One thing I run into a lot when editing is a manuscript that has been edited to the point of sterility. The personality and flavor have vanished because the author was too focused on the mechanics of writing the plot. Giving characters lives, likes, and dislikes outside the main plot allows you to worldbuild and create a layered, believable universe that readers want to explore.
There are certain places where you can go back and add the fine details that will make the book pop. Remember that the more specific and personal (to the character) you make these details the more universal this becomes.
PLACES YOU CAN ADD PERSONALITY
These are places in the manuscript where you can add descriptions that will show your character’s personality.
Intimate Spaces: Places like the bedroom (if they live with other people), home (if they live alone), office, locker, computer screen, and the phone of a character should be decorated to reflect their personality. Describe these in detail the first time and note changes or repeating colors every time you revisit that “set” in the book.
These can also be good places to show changes in the character. Someone who has just arrived may have an empty house and then decorations will start appearing in each scenes. If a character is experiencing depression their clean room might become messy or empty.
Internal Dialog: How a character thinks about the world reflects their personality. Do they compare bad traffic to a Suez Canal meme or a slow line at the campus dining hall? Do they think something is smooth to silk, or baby’s skin, or ten-year-old Glenlivet scotch, or banana pudding? What a character thinks about reflects their personality and culture. It does a lot of worldbuilding in a short period of time.
Interactions/Dialog/Slang/Fashion: The most obvious place to show personality – and to provide commentary on character’s personality – is in their interactions. Their mode of speech, if and when they codeswitch, what kind of slang and curse words they use, what they wear and how they style themselves… all of these create an opportunity for the character to show the world who they are – or who they want people to think they are.
Since this makes a bulk of the story these are very obvious places where the character’s personality should shine. Always keep in mind that subtly changing language, fashion, ect can be used to show emotional or tonal shifts in the same way a film would use mood lighting and music.
TARGETS OF (EDITING) OPPURTUNITY
These are places in the manuscript where you can do a quick pass to make add personality if it’s been lost in an edit. It’s also a place to let personality shine in future writing endeavors.
Colors: Do a search for color words – blue, red, yellow, green, orange, black, white, purple, gold, silver, rainbow, translucent – and look for opportunities to refine the color descriptions.
Smells/Tastes: Do a search for scent words – smell, scent, odor, sour, sweet, spice/spicy, taste, rich – and make sure they are specific.
Slang: Always make sure the slang a character uses reflects their age, region, and religious preferences (if they have any), or that the slang reflects the person they are pretending to be in any given theme. This is a fun place to add hints that someone isn’t exactly who they pretend to be (using the wrong colloquial term for something, using local slang incorrectly, not recognizing a hyper-specific thing from a place they claim as their home region, using a phrase tied to another group/person).
Slang is also a place where you can showcase intimacy. People will often mimic the language of someone they admire or are close to. Friends will often pick up each other’s pet phrases and slang usage. Groups will often have a motto they repeat (May The Force Be With You, Full Hearts, Semper Fi, ect). It’s a good way to signal the unity (or discord) in a group and show how your characters are related.
Similes/Metaphors: All figurative language is fair game when you are worldbuilding.