The Eight Deadly Words
"I don't CARE what happens to these people." - Dorothy J. Heydt
Stories are, at bottom, about people (or people-analogs, like anthropomorphized talking animals). But more than that, they're about people or people-analogs that the reader cares about. Hooks and cliffhangers, opening in medias res, lots of fast-paced action, brilliant worldbuilding, intricate plots - all these things that are supposed to get readers interested in a book and keep them reading - won't matter if the reader doesn't care about the characters on some level.
Well, OK, there are some people who don't care about characters, but most of them are reading nonfiction. And even with nonfiction, there are all those folks reading biographies and the story of the people who did X or Y and historical anecdotes of all kinds that are mainly about people. Because what draws most readers back to the book every time they put it down is wondering what is going to happen to these people next, and whether they're going to get out of whatever trouble they've gotten into.
It is even more important for the writer to care what happens to these people. You are going to be living with them for a lot longer than the readers are, and if you don't like these people and you aren't interested in them, you're going to have a much harder time keeping at it at all, much less actually making an interesting story out of what happens.
Not to mention the fact that if the writer doesn't care, why on earth should the reader?
So the first thing to ask yourself is, what kind of people do you like to read about? I'm not talking about vampires vs. wizards vs. spacemen here; I'm talking about whether you like to read about people who focus on things outside themselves (like politics or engineering or dragon slaying) or people who focus on their internal problems (like getting over a traumatic past or learning new skills). Do you like to read about outgoing characters or shy ones who need to be coaxed out of their shells? Can-do go-getters, or Gen Y slackers? One-of-a-kind super-powered heroes, or more ordinary folks who do a lot of just muddling through? People like you, your family, and your friends, or people who are very different in certain ways?
The next two questions are of equal importance: First, where do you like to see characters go? Do you like watching them make enormous changes in themselves or their lives or their worlds, or less dramatic ones? Are you interested in characters whose spiritual journey is at the center of their story, or ones who are more practically inclined?
Second, what kinds of trouble can these characters get into - trouble that matters to them, I mean? It's no help to have a "problem" that the character doesn't care about and has no personal emotional investment in; she or he will just ignore it. Also, it's really hard to make the reader care about plot problems if the character doesn't.
It doesn't actually matter whether you start by thinking about your characters this way and develop the plot from there, or whether you start with a plot or an idea or something else and then look for the characters who'd be interested in doing those things. What matters is that you do think about it at some point, on some level. (Not everybody does it as a conscious and deliberate process.) It is also wise to keep in mind that you aren't ever going to find a character that everyone likes; tastes differ in this, as in everything else, and your best bet is to please yourself.
Because if you don't like your characters, especially your main character, odds are that you'll get tired of living with him in your head before you actually finish your story. It's amazing how fast an unappealing-to-the-writer character can make one go from thinking one has the best plot/idea/setup for a story ever, to thinking that one never wants to see anything related to this story, ever again.
