Readers demand living, breathing, suffering characters. And rightly so. We read stories for a variety of reasons; for escapism, for an insight into the workings of the world, to mentally interact with people whose problems we can identify with, to discover solutions to our own problems, to be thrilled, scared, amused or otherwise diverted from the humdrum of everyday life.

But whatever the reason for reading, the one common denominator is the people who live between the covers; those fictional characters whose experiences enable us to feel all the emotions we feel whilst reading.

If you can't create characters that grab the reader by the scruff of the neck and make them sit up and take notice, you might as well not write the story.

That may seem like a harsh thing to say, but it's a sad fact that readers have too much choice in what they read to spend any time with characters they don't immediately care about.

Characters are the life-blood of a story. Without them the story doesn't exist. Readers don't care about what happens in a story, they care about what happens to the characters in a story.

So the people who make your story happen have to be as real as you can possibly make them.

But how are such characters created? How can you make sure that your characters seem real, so that your reader completely identifies with them and can't put the story down until the fate of the character is known?

Here are 10 quick tips to help breathe life into your characters. It's not an exhaustive list but it's a good starting point of things to bear in mind when writing or plotting.

1. Names are important. Some writers can't get going with a character until they know his name, and sometimes if a character isn't working a change of name can solve the problem. Make sure your character's names fit them, and don't be scared to change them if a character is asking you to.

2. Don't make your characters perfect. Readers want the people in stories to have some flaws, just like they do.

3. Make sure your character's personality dictates the scrapes they get into.

4. Also make sure your character's personality dictates the way in which they solve the problem.

5. Make your character's speech pattern match their personality. Eg, don't have a young person or child use words that seem too grown up.

6. Your character must change in some way by the end of the story. In other words, they must grow and learn by what happens to them. If, by the end of the story, the problem they faced at the beginning would give them just as many headaches, they haven't grown. Readers want the people in stories to learn as they go along and put into practise what they're learning.

7. Pay attention to what they wear. Clothes, and the colours they choose, speak volumes about what kind of people they are. You don't need to go into long descriptions of wardrobe contents, but let the odd comment speak about the character. For instance, having a woman search through her jacket pockets says a different thing about her than having her search through her handbag.

8. Let them solve their own problems. For instance, if they're stuck down a hole, don't have someone come by with a ladder and rescue them. Instead make them find a way to climb out. They will be so much the stronger for finding their own solution, and readers will cheer them on all the more.

9. Make their problems huge. The more there is at stake the better. That doesn't mean every problem must be life-changing, but it does mean every problem must have a real impact on the character situation, and the solving of it must be imperative, not optional.

10. Last but not least is to keep your characters busy. Always have them doing something that directly relates to the story. For instance, if your character is having a cup of tea, then make sure your whole story will fall apart if they don't have that tea just then. If the tea is unnecessary, cut it out.

If you bear these ten pointers in mind when creating characters for your stories, you will find that not only are the characters themselves stronger, but you have a stronger story too.