[gmw]

It is a difficult path to tread. Too much "interest" in your characters and they feel false and unrealistic, too little and they're boring.

I find that in many books the main protagonists are often ... if not boring, then at least less interesting that some of the supporting cast. The issue, I believe, is that main protagonists are the vehicle through which the reader experiences the story, and making them too extreme in any regard can easily stretch into making them inaccessible to the reader.

Be very careful of trying to find too much "in-betweenness" in your supporting cast; it is very easy for this to slide into everyone seeming the same.

I read somewhere that all authors only have limited repertoire of detailed characters that they recycle from book to book. It was a long time ago that I read this, but I seem to remember the figure as being something like 7 for most authors. I remember looking around at the books on my shelf and thinking there was considerable truth in it, although there are some authors that manage larger casts. (The Harry Potter books always amazed me with how many characters there were in it, and how even minor characters played important roles right through the books.)

I find it helps to write scenes for your characters that aren't part of the story. Prelude type stuff, or short stories of some happening that may have nothing to do with your main story. Here you can get as carried away - or as mundane - as you like, and you start to get a feel for the characters, how they act and speak, why they are like they are. By deliberately writing such scenes outside the main story you get the freedom to write what you want without worrying about what the reader is going to make of it, and this freedom - I find - helps me to relax and spread my imagination. It can also give you events that you can refer to in the story. Care is needed not to side-track the real story with irrelevancies, but being able to refer to life beyond the immediate story gives everything a bit more depth.

So ... tell Claire to get a life. Go out and get some experience outside the story, and then she can come back and be a better character in the story.