Neil Gaiman on characters
Some very cool stuff.
"I read a book once," he said after a pause. "Can't remember the name of it, but that's because I put it down after eighty pages. It was written well enough, I suppose, but the lead character was someone so unlikable that I realized that if I met him at a party, I'd make my excuses after five minutes and find another room to be in.
"So I thought, 'All my characters should be people I'd want to talk to at parties.' That's my - well, I'm just formulating it right now, but it's my Party Theory. Why would I like this person enough to spend time with them at a party I'm having a good time at? What about them would make me want to stand next to them and chat?
"If you don't know what it is, you should find it."
This works both on a personal level -- writing someone you actually care about -- and on a reader level -- making someone want to read about your characters.