how to create good characters

Character is exaggeration. Maupassant’s dictum that you should provide one unique telling detail that captures a character perfectly is just another version of exaggeration. On the other hand a common error is to exaggerate that which is most strange TO YOU about the character, not that which is humanly essential; because it is how you capture some unusual human quirk or spark that brings a character alive, not some well rendered superficial detail- however 'shocking' the detail is. A good example is the way Graham Greene (or Grim Grin as Kingsley Amis called him) in Stamboul Train portrays a lesbian journalist and a Jewish businessman. He exaggerates both- good, they stick in the mind with some intensity, but he makes the lesbian all bitter and twisted about the women in her life and he gives the Jew an interior monologue that constantly refers to Jewishness in a very obvious way. It’s rather like those male authors who when they write from a female perspective write long and hard about their breasts and other female only parts without realizing that stuff is totally incidental- it’s the human stuff we are interested in, not the cladding. Few male authors, apart from Henry Miller refer constantly to their cock and balls during interior thoughts about unrelated matters. Anne Tyler is brilliantly skilled at mimicking a ‘male’ voice- and she very rarely makes this kind ‘body obsessed’ error. The fact is we get used to ourselves pretty quickly. And very few of us love our jobs so much we are thinking about them all the time. A common error when portraying someone doing an unusual job- chicken sexer or stunt pilot or whatever is to make his or her interior talk give away all your hard won research. Forget it.