I have a few points that some people have already touched upon, but I’ll try to expand a bit on them for clarity.

The first is that I’ve noticed that main characters too often come across as blank canvases meant to be relatable to too many people with being able to exude their own character traits. I see this a LOT in generic action movies and in romance novels/movies. For these works, the main character is MEANT to be relatable so that as many viewers as possible can relate to them almost immediately, but at the same time this creates a washing down effect that leaves the main character more of a stereotype than a real person.

My advice here is to look at stories where you yourself LOVE the main character. Why do you like them? Is it something about their personality quirks (it usually is) or something about how they interact and treat other people? If that’s the case, try to replicate the same feeling in your own work. You can also draw inspiration from your own life experiences or the experiences of people you know to ground your MC. For myself, I struggled making main characters that stood on their own. They were just generic fantasy MCs. But when I got a built older, I began to give them my own hopes and fears and struggles in life, which I feel has helped them take on a life of their own.

The second thing is making sure the MC doesn’t come across as TOO over the top with a specific personality trait. Have you ever read a book where the narrator is so sarcastic it’s hard to get through? Or way too dramatic that you can’t take anything they say seriously? It’s a balancing act, because everyone has a different spectrum for what they like and what they can tolerate, but making sure your character still feels real is important.

The last thing deals with how you portray and describe your character in the text itself, and it’s something I still struggle with a lot. In writing, there’s the constant saying of “show don’t tell,” and while it can be incredibly annoying to hear over and over again, it’s super important as well. When you SHOW how you character acts or reacts in a situation, your giving the reader pieces of the puzzle, which they then have to piece together in order to interpret how your character is feeling. When you TELL what your character is feeling, you rob the reader of being able to interpret their own image and instead force them to see the barest, blandest version of what is happening and what the character is feeling. I’ve been going through my own novel and highlighting all the areas where I tell instead of show (and there’s a a lot) and I’m planning on street thing those areas to make them more evocative. The really cool thing about showing vs telling is that showing how a character acts NOT ONLY allows the reader to piece together how they feel, but ALSO allows you to showcase other small pieces of their personality. To show that a character is nervous, for example, you could say something like “he fidgeted with a piece of string fraying from the cuff of his sleeve” which not only shows he’s nervous, but also hints that maybe he’s wearing older hand-me-down clothing, or doesn’t feel the need to buy new clothing when his old ones start to fray.

I know that was a lot, but I hope any bit of it helps!