As a writer, you are going to have to know more about your character than you do yourself.
Once you are good at creating characters, your readers will know them by their actions, their thoughts, and their mannerisms. Motivation provides a rationale for your character’s actions and reactions. Characters act or react for a reason. They must act and speak based on who they are as people.
One of the best ways to develop a character is from the inside out. In my book called: You Are The Character, we focus on the main character’s mental, physical, internal, and external characteristics. Are you writing about yourself as a child, a teenager, a young adult, a newlywed, mature woman?
Maybe the character is the BOSS by day and GIRL NEXT DOOR by night. Knowing the archetype gives you, the writer, a chance to twist and mold your character’s traits. It can also be a variety based on the time transitions in your story.
Archetypes represent something that we can already identify with. Always give your character a TAG.