I am virtually unable to visualize the faces for my characters. Sure, I can think about facial details, but that's far from having a face talking and producing true expressions in your mind. So I decided to look for faces which I could glue on my characters' heads. I look for them in real life or I search for proper faces in movies. That's usually the best place to look because in movies these faces are also in more similar situations than real life people.
What do you do to find good faces?
Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :
This has been discussed in the past and I think came down to some people being more visual than others. I always visualize my characters' faces. I don't have to "find" them any more than I have to find the characters themselves. Other people don't visualize their characters at all or only do so vaguely.
Posted by KStar (Member # 4968) on :
I will normally decide on who the character is, all their personality traits, etc. and then fit it into a person I already know. This makes it easier to write them and gives me a total profile for their movements, reactions, others reactions to them, etc. It's usually a person I know, or a celebrity that I choose. The last book I finished was a girl from high school, and two actors. Once in a while I'll invent them, but I have a hard time achieving a stable visual of them when I do that.
Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :
Here's the discussion about this question Jeanne was referring to, Martin.
Is there an echo in here?
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
No echo, just a double post which I have now deleted.
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
I can't visualise the POV character's face because I look from their eyes, I see other characters clearly, though.
Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :
Thanks for the link, wetwilly. I will look into it more thoroughly when I have the time.
What I did read in that thread made me think on the way I once described my two main characters. I even went into their height and weight since that is quite different from our standards and just by putting out these numbers the reader could get the idea on the difference between them and ordinary Earthlings.
To skadder: what happens when your characters look into a mirror?
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
Then they usually look at their bodies. If they ever saw their own face it would cause some mental feedback loop and their head would explode.
I think.
Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :
Skadder, I think "And then his head exploded" is a much more interesting description than "he had blue eyes, long black hair, and a thin face," anyway.