Write a reflection statement that evaluates the influence reading effectively constructed characters had on your own crafting of characters in your own creative writing. Include examples of character development from "The Boat" by Alistair Macleod and Dubliners by James Joyce. Reflect on how other writers' techniques have impacted your own attempts to construct characters. The task is not an essay, and you can write using your personal voice.

It looks like you are asking about how other writers' techniques have impacted your own attempts to construct effective characters. You mention "The Boat" by Alistair Macleod and Dubliners by James Joyce.
While Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories, "The Boat" is its own short story. Let's discuss the tools Alistair Macleod and James Joyce use in character development.
Because these are short works, both authors choose to focus on one main character in each story. This method of choosing a sole character to focus on is favored by writers of short stories. In "The Boat," the main character is the narrator. Macleod fleshes out this main character in three ways. First, he uses flashbacks to tell us what the narrator thinks about his father (with whom he sympathizes) and his mother (about whom he is conflicted). Here are two examples of flashbacks that involve the narrator's father and mother in the story:

My earliest recollection of my mother is of being alone with her in the mornings while my father was away in the boat. She seemed to be always. . . .
My earliest recollection of my father is a view from the floor of gigantic rubber boots and then of being suddenly elevated and having my face pressed against the stubble of his cheek. . . .

The rest of the story focuses on how the narrator reacts to his mother and relates to his father (Macleod uses this dichotomy to highlight the conflict between modernity and tradition). Here's an example:

And then there came into my heart a very great love for my father and I thought it was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations. And I knew then that I could never leave him alone to suffer the iron-tipped harpoons which my mother would forever hurl into his soul because he was a failure as a husband and a father who had retained none of his own.

Macleod ties these three elements to a central theme, which is the loss of a major tradition. Embedded within this theme is the overarching conflict: the embracing of modernity versus loyalty to tradition or a cherished way of life. In the end, the narrator chooses the path his father wished for him. The decision to embrace modernity results in a Pyrrhic victory for him: his relationship with his mother suffers, and he is engulfed in a mixture of grief and guilt.
In his short stories, Joyce uses the same methods in developing his characters. In "Eveline," the focus is on a young woman. The conflict? To decide between the familiar (which is deeply enervating) or the unknown (which may or may not lead to freedom and personal fulfillment). In this story, Joyce also uses flashbacks to give us information about how Eveline fears and despises her father.

When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl. . . .
Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago. . . .

So, in "Eveline," you have the three elements authors use to develop characters in short stories:
1) Choose a main character to focus on.
2) Use flashbacks or provide brief backstories to explain why the main character is conflicted.
3) Tie the main conflict to the central theme of the story.
You can also use examples from the other stories in Joyce's fifteen-story collection, Dubliners, to make your point.
https://www.emwelsh.com/blog/short-story-character-development