Here's the answer: ...they're the ones who are Characters.
Let me explain.
When a reader sits down with a story, there is already a suspension of disbelief that needs to happen for them to accept the fictional backdrop you create for it. From the start, you're asking them to believe in whatever truths you establish in your plot and the dynamics of your plot's world, however out-of-the-ordinary they may be. And they want to believe it because it'll give them an experience to enjoy. That's why they and we read any fiction at all. But you need to help them along. And the best way to do that is to populate that plot and that world with the most realistic characters you can manage.
So what's the problem with writing characters as just Characters, just people who exist in your fiction? Simple: when they're just "Characters", the only things that are really set up about them are things the author feels are immediately relevant to the plot and the other supporting characters. This means that they get a grab bag of quickly identifiable traits that the reader can remember them for and that the plot can pull from (for example, a Young Adult novel hero who is simply established as tall, handsome, brave, pining after whatever generic love interest is nearby and coherent enough to reciprocate something, and capable of surviving ridiculously dangerous things... the end). It's not to say that Characters won't get the job done - they serve their purpose of serving the reader their story, using that Trait Grab Bag to nudge the plot along from one point of conflict to the next, and on to the eventual resolution that their traits dictate they can accomplish.
But that's all they'll do... serve a purpose as a cog within a bigger picture. They won't engage the reader like they could be engaged, won't suck the reader into their lives and get that pull of empathy or hate or hope for their journey or whatever you want them to get. They won't make the reader truly care about what happens to them and their world, at least not as much as they could. Characters that are just Characters leave the reader on the outside of a story, looking in. They put up walls. They make suspension of disbelief harder, and work against your passion for the story you're telling.
So what do you write instead? Well, you scrap those Characters, and you write PEOPLE.
Take any character you're trying to write, and don't think of them in terms of how they'll serve your story. Give them a name, and go all Dr. Frankenstein on them, and give them life. Make the inanimate, the fictional real by giving them not just the Trait Grab Bag, but all the parts that make a person an actual person, and make those parts a functioning whole.
Start here: What's the context for the world that your plot and characters exist in? Is it in the past? Is it futuristic? Post-apocalyptic?
Next step from there: Whatever it is, what kind of people can exist within it? What are the different classes of people? Are they separated by income? Nobility of birth? The city they live in? What differentiates groups of people from each other?
And next after that: What class of person is your character supposed to be? Once you've got that figured out, you can set up the Grab Bag of traits that go with that particular class as a foundation of characteristics (for example, if they're of a poorer class, then they know what it is to be hungry, to struggle - so they're tougher in order to survive, and maybe a bit bitter against those of higher class or against the system that keeps them poor). And after you've got that Grab Bag out of the way, make that character a person with traits unique to only them - traits shaped by their family lives within their class of people, the friends they have or haven't had, the mistakes they've made in the past, the hopes they have for the future. Take example from your own personality if you'd like: whatever you can think of that makes you, well, you, use all those different types of elements to fill in the blanks and make your character a living, breathing person.
After that, you use whatever you can of what you've worked out within the story itself, and whatever you don't use still serves as an influence for how these characters act within the story, interact with each other, and influence the overall story itself. If every character you create is written as a Person, not a Character, then what you have for your plot is a living population that will make your reader give a crap as to whether or not things turn out for them, and where they end up by the time it's over. Nothing generic or forgettable. Something unique, fresh, engaging. Everything the Doctor ordered for "Hell yes!" fiction.
Image courtesy of MisterGC/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
So do your story and reader a favour, and go be Dr. Frankenstein - give your creations life!
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Word count as of today: 66,231
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