The little I've learnt about characters....

You have to make the character a real, eating, breathing, drinking, thinking person. Then you have to get right inside their head and see the world from their eyes.
You have to know how they talk, how they smell, how they react, how they interact, everything about them and you definitely can’t go changing their emotions at the drop of a hat.

I believe you have to decide what their emotion will be beforehand. Then once decided you must create an air-tight environment around them that will only lead to this desired emotion being shown to the reader.

So don’t go making them do things or say things just because you need them to make the plot flow. And definitely don't do it just because you can’t think of something to write. That is being lazy and you'll pay the price. You have to put in the hard yards to get these 'real' characters to lead your story.

In saying this, I'm still a long, long way from fully grasping the talent. But I'm happy that I've now at least grasped the vital importance of it.

Tim B.