Let's Talk About Characters!-Part 2: Personality

Sometimes creating a believable character is hard. For me, even if a story has a good plot I'll move on to something else if I don't like the character(s). I'm not a fan of totally helpless characters. I'm not saying that all characters need to be super intelligent and have fighting abilities at a master level, they just need to have at least one strength. Now if a minor character was totallly helpless I wouldn't mind as much if they were needed to progress the story. Personality is also a key part for making characters memorable. I could list some examples, but a memorable character for me may not be memorable for someone else.

When I create personalities for my characters, it's a long process. First, I write a little biography of sorts for them, then I would write a sample scene with them to see if that personality would fit the situation I presented on the page.

So what do you do when creating personalities for your characters?