How do you create compelling characters.

[Madeline]

I am writing a character-driven novel and was wondering how you all create compelling characters worth caring about?

[Leon]

Madeline, that must be one of the hardest questions to answer.
Although I have made use of character worksheets, I find that the worksheets cover the physical appearance of characters more than their actual character.
You have given me a good idea though, and it might help you to create characters that your readers will believe in.
I am going to write a short essay, let's say about 500 words, on at least ten people I know. I won't use people that I know well, because I think I use characteristics of these people in my characters in any way. Instead I'll write about people that are only acquaintences. The essay will only do a short physical description of the person, but will be more about how I perceive this person. What does he/she like/dislike? Why do I like/dislike this person? Is he/she honest/dishonest? Etc, etc. I will try to make this person as individual as I can. Hopefully this will help me in the future, to create highly individual characters, each with traits that readers can latch onto.

Apart from that, I do think it's important that characters should be consistant, unless they have hidden characteristics that you are hiding from your readers to reveal later. (Or if the person is consistently inconsistant, like some polititions).

[Leon]

OK, here is the first of the character essays I wrote,
The old man
What a quarrelsome old man he was. When he had been drinking, which was often, he would disagree with anything you, the cat and the neighbour said just because he could. Also, nobody could ever say he was not a hard worker, but that came with its own difficulties, for no matter what he was asked to do, he would do in such a way as to infuriate even the most mild-mannered of people. If he mowed the lawn it would be so short as to be dead, he would be having his first beer at around the time he took the mower out of the store and the lawnmower would be broken by the time he was done.
His fingers were huge and callused, he was formidably strong for his age and he refused to let things lie. He also rarely got sick, while a lifetime of drinking seemed to have only marginally slowed him down.
As all old folk are fond of doing, he loved to sit in front of the television in his bedroom in the afternoons, where he would talk to those people on screen as if they could hear every word he said. A never ending litany and grumbling would emanate from his bedroom, instructing actors to ‘Take that,’ or telling himself ‘What a punch that was!’ Rising from the television only occasionally to make coffee, he would tell all and sundry in the house about what he had just seen, and what a mad bunch of people those on the telly were.
But if his work and television was a pain to those around him, it was as nothing to his religion. A devout Jehovah’s Witness, he would get up and be out of the house every morning at dawn, no matter what the season, or what the weather. Out he would go, to taxi ranks and train stations, shopping malls and anywhere where people would congregate, and there he would preach the Word. From this he would return at around eleven in the morning in his clapped-out little car, have a coffee and then, in all likelihood, have to fix something on said car.
Of course, we all have something that irks us, and for him it came in the form of his ex wife. She would phone him every day, and every day she would demand money off him. He, living off a state pension, could ill afford her all too many requests, yet almost every day he could be heard quarrelling with her over the phone, and at least once a week he would get grumbling into his car to deposit some money into her bank account.
Not that he had much want for money, as he was well cared for by his family. It was thus that the money he did not give to his wife, and any money he could make from piece work around the neighbourhood, was all spent on the one thing that made his life worth living, an ice cold beer.