How your characters react to the events in your stories and the other characters around them is, I think, the single most important way of revealing what they are like. We pick up on non-visual clues and generally we can tell (or suspect) whether someone is covering up how they really feel and that what they say may not necessarily match what their ideal outcome would be. Fiction should reflect this too.
There is plenty of room in fiction for the hypocrites to cause trouble for your lead characters but there should be some insight somewhere as to why they are doing this. Your lead characters may not know but there should be something for readers to pick up that yes, character X is doing this because... The great thing is it does not have to be something major. The worst grievances often start off by something very minor festering and not being dealt with properly. Indeed that could prove to be your lead character's worst mistake, the trigger for the problems they then have to deal with during your story.
What is also fascinating about character reactions is the vast variety available! Introverts will react differently to extroverts and so on. The important thing is knowing how each and every one of your characters would react given Situation Z and why they would do so. You will then write convincingly. Your knowledge of your characters will be picked up on by those reading your stories. It has to be convincing and only real knowledge will enable you to write convincingly. I don't think that can be faked. And real stories always have truth behind them, no matter how fantastic a setting they take place in, because the characters have truth.
There is plenty of room in fiction for the hypocrites to cause trouble for your lead characters but there should be some insight somewhere as to why they are doing this. Your lead characters may not know but there should be something for readers to pick up that yes, character X is doing this because... The great thing is it does not have to be something major. The worst grievances often start off by something very minor festering and not being dealt with properly. Indeed that could prove to be your lead character's worst mistake, the trigger for the problems they then have to deal with during your story.
What is also fascinating about character reactions is the vast variety available! Introverts will react differently to extroverts and so on. The important thing is knowing how each and every one of your characters would react given Situation Z and why they would do so. You will then write convincingly. Your knowledge of your characters will be picked up on by those reading your stories. It has to be convincing and only real knowledge will enable you to write convincingly. I don't think that can be faked. And real stories always have truth behind them, no matter how fantastic a setting they take place in, because the characters have truth.
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