Character images

Jo here.

I thought I’d pick up a question that referred, in part, to my books.
Janga asked, “How do you visualize your character? I know, Jo, that you give your readers "portraits" of the Rogues on your website, but did the images come before or after the creation of the characters?” Thanks for the question, Janga. E-mail me your address, and I’ll send you a book.

I never use pictures to create my characters. It doesn’t work for me because a picture, even the best portrait, is static. It catches a person in one moment, and only one aspect of them. I think we’ve all had the experience of seeing a photo of someone we know well and for a moment not recognizing them. Yet that is them. It’s not typical, perhaps, or light and shadow has created different angles, but it is as real as the more familiar.

A movie or TV program is much more complex and this would be more useful, but it still just doesn’t work with the way my creativity does its thing. I suspect that it remains external. The images I see that I write down are in my head not in front of my eyes.

In fact, I come up with the externals of my characters in the way we meet and learn real people -- in bits and pieces, light and shadow. In ways of moving and the shifts of muscle that create hard lines at one moment and soft at another.

I’d find it hard to describe someone I knew in specifics. I could say 5 foot 10, brown hair…. But then, what brown? And except for a few obsessive people, hair shape doesn’t stay the same. It blows in the wind, it gets roughed up by hats and hands, it lies flat in the rain….

People are like music. They’re all movement and change and though I'll start with some dimensions and details, they take on structure bit by bit as I write the book. My current hero has dark hair and eyes, which would be unusual in England, so I gave him an Italian mother. A disreputable one, which adds to his general image problems. Just because, I made him quietly impressive without being tall or large, and I realized later that that would be the likely result of a neglected childhood. Then later still, how it would make his schooldays particularly difficult, which was always part of the story. He's not just a soldier, he's a fighter from the cradle, so I realized he wouldn't have perfect features, even if he'd been born with them, so he has a crook in his nose and some scarring. But his profile from some angles is beautiful. And so it goes.

I truly don't have a clear image of my characters, even when I finish a book.

However, I do sometimes come across a picture that reminds me of one of my characters, which is where those Rogues pictures came from. I do remember that when I first saw the cover for An Arranged Marriage
I thought, “That’s not Nicholas.” But the image quickly grew on me and became an aspect of Nicholas.

The cover of Unwilling Bride is also not Lucien – it’s too hard and slick, rather like a thirties movie star – but again, it captured something real.










It was the Francis one that started me on this, however. This is a portrait from slightly after the Regency and I just thought, “That’s Francis.” Quiet, gentle, sensitive, firm, intelligent….

But it's okay if these aren't your image, as long as your image works for you.

The other image I’ve found that’s spot on is the period portrait I’ve assigned to Diana, Countess of
Arradale, Rothgar’s lady. It is just so very her. I haven’t found anything for Rothgar himself, however.

Lastly, there’s the startling picture for the omnibus edition, Three Heroes. When I opened the jpg for that, I truly couldn’t believe my eyes. I had send descriptions of my characters, but how one earth had the art department got it so right? There was Van in the middle, dashing and active; Con on the left, stocky and steady; and Hawk on the right, the hyper-intelligent military nerd. Hawk’s just a bit sulky-looking, but that was the only quibble I could make.

We authors pray to the cover gods every time, and sometimes they smile.

The casting game is one I find hard to play, and some suggestions are truly weird to me. I think I remember someone once saying Mel Gibson could play Rothgar. Mel Gibson?!? Let’s add a few more of those ?!?!?!?!?!?!

But by all means let’s play. What actors could you see playing one of the Wenchs' characters?

If you’re a writer, how do you come up with the physical presence of your characters?

And may the cover gods always smile.

Jo :)

Comments

[Yanna]

I love the cover on A most unsuitable man. He is exactly how I picture him to be! It was very enjoyable reading a really wonderful story and having a most suitable face filling out one's imagination.

And no, I cannot imagine Mel Gibson as Rothgar. I can't put a tangible face to someone like Rothgar...

Recently I saw Lionel Barrymore (in the early years) in one of those Turner classics. I can picture him as one of the Wenches' heros.. maybe Ms Chase' Mr. Impossible? Then I saw Mr. Impossible from the Mr. Men series and thought he is exactly how Mr Impossible is like. ;)

Yanna

[Lois]

This one's too tough for me since I'm always inclined to throw Sean Connery in the mix, even if he, sigh, is too old for some roles. ;) Your guys up there are just perfect! :)

Lois

[Lois]

This one's too tough for me since I'm always inclined to throw Sean Connery in the mix, even if he, sigh, is too old for some roles. ;) Your guys up there are just perfect! :)

Lois

[Susan Wilbanks]

Mel Gibson as Rothgar?! That's crazy talk!

I sometimes do use a real person--actor, friend, or whatever--to help me picture a character when I'm first starting a story, but they never look the same in my head by the time I'm done.

I'm often a bit flabbergasted to discover what images my descriptions evoke for my critique partners, though. For example, I have a hero who looks like himself, but if I had to describe him in terms of actors, I'd say Nathan Fillion as Malcolm Reynolds with just a little touch of Sean Bean as Sharpe. One of my CPs remarked that he pictured a young Robert Redford. After I retrieved my jaw from the floor, I went home and took a hard look at my manuscript, because that's just not the same thing at all!

I don't usually play the casting game as I read, though, unless there's serious talk of the book going to film. I wouldn't play it with my own books if two of my CP's didn't insist!

[Janga]

Thank you for your wonderfuly generous answer, Jo. I am reassured as both reader and writer by your words. And I agree that your Three Heroes cover is superb. I always include it when I join in discussions of favorite covers.

The casting game is quite popular on one of the bulletin boards I frequent, and I almost never participate because I prefer the image the author's words create in my head to any actor. That preference is probably one reason that I rarely like movies when they are based on books I have loved. The actors almost invariably strike a false note with me. There are rare exceptions. Gregory Peck, for example was Atticus Finch.

[Sherrie Holmes]

From Sherrie:

I like to have a picture as a mental stimulus while I write. I don't purposefully look for a picture of my hero or heroine when I first start a story, because I'm just getting to know my characters and they are only vaguely formed in my mind.

However, once I'm into my story, I inevitably come across a picture of someone who looks *just* like my hero or heroine. I laminate it and keep it taped to the corner of my monitor until the book is finished.

The picture is a focal point for me, a constant reminder that this person is in my life and in my head, and it seems whenever I look at it, I get new ideas about plot twists or character development.

I'm a very visual person, so visual aids are useful to me. I also figure that when x novel gets published, I have a picture of my H/H to supply the art department as a guide. *g* That's not saying they would ever use it, but it might give them an idea what the characters look like--which is probably a far cry from anything they could produce.

[Nina P]

I rarely play the casting game. Like Jo said people are like music, in constant motion. I want the author to paint the picture. Although I love to see images of what the author was thinking of/working from. Thank you for sharing your ‘photos’ with us, Jo.

My characters often come to me in phases, similar, once again, to the way Jo described. I start out with the basics – dark hair, deep blue eyes – then they being to whisper to me of their joy and pain as I move along. These will often affect the way they sit, stand, walk, dress and how their face wears their emotions.

My current wip is based on a real person. Having access to his personal journal and the only known image of him when he was 16 has fueled my 'experience.’ But still he whispers to me, filling in between the lines of his own journal.

--Nina, hoping the rapping at the door isn't accompanied by a straight jacket.

[merry]

Maybe Tom Conti when he was younger as Rothgar. But who could play Cyn?
Merry

[Jane George]

Hmmm,

Okay, as everyone's imagination is different, there's no wrong answer, right? (Except for Mel Gibson) ;-j

Rothgar: A bit of Ciaran Hindes(only as in Ivanhoe or Jane Eyre) mixed with a bit of the fey intelligence of Edward Norton in The Illusionist.

Fort: A young Robin Ellis mixed with Edward Burns.

I'm mixing because there is no substitute for the imagination, which is why movies are great but books are better.

I do sometimes start with photos as jumping off points because I am a trained visual artist. My h/h in my WIP started with Aidan Gillen http://lordoftheflies.org/img/ST.JPG
and Rosamunde Pike. http://img459.imageshack.us/img459/5424/pride3qs.jpg
I put their pics together to see if there was chemistry. I thought, Yup!

[Jane George]

Dear Nina,

As long as his name isn't Tom Riddle, you should be okay.

[Jo Beverley]

Excellent points and picks.

On Cyn, I think Orlando Bloom could play him. And Ioan Gruffudd could have been Francis, but now he's into his thirties, not really.

That's my big problem. Most of my heroes are mid-twenties and there aren't that many actors known at that age, and fewer that have presence.

In history, many men had achieved a great deal before 30. Perhaps I'll riff on our society's unfairness to the younger man.

Jo :)

[Patricia Rice]

I have a visual image of my characters in my head. Since I am extremely bad, beyond extremely bad, at recognizing faces (I see character, for some reason, not actual features), trying to put a movie actor to my characters is difficult. And with the contemporaries, it really is necessary because so many people these days identify with these images, so a movie star description helps draw them in faster. But you really don't want to be around when I'm trying to brainstorm who the image in my head looks like. I can go back quite a few decades to pick out a face since I like old movies. Not very helpful to younger readers.

[MaryK]

It's been a while since I read Rothgar so I remember nothing about his physical description. But I'm thinking Clive Owen could do his character justice.

[RevMelinda]

Hi Jo,
You're going to think this is nuts but the actor who comes closest to my mental image of Rothgar is Goran Visnjic (the darkly beautiful doctor on ER). I can picture him as gracefully lethal in lace.
Melinda

[Jo Beverley]

I don't watch ER, but from pics, I think you're right, RevMelinda. Definitely the right look!

Jo