Sometimes it's just better to be simple

Or, what do you mean I can't play the same character as last time?

Let me tell you a story of two characters, two very different characters created for two different campaigns of the same RPG system.
And my complete inability in attempting to play them differently.

Okay that's a bit harshly put perhaps but the thing is that while my RPG experience isn't the biggest I've come to notice that I do seem have some issues with playing characters differently from each other.

One hand I've got my first character for Exalted, Tepet Revvie. Well her full name is Tepet Revvie "Tarnished Orchid" Edalaika but the last bits fell off at one point and I'm not missing them that much truth to be told.
Anyway, Revvie was the first character I rolled up for the system, and like most first characters she is partly a mess. Her backstory can be summed up with "Left for dead by unknown assassins" and that was pretty much it and then there was a lot of things not really fleshed out about her like her motivations and goals for instance.
I didn't care about it so much really and figured I'd hammer it out as the campaign went on. Which was the case.

And then on the other hand I've got my second character for the same system. So when a second campaign was about to start I began building a character based on the lessons I learned from earlier and the end result became the forest ranger/archer Winter Dawn of Amber Hill. His backstory was a lot more expanded than Revvie's with him growing up in a remote village and falling in love and marrying the girl of his dreams and then having his whole life shatter when she gets abducted and he sets out trying to find her and bring her back with the help of his godly powers he gained while trying to rescue her.
So a lot more elaborated and worked out with a clearer goal and motivation than before.

But the thing is that I've always enjoyed playing Revvie more than I enjoyed playing Winter. Mostly because I always had a hard time coming up what I really wanted his character to be.
For Revvie I had a bit of a shaky as well but after a while I just came into a sort of natural groove with her with playing her as slightly snarky and a tend to run her mouth quite a bit but at the same time she was caring for the people closest to her.
But for Winter I never really seemed to get in this groove.He never seemed to develop into something solid character-wise and just felt muddled. Did I want him to be good natured or did I want him to ruthless in his pursuit? Or did I want him to be nice but an utter monster in finding and dealing with his wife's captors? Never really managed to figure that out and the character suffered for it.
It's kinda hard to explain really but the main problem is that I lacked the necessary drive for the character. His wife had been kidnapped and everything and yet I never seemed to drive that point on. Mostly because I was probably afraid it'd make him look a bit of a whingy bastard with constantly trying to bring that up but at the same time I missed the chance of using that to my advantage.
In hindsight I realize I probably should've watched Taken or something and tried to base my character on Liam Neesons character there since the scenario used is kinda similar and it would've been a great basis to use.

If I would name one factor to why Revvie is so fun to play is that, on a basic level, she's very simple. She doesn't have any major motivation that drives her other than she enjoys the company of her friends and would walk through hell if necessary for them to stand by their side. That basic simplicity works so well in her case compared to the elaboration I went through with Winter and how that just fell through via my lack of fleshing him out in the right way I needed to do and instead of giving him a goal driving him onwards I should've looked more into who he was instead.
Which I guess is a lesson I need to remember for future characters.