Making characters is pretty easy, but really making them come to life is very tricky.

A couple of my first characters are very on dimensional (rip Rick). The best thing to remember when making an OC are some of these main questions:

-What drives your character to go after what they want?

-What are some flaws in their personality?

Fears, likes, dislikes, pet peeves, etc. You really have to get to know them like you would a friend in real life.

The reason why I use my character Adam so much is because I got to know him the most and really felt like I was able to make him flourish.

He's an egotistical soccer player that's terrible at keeping secrets, yet he has a good heart and maybe throw in some feelings of loss after his older sister left for college.

No one is perfect, so you have to try and remember that when making your character. They have flaws, they mess up, they have their fears and things that set them off.

If you ever want help coming up with them, I would suggest maybe using some you know best so then you can really make their angst come out (trust me, I am the worst person at keeping secrets and I never realized how much that weighted me down until after I wrote Adam's angst) or you can just go on YouTube and find those shorts people post with 'fun fears to give your characters'!

Making a character interesting isn't really just "alright hold still...yeah yeah just like that" *pours a bucket of trauma onto them*

You can do that! I know many people who enjoy writing darker stuff! Me, personally, I don't really enjoy that.

A character doesn't need that to be interesting, you simply need to get to know them and who they're with.

There will always be the characters you struggle with (I still bring up Tom and bro has like no flaws whatsoever he's perfectly perfect-) but it gets easier the more you do it.

I would recommend try and remember that they're just people. No one is ever perfect and you know dang well they're not. Now that doesn't mean writing how their whole family died, it just means putting a couple flaws in here and there.

Maybe they're always scared of losing a game point, maybe they always push themselves to do better but then realize they didn't know if they really wanted that after getting accepted into what they thought was their "dream school", maybe they care too much and put other's problems on themselves, or maybe they can be caring at some times but when they're actually needed they become rude and shift the attention onto themselves.

I see them as real people when I write them, not characters I'm puppeteering to do what I want. Just being able to imagine it happening is huge.

Good luck!