Writing Interesting Characters (part 3)

Background definitely influences how a character might develop, but even characters from the same background can be entirely different. Another step to writing an interesting character is deciding on how they reacted to their background circumstances. Some people have a flight response, and others will instead fight. For example, think about this potential scenario: 3 children are left as orphans when something tragic happens to their parents. How each of those children responds to this tragedy might depend on a variety of factors, such as their age, gender, and whether they've had to fight for something before or if they're used to relying on someone else to get what they want. One possible example in this scenario: The oldest of the 3 feels the burden of responsibility and takes charge as a leader for the other two. Would the level of “tough love” and nurturing be different for someone in this role than the other two? What if that character wasn't naturally very good at nurturing, but with the other two relying on him or her, it might suddenly become a very forced character trait that produces a struggle and a transformation over time. Or perhaps the character was able to keep up the facade for the others but was quite the opposite internally, struggling to be free of the role while feeling trapped.