking Alexandria and hates Justin Beiber enhance the story or provide a deeper understanding of their goal in the plot? Some minutia can make a character more believable, but too much extraneous detail tends to derail the plot. Revealing that information piecemeal is also important as putting it upfront tends to come off as an info dump. If it's sprinkled throughout the story and ties in to events the protagonist is experiencing, it generally is more effective.

A final bit I'd recommend is to realize that the character doesn't have to be a moral paragon or everyman. Sometimes giving perspective on a character that is extremely different can draw a reader in. Literature/films like: Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Maniac, May, as well as others are effective at making a character relatable/empathetic (or at least help you to see the world from a drastically different perspective) despite the fact that all of those characters do horrible things in the plot they're featured in. In the end, there are many approaches here, and I generally find that the more time is spent thinking on how someone would react to a certain situation helps to create a more fleshed out character. There's something a teacher used to tell me that resonates a bit after reading this: a character can make a story engaging through their actions/reactions, a plot cannot make a character interesting through its development.