Characters are hard to make, and trying not to be cliche is even harder.
Characters in a story should have a personality that isn't two predictable, they also should have a name that you would have to pull your tongue out to pronounce. Simple but not to simple, if your two lazy name it after a person you know. Don't name any character after yourself, or else I and other people will call you a "self insert" but usually self inserts happen in fan fiction and are used to see if the main character is a Mary Sue.
A Mary Sue is used to describe your main character as absolutely perfect with the only flaw is having an evil dark side or being clumsy. Characters should have more then one flaw besides clumsy like arrogant, cynical, impolite, and shadow the hedgehog. Characters shouldn't be perfect everyone messes up from time to time.
Characters need to be relatable but don't base it off yourself, base the personality off of a friend or a person you know. They need to have something stick out about them like the way they talk, or the way they dress.
Characters don't need dead parents unless its important, dead parents usually mean that it's a pretty cliche story. Characters can have them but try not to. They can have step parents, usually step parents in stories are mean and abusive, you don't want this.
Characters in a school setting shouldn't have magical powers it won't fit. They also shouldn't have a perfect relationship because no one is perfect. Also in a school setting they shouldn't have cat ears or two different color eyes unless everyone has that. Not everyone in school is either a popular girl, a jock,the bad boy, or a nerd most schools I've been to are filled up with annoying kids, anime and video game nerds, the nike kids, and the popular girls who wear "Pink" the brand.
Characters should be unique not a cliche piece of trash or in a fan fiction a character that is exactly a like with the person they are shipped with. Also don't tell what brand of clothing the character is wearing, it will make people bored. Don't make the first page of the book the character page this is wattpad not tapastic.
People aren't always in a relationship and neither should your character, if they get good grades they shouldn't be with the bad boy, they should be working on homework or assignments so they could keep there grades. If it's a bad boy they should be trying to be better and trying to get there grades up.
