Recently I went through a few months of making characters that had terrible backstories (parents died or wife/son died or somebody they loved died) that didn't correlate with how they saw the world ie they weren't super depressed but functioning soon after the tragedy. I realised that and immediately switched my focus. It was bad characterisation.

Now my characters are really average, run of the mill, neighbour Joe types with a cracked flaw/problem that is going to be developed/have personal growth. I find them more interesting, to be honest, like one of them's a coward whose only skill is running away, in a zombiepocalypse, who wouldn't even [i]try[/i] and save anybody (while everybody else, mostly awesome soldiers, would near sacrifice themselves to protect the group).

All of my characters, now and then, have amplified traits of myself, but are also different enough from myself that I'd need a second to think and feel like they do, so they're relatable to me but I can comfortably say I'm not writing my life story out in the open.