I was recently in L.A. and had an interesting discussion on the depth and detail one should go to in developing characters for your story. I am a writer and also teach screenwriting. My personal preference is to write fairly detailed character descriptions for my main characters, often going back as far as to who their grandparents were and how the family arrived at where they are today. Some very respected writers told me that they write only a few paragraphs on each of their main characters. Just enough until their character "speaks" to them. Just for the heck of it, I tried the briefer biographies. I didn't feel that I had the kind of grasp on my characters that I wanted. So I went back to the detailed biography. As in everything, you should go with what works best for you. Nevertheless, I am interested in what others do in terms of developing their characters. Since there are a lot of new writers on this list I hope the responses are informative. At a minimum, I hope they will encourage new writers to focus on building good characters.