My first-level approach is to try and make my characters as much like me as I can. And then make things go badly and see how they do. I think a character who is basically like the writer and the reader (good, sensible, intelligent, well-intentioned, and so on) is going to produce a more deeply felt ride. Fiction gets under our skin most, I think, when we find it impossible to distance ourselves from the narrated dilemma.
