Then there are the writing courses, the how-to books and the conferences. Learning is good for us. I know I will sometimes stop and realise I'm picking things up as I read about them, even though I haven't consciously picked things up.
I mention all this as I had a wonderful cyber launch of From Light to Dark and Back Again (Chapeltown Books) yesterday and learned lots from it about what worked, what fell a bit flat and so on. I hope to write a future Chandler's Ford Today post on this at a later date. (I've also shared the link to the Kindle edition of the book, which is currently on offer at 99 pence (UK)).
So turning to the other side of the coin and looking at our characters again, do they keep learning or do they keep on making the same mistakes? How do they learn? Do they share what they have learned with others? Is knowledge kept from them? For characters to really resonate with readers, they have to grow and develop so your characters must be learning (sometimes it can simply be discovering what not to do!).