I get easily distracted and make many characters. They almost never go past level 20.

I'm usually the same way. Because an idea sounds really cool so I make that character, then it's fun for a few levels and I have an even "better" idea, so I make a different character. I think you just have to find the character that you really want to play, make sure it has potential for a lot of play time, and stick with it.

By making a character with an interesting roleplay, backstory, good looks and most important thing is making sure they don't lose their 1 life.

I do that too, though my characters usually get to lvl 40 or 50 (rarely 50)

Have you tried RPing? (Though, even RPing gets boring to me and I end up thinking about different builds and such)

It's hard and I don't know how some ppl have those 200 hour characters xD.

Oh and maybe you could try a "Dead is dead" character? I had fun with the one I made.

Its hard but I force myself not to look through the creation screen to try new things. That's what gets a good RP in trouble. Stick with one and go to the end.

It can be hard though. I have 2-3 more character ideas to try out and I'm not even done with my current one. But I dare not try those other ideas out or I will lose focus. That's all it takes for me anyway.

Set some goals for your character to be done, such as kill the jerk who wanted my head chopped off, and build a story around the goals that you set.

I do it by getting involved in my character's story. Myself, I don't care about classes or levels or stats or numbers or any of that. Those things are not roleplaying to me. Roleplaying to me is creating a vivid character and telling a story that engages my imagination. I use the game world given me by Bethesda to tell make up my own stories. Each story is different. Each story has its own length. When a story is finished, I make a new character and tell myself a new story. That can happen in one hour or in 500 hours. It all depends on the story I'm telling.

These two things (besides the 1 life thing)

OF course i have several characters anyway, all with interesting stories to tell, but I DO try and keep it to a minimum...........sometimes

By realizing that I'll have to go through Unbound again. And by accepting the fact that no matter how many times I restart the game, my pet peeve bugs will still be there.

Yea....

I had around 25, from the looks of it, characters in Oblivion, And I rotated between 3 active ones at a time. The major part of that, was that I could just load up a save, before leaving the sewers, make a character, and leave the sewers.

In Skyrim, I have multiple characters, I don't really make the background, let it come to me during the rp sessions.

Some of my characters get promoted to Skype only Rp, while others get promoted to fan fic only. But those characters are canon in my game world. And like Oblivion, I rotate between characters.

This. I restarted thousands of times when i first played skyrim, because my character's face looked horrendous in Helgen keep. I kept having to restart and do bloody unbound over and over again just for my character to have a decent face. It was infuriating. In the end i just gave up and settled with a less than average face. Turns out it was better than expected, probably because the lighting in the keep svcks or something.

Now that there's the face sculptor in riften its somewhat better, though the lighting there can be different from outdoors as well, pah.

I find myself in this situation when I come up with an idea for a build then I get to about level 6/7 I find myself coming up with a new build. And I say build and not characters as I have only had about 3 characters and a lot of builds. as michaelpk said

I think it's important to try out new builds and when you come up with a good character you may find that one of your builds fit with that character.

Self control!

Totally agree with this!

It's the approach I use for what I call my "Keepers".

Though I do have "just for fun" chars too!

I'm probably missing one or two, but I think I've made a total of nine characters since the spring of '12. Three of those were quest specific (that I remember) and didn't last much beyond level 25. All of the others, save the new mage I just started not long ago, exceeded level 50 and I think my first Nord tank may have reached 60+.

I guess I have the opposite problem. Even when a character's story has been played out and there really isn't much left for them to accomplish, I still push forward with them refusing to give up on that RP. My latest is my grumpy ole Orc that I now use to simply explore. He's still finding new places and challenging tasks, but I'm pretty sure he's near the end of being an adventurer. Retirement is calling for sure. But he will not be deleted.

On my current X-Box that I've had since last Christmas, there are three characters and that is all I've created. The Orc and new mage mentioned above along with the recreation of my first thief/assassin that I had created on my old X-Box. The thief, as with the Orc, are both well over level 50. The mage just hit level 18. These characters have personalities and I like them and I will hug them and squeeze them and call them George.

Usually whien I start a new character, I'm already thinking about my next one. I visit the Skyrim Blog regularly for new ideas, make a laundry list of builds and RP ideas. But I always stick with whatever character I'm currently playing until that one's done.

My problem is more of an opposite one. My character is super OP, but when I make new characters I never really play them for all that long before I get drawn back to my original one.

I just got the DLCs though quite recently, so there's still content to go through... not much in regards of character progression though.

It's just about willpower though I think. Just make the decision and stick with it.

I'll probably make a new character once I've played through all the DLC, and mod the hell out of it.