How well do our Characters Grow ?

The characters ( the protagonist, the antagonist and the peripheral characters) are extremely important elements in our stories/books. All these characters take the story forward. Thereby it becomes  important  to not just  flesh them out in a appealing, healthy and wholesome way: without making them too fat or too thin, but also to breathe life into them.  As these are the  literary  people who will attract  readers into the make believe world we have created.

I have realized I had been indifferent  to not just the peripheral characters who dotted my story,  but also to the protagonist and the  antagonist in my  earliest work. No wonder then, its lying  in the lower drawer of my desk. When I revisited that particular book, I blanched at the flat characters I had created. Forget about bonding with them, a reader may not even like the one dimensional creatures, as flat as cheese trapped between two slices of bread, I had unknowingly unleashed   years back.

 I have realized that  for the characters in our books  to become multidimensional creatures with  rounded personalities that   readers will love, bond and  befriend, we  have  to make the characters grow.  By growth its not just the numerical or the physical growth, but also the emotional, spiritual, intellectual and  mental   growth. A growth that signifies  and symbolizes that life is  not only being lived  every  single moment, but also that its teaching us every single moment. This emotional, spiritual, intellectual and mental growth happens when we experience life in its entirety, when we battle everything that life is constantly tossing in our paths, and yet move ahead without giving up hope or the dreams we carry in our hearts. 

Character development is an important  ingredient of our story.  For a character to develop to it’s full potential,  character growth becomes vital. Not just the main  character, but the antagonist as well as other characters too must grow before the readers' eyes. This can only happen when they  experience the bitter sweet emotions of joy and sorrow,  meet  with  success and failure, adjust with guilt and regret. They  need to forge relations that may or may not blossom, undergo the  ups  and  downs and uncertainities that mark life, show their deepest  fears and darkest emotions,  reveal  their brave fronts as well as their vulnerable sides to the readers. Growth is one facet of life that is constant like change and it will resonate with the readers. Our characters are reflections of what we undergo in our own lives.

As humans we are constantly evolving and changing, sometimes for the better and at other times  for the worse. Though we may be unaware of it,  each and every experience:  whether good or bad contributes to our growth. Likewise for our characters.

When these varied   emotions  are  added to  the characters, its then that he/she/they  really start  living and breathing. The story literally hums into life and the characters develop flesh and bones, blood and skin.  

I am striving to make my characters grow. How do you all  bring about character growth? Do you have any special method to breathe life into your characters? Please share, we all will  surely benefit from your experiences.