If you aim for a universal character you may end up with a vague or dull or windy one. If you set out to write a typical character you're likely to produce a caricature, because people are typical only in the generalized qualities that lump them together. Typical is the most provincial adjective in a writer's vocabulary, signaling that you're writing only for those who share your assumptions. A "typical" schoolgirl in Dar es Salaam is a very different type from one in San Francisco. Furthermore, every person is typical of many things successively or simultaneously. She may be in turn a typical schoolgirl, bride, divorcée, and feminist. He may be at one and the same time a typical New Yorker, math professor, doting father, and adulterer. It is in the confrontation and convolution of types that much of our individuality is produced.

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edit…, loc. 284