How to Write Compelling Characters

The Great Blogging Experiment is underway today and I thought I might get in on it.  For a complete list of all participants, click here.

So, how does one create compelling characters?  There's certainly a wide range of characters across the genre board from your sword-wielding fantasy hunk to your strong, but silent crime detective.  But there's definitely something connecting all characters that makes readers fall in love with them: they're all going through something readers can relate to.

Maybe while sword-wielding fantasy hunk treks across the fairy lands to slay the evil dragon, he's contemplating those last biting words his father had said to him right before he left.  Or maybe as super strong she-ain't-no-damsel-in-distress hacks her enemies to pieces, she's secretly hoping that all of her insecurities aren't written on her face for all to see.

Readers like to read about these exaggerated worlds where everything the protagonist does is about life or death, an eternity of perfect bliss or a short, sad life of misery, etc., but ultimately what they really like is to think that they could easily trade places with the protagonist.  I.E. that the protag is a living, breathing human being who suffers from issues that conjure up memories of when we suffered from the same thing.

No one's going to care about super hot fantasy hunk if his entire existence is based on something that readers just don't buy.  Like super hot girl falling head over heals in love with him with a look and finding no faults in him because they just don't exist or twenty story dragon quivering in fear before this mighty warrior because no one like him had ever challenged the dragon before, blah, blah, blah.  See?  It's already boring.  Can you imagine a whole book like that??  *shudder*

So, IMHO, to make a compelling character, you must give him/her faults, quirks, and real problems that he/she has to work through.

What about you, dear readers?  What do you think makes a compelling character?