Reposted in its entirety from the now defunct Foul Papers Blog. Pronouns have been edited to render them gender neutral. Originally posted March 30, 2010.

This one’s for the fiction writers.

We all want to create characters that live and breathe and jump off the page. Those are the characters people care about, and I’m talking series-finale-of-Six-Feet-Under-level CARE. While I was gearing up to write this post, I rewatched the last six minutes of that series on YouTube. Then I sobbed for ten minutes and had to go wash my face before I could come back and actually write. It’s been years since that show went off the air, but I still miss the Fisher family.

Fortunately, you don’t have to stick solely to the solemn and heart-wrenching to make people care about your characters. Look at Jim and Pam on The Office or Chuck on, er, Chuck. Funny or silly works just as well as deep, if the character has depth.

Here are a couple of writing exercises to give your characters dimension.

1. 1. Write a description of your character from their own point of view. It might be their hypothetical profile for an online dating site or their work bio. If you’re writing sword and sorcery, it might be one of the Wax-On-Wax-Off training exercises that their enigmatic swordmaster/senior sorcerer forces them to do for no seeming reason. If you’re writing science fiction, it might be their ship’s log. The purpose matters only in so far as it gives you an audience and sets the tone. The key is to get at how they see themself.