I have four characters, Tadix, Etavke, Hofwu, and Koon. And all of them lack thickness and depth. Unfortunately, I've gotten pretty far in my story to restart, but I'm worried that my characters aren't real enough. So how can I create real characters that go through things the reader goes through, even if it's set in a different time period?

One thing you might try is to use one or more of the character interview collections in an effort to get to know them better. As I have done so with different characters, I discover new background information on each. You could then add in little snippets throughout your story where they might each tell stories about their past (or something along that lines). This way you don't have to change the main story, but you can add depth to each of them. Just a thought.

Have you essence mapped them? I think I have better, deeper characters than ever before now that I've started essence mapping (although all my stories with mapped characters are still works in progress).

Okay, I'm going to march in here and be an annoying know-it-all.
John and Sam, those were very good suggestions. Listen to them, Vace.

Okay. Prepare a separate sheet of paper for each character. Write their name across the top. then think about them.

A. Do they have a "defining moment"? For example: rescuing a damsel in distress, or betraying their kind to the enemy, etc. Write a short "in-a-nutshell" summary of this and decide whether you want this to be their character, or an exception, or just something that happened. Decide if you want your traitor to be a ruthless liar or if he felt like he HAD to betray whoever to the whoever or some reason, and is really not a bad person on the inside... I hope that made some sense.

B. Do you know what they look like? Describe them in great detail.

C. How would they react under stress? Invent a situation and put each of them through it. Say, they are in battle, and a friend was just killed. Would they rush to their friend's side to be with him in his last moments? Would they go all battle-crazy and kill a bunch of people? Would they go all battle-crazy and end up getting killed? Would they fall on their knees and scream, "NOOOOOOO!!!"? Devise a couple of different situations. Write the situation down on a separate sheet of paper, and write their reaction in their own stack of papers. (You may want to obtain a folder to keep all this in.)

D. They're your characters. Decide what personalities you want them to have. Is Etavke selfless and loyal, willing to readily give himself up for the cause? Is Koon villainous and hard, but on the inside it is only because that is all he knows? Is Hofwu a ladies' man? Is Tadix hard and cynical on the outside, but soft-centered? By no means change the personalities if you've already got something going toward a personality for one of them. If Tadix is sarcastic, leave him sarcastic-don't suddenly make him kind and caring.

E. By now you should have a pretty good, 3-D character. But essence mapping and character fractals never hurt, either (except maybe your brain ).

Hope this helped.

Can this be archived?

Correct.