Give characters pet peeves. Put them in a situation in which they are annoyed by them and write about how they respond to them.
— www.10minutenovelists.com/top10tuesday-top-20-things-to-give-your-characters-that-will-make-them-more-vivid
Pet peeves work because they reveal character through disproportion. Anyone can act reasonably when the stakes are high. But watching someone unravel over something small — a clicking pen, a mispronounced name — shows their real pressure points, the ones they can't rationalize away. Say your steady, unflappable detective character loses her composure not at a crime scene but when her partner chews with his mouth open during a stakeout. That flash of irritation tells readers more about her control and what cracks it than a dozen pages of backstory. The caution: don't let the peeve become a costume. If every scene reminds us she hates loud chewing, it stops being a window into character and becomes a tic performed for the reader. Use it sparingly, let it surprise you once, then let it recede into the texture of who she is.
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