work from the outside-in. think about your story for a minute.
in order to have a character at all, there must be a story somewhere. to go on a journey, we need a vehicle. your character is the driver. no vehicle? no driver. so we need a story in which to place our character. the good news is that this character can spawn from the story idea, or the story idea can spawn from the character. no matter which way you go about it, though, we need to know one thing: why is this character here?
this is important. your character must have a reason for being in the story. the easiest 