Read about it. Read good books with good characters. Pay attention to how big characters role to story line, plot, theme, dialog, drive/pace... is. Watch you tube tutorials, lectures, interviews... about it. Read and listen to what authors tell. But read and listen also what people in movie- and tv-world tell about it. Meet people. Listen to them. Specially meet people that are not your peers or social group. Think about it. Do yourself your own character paper. Put everything important there. Use it when you create characters. You don't need to fill everything, but you must think about it all. When you read, don't read like if it was important to remember what you read. It is not. It is important to be able to use all knowledge as a tool. It is deeper. It takes more time. Get some social psychological knowledge and understanding. You can use it. Get some knowledge and understanding about how social animals live. Their rules, conventions, communication... There you have your primitive human world. Sex, competitiveness, dominance hierarchies, alliances... If somewhere is consensus about how we behave and why, you know they are wrong. Truth is too painful. It shows as what we don't wanna admit. That is why truth about us and consensus are never in the same room. But... Excuses, self-deception and self-delution are always with consensus. And you can be sure, that truth seekers are not welcomed to that room. And... You can pick good minor characters from that room.
Do you daydream? Play out scenes with the character in it. When you're lying in bed before you fall asleep, make up scenes with that character in it. Try five or six (or fifty or sixty) different options in your head until you settle on one that feels right. Let your characters interact (in your head) and see how they can play off each other. Add more characters to your mental scenes and catch all the interactions and affections and resentments. You can do a lot of "writing" work when you're nowhere near a keyboard. If you're not a great daydreamer, maybe you need to do all this stuff by typing it up, but if you can get into the daydreaming habit I think it'll save you a hell of a lot of time!
I’m a beginning writer. In what I have written so far I start character development with dialogue and I start with someone I know. I believe that characters are developed through dialogue. How does this person talk? What words do they use? Do they use simple or complex sentences? What do they talk about? I would say start with writing about yourself and people you know.
To me, a "dynamic" character needs to be able to work out the problems the story throws at them and become stronger through that (unless if your story is a tragedy, of course). Most of my main characters aren't the most confident in the beginning, but they gain that confidence by the end. Characters who don't change through the story aren't very dynamic (but it's okay if minor side characters who don't add much to the story don't change). That's my interpretation and experience.
IDK. From cracking a joke, going stone faced, to pure pissed and gutting a guy. So yeah they need range and depth, in both dialogue and internally and can't be OP otherwise what is there to slow them down? So it makes all the suffering I put them through that much more grueling due to the litltle fact that none of it is as simple as a plot demand away. Even when something seems so simple, in reality would have massive negative consequences if they just did them whenever they felt like.
What is a dynamic character other than a character who has changed by the end of the story? That's really it. There's nothing else to that. In real human nature, once you know something, you're a different person. Once you realized you were in love with someone, did that not change you? Once you learned your company was going bankrupt and now you had to find another job, that changed you. So with that in mind, dynamic characters have two parts: What did they learn through the course of the story and what did they do about it? Those dangling plot threads? Those often happen because an author reveals something and then the characters never really do anything about it. That was a big problem with Bella Swan. She learns there's this vampire underworld and... .... .... well, nothing happens.
I base dynamic characters of off people and persona. For example, I know very little about Harry Connick Jr., but if he sits in front of a piano with a Manhattan in his right hand, and a cigarette dangling from his lips, my brain starts to go crazy on what he could be. Is he a villain? Is he a good guy? Do I care about this guy? Why do I want him to play old school Dave Brubeck? That's when my characters start to evolve. I will also continually ask myself, is this cool / is this believable?
There always more. Character can bee dynamic with - information - action - dialog - socially - emotionally - internally (character who changes) - intellectually - creativity - sexually (ok... this is partly socially and action and...) - passive-aggressive way... All of these overlap with some others. If character changes but does not do, it is not very active.
Maybe all characters do not have to go through huge moments in order to be considered definitively dynamic. Something that has always been a help is thinking about sincere souls I've associated with or known who have crossed paths with the magnificent mess who is me. I then play certain semi-autobiographical moments within my mind. This helps me develop possible dialogue and specific interactions. So it is kind of like this alternate universe that I have created which overloads with opulent optimism. Not to mention creative possibility as well. What may be then correlated with dynamism is believability.
