No matter the genre, every story has characters, otherwise you'd be writing a phone directory. Hold on. Bad analogy. I know plenty of characters in a phonebook and who the flip uses a phone book anymore anyway?

As I was saying, sans phonebooks, characters are an essential ingredient in a story recipe. There's lots of tricks to jazz up a memorable character, but EVERY character needs some basic things.

5 Essentials For Character Building

FEAR
What's makes your character scream like a little girl? Centipedes? The IRS? The threat of an alien probe shoved up their...wait a minute...I'm scaring myself. And that, my friends, is the point. Everyone is afraid of something. Identify what your character is afraid of so that you can use that fear to ramp up the tension.

STRENGTH
I'm not talking six-pack abs here, though in the case of your hero, that's never a bad idea. What sweet skills does your character possess? Is he a crazy freak with nunchucks? Can she hit a raccoon in the eyeball from fifty yards away with a slingshot? Maybe this character has x-ray vision and can see into people's souls. Whatever. Give them something to work with.

FLAWS
Perfect characters make readers want to punch them in the head. Nobody is flawless, so make sure your character isn't either, even your super stud that swoops in to save the day and the damsel in distress all in one fell swoop. This can be something as small as an inability to balance a checkbook or create a whopper of wart like a gambling habit using stolen money copped from nuns.

A SECRET
Psst. Hey buddy. Come over here and I'll whisper you some covert information because have I got something juicy to tell you. Are you leaning toward the screen? That's because you want to know what I've got hidden. Secrets are like big, juicy nightcrawlers wriggling on a hook, irresistible to the reader fish. Characters with secrets reel a character in.

MOTIVATION
Everybody wants something. A brand-spanking-new Tesla. A mutton lettuce tomato sandwich. The stupid hangnail on my thumb to go away. Your character wants something as well. What is it?

Make sure to incorporate these 5 building blocks next time you construct a character and you'll be well on your way to making him or her memorable in a reader's mind.