Great stories are built on characters that the readers will be able to care about and root for wholeheartedly. Characters can face deep moral dilemmas or brilliant conflicts, but if the reader doesn't care about the characters, the story will feel irrelevant. One of the single best ways to create a character readers will root for is to give the character endless determination in the face of very tough odds. Other qualities that make characters easy to like are generosity, beauty, cleverness and humility.
Without conflict there is no story. Every good story centers around characters with a strong desire or need to change the situation as it is, whether that means escaping a toxic relationship or stopping an evil dictator. Regardless of how important a conflict is on paper, the reader will generally not care much about it until it personally affects a character she cares about. To intensify the gripping power of the story, entangle the characters we love in a situation that could seriously hurt them.
Conflict and character turn into a plot when the character begins making decisions about how to respond to the conflict. In a well-crafted story, the character is forced into harder and harder choices with more and more serious consequences. Every time a decision makes the situation simpler or easier, the reader can relax a little and the story loses some of its power. It is only after the climax, the highest point of tension, that the story should allow the reader to feel the relief of a satisfying solution and stable resolution.
If a plot is made of hard choices with rising stakes, the meaning of a story comes from the values it reveals in its characters. A choice becomes significant when it forces a character to choose between two things he loves or cares about. Will he choose his own safety or his wife's? Say he accepts the danger. Will he choose to save his wife's life or the lives of a hundred strangers? The most interesting choices and the most satisfying stories are the ones that reveal and reinforce admirable values in their characters.