I may have discussed this before, I may not have. But I want to talk about it now. In my opinion, and in my experience with talking to people and discussing this kind of topic, I want to summarise the two approaches I think a person can take to writing characters.
1) Write out the character. Know the character. Be the character. Basically, you know everything there is to know about your character from the way they fold their arms to the way they make a cup of tea. Everything. From this there will be a problem that will allow you, as the writer, to come up with a plot to help the character fix this problem.
From character comes problem or situation which comes plot.
2) Surprise. (my personal favourite which I've touched upon before) Know the basics - their name, their rank or job even (maybe not even) hair colour, eye colour (or maybe not - I still don't know what colour eyes half of the crew of Redux have.) But if you are the kind of person, like me, who doesn't want to know everything there is to know about your character, who likes to be surprised by what they do or what comes from them, then don't know anything about them and see what they tell you.
Surprises can be troublesome (explained through the Third War that Zach escaped - I may or may not have an idea what this is) but they can also be great fun to play around with. (McCallister will overstep his duties as First Officer/Second in Command to tell the Captain to have some sense/tell her she's wrong - that was meant to lead somewhere.) My point being that surprises can help spice up your story and give it a little more depth or something that you've been missing. It can also create more problems then its worth but you, as the writer, need to make the decision to what is best left in or taken out.
Happy Writing.
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