Something Lynda said in another thread sparked a question for me, and rather than hijack that thread, I'll ask it here.

Lynda said:

"One thing that helps me anchor my main characters is to choose someone (usually an actor) who resembles them either in personality or physically and keep that person in mind when I'm writing my characters. The "real" people used as models would probably never recognize themselves, and since I don't really know them, their personalities are my creation, but having a way to anchor that character somehow helps me to keep him grounded."

That jumped out to me because I don't do anything like that. Physically, my characters are always pretty vague in my imagination. I just have a very basic idea of what they look like. For example, one of my MC's in my current WIP is thin, female, tan, light brown hair, not particularly pretty. Most of those details don't even make it into the story, so the physical description of her is even more vague than her image in my head. Other than that, she's just kind of a blur in my head.

I know my characters' personalities, though. I know very clearly when I've given her a line of dialogue that she wouldn't say, or when I've made her make a decision she wouldn't make. I know what she would do in any given situation.

So I was just wondering how clearly you know what your characters look like. When you close your eyes, can you clearly visualize their physical appearance? Or are you like me, and they just look like amorphous blobs of skin with a couple distinguishing characteristics? Or do you do something else completely?

Also, how clearly do you tend to describe characters in your stories (physically)?

Women are hard to find pictures of for me because none of my female characters look like rail-thin smiley actresses. You can believe they kick a**.

If you don't have a strong picture yourself of your characters, how can you convey that to your readers? I couldn't. So... no, my characters are never amorphous. Even the secondary characters tend to be pretty definitely drawn.

Edit: I don't do a huge amount of physical description though. Of my MC probably next to none. Of my secondary characters, I'll give my MC's impression of them. If my reader visualizes them differently than me that's all right. What is important is that I know them well enough for them to be real to me. Otherwise I am convinced I couldn't make them real to the reader.

"If my reader visualizes them differently than me that's all right. What is important is that I know them well enough for them to be real to me."

For me, that's the answer to your question, JeanneT. I guess, for me, knowing my characters doesn't require knowing exactly what they look like. It doesn't really matter to me exactly what they look like. If I can convey to my reader what kind of person the character is, then I feel I've achieved my goal.

I just realized I also do the same thing when I'm reading; I don't necessarily develop a clear picture of what the character looks like unless it's required by the story. In fact, even when the author gives me a list of specific details about how the character looks, I still don't create a clear image in my head of what he/she looks like.

My point was that I couldn't.

For dialogue, I have to be able to hear them. I know what their voices sound like and they each have a very distinctive "voice." I picture what they're doing. If I can't, then I can't convey it. That involves picturing the characters as well. I can see their gestures. I know that Neska rubs the palms of her hands--where her tattoos originated--when she's nervous because I can see her doing it.

I guess part of the reason I find this necessary is that when I write, I picture my characters in my head and try to channel them. If I can't get a clear picture, I can't do that.

I don't go into lengthy descriptions in my novels. I know what they look like, but I try to pass on only the most salient and distinctive aspects of their physical characteristics, something that might convey who they are.

As an example, one of the MCs in Kings Falcon is King Jurriaan, he's loosely patterned off Bruce Boxlightener in his role as John Sheridan in Babylon 5. I seriously doubt anyone but me would visualize him that way though. The entire physical description for the man is 17 hands tall, eyes the color of a willow tree after the rain, light brown hair with touches of grey at the temples and he smells like a spring rain. You only get that much description because Falcon is a spy and looks after details like that. She notices that he's pretty careful to ensure his nails stay clean, but the reader doesn't. For me, I couldn't develop his personality (like the fact he runs his hand though his hair when he's nervous) unless I knew what he looked like.

People are all over the fence in physical descriptions. Some want a lot, some what next to none. After having been in the first group, I'm now in the second. You don't need a lot to describe someone though.

He was a ferret of a boy. (Thank you, Robert Dugoni - The Jury Master- for that description). Tells me worlds about him and gives me a strong visual even though it doesn't mention hair, skin or eye color.

Lisa Scottoline - Daddy's Girl, Killer Smile - has fairly detailed physical descriptions in her books and often uses the same characters. She was suprised when at a book signing someone told her that she knew exactly what perfume on of the MCs wore. This wasn't a book detail but a reader one. So, realize that even when you are detailed about physical appearance the reader is going to spin it. Too much detail can be a turn off though.

What I mean is that it may depend on your dominant sense.

Some people process the world visually, and those people would probably need a clear picture of their characters.

Others process the world more through sound, and those people would need to know how their characters talk, etc.

There are also those who process kinesthetically (touch/feel or movement) and they would need to know how their characters act, move, etc.

I've met someone who seems to process by smell/taste more than other senses.

Suzette Haden Elgin wrote a book entitled TRY TO FEEL IT MY WAY in which she talks about how the words we use often indicate our dominant sense. It's a cool book to have if you want to use sense dominance in your characterizations because it gives you ideas of how you can use dialog to characterize.

Example:

sight dominance: "I see what you mean." "Look at it my way."

hearing dominance: "I hear you." "Listen to this."

touch dominance: "I can't seem to grasp that." "How can I get a handle on that?"

annepin said:

"For instance, i can't imagine being the same person if I were, say, blonde."

I am blonde. I can imagine myself being exactly the same person with other hair colors. In fact, I have had blonde hair (naturally), black hair, brown hair, and blue hair. During all of those phases, I saw myself as the same person. Not disagreeing with you, just thinking out loud. Clearly, you and I have different ways of seeing and thinking about the world (which is cool.)

On the other hand, I'm sure other people judged me very differently when I was in my blue hair phase. Perhaps a pertinent point.

Katleen, I absolutely think it's a processing thing. Like I said above, I don't picture my own characters or characters in books I am reading very clearly at all. I hear their voices, though. I know exactly how every one of my characters sounds. And I know exactly how they move. I know that a particular character will shrug his shoulders when he has no response to another character...I know that one character will put her hand on her husband's shoulder to calm him down when he is upset, and I know it works on him...I know one character is very touchy-feely, and another is not.

So I wonder if it would be useful to try to incorporate ways of perceiving the world other than the ones I tend to lean toward? (Which would be a motor-kinesthetic figure of speech, right?) Do you think incorporating more visual information would be good to appeal to visual readers? Or do you think giving information in the way your own mind works is more likely to feel real because that's the way you experience it in your own imagination?

And no problem, wetwilly. I like discussing these things, just people have been a bit touchy lately so I didn't want to seem to be saying that only my way was the "right" way.

It's weird. I will lay in bed and "play" scenes in my mind when I watch and hear what they do. But smell and touch I try to add. They don't come naturally to me.

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So I wonder if it would be useful to try to incorporate ways of perceiving the world other than the ones I tend to lean toward?

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But in general I try to engage all of my senses. Part of it is that it's fun to try to stretch yourself. The other part of it is you want to give adequate sensory information for all readers, whether visual, tactile, auditory, etc. Again, I try to think of the most salient characteristic of a place.

I get the most positive comments about my dialogue. I have been told by editors that my characters are very good at "sounding" different which I attribute to the fact that I hear them.

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So I wonder if it would be useful to try to incorporate ways of perceiving the world other than the ones I tend to lean toward? (Which would be a motor-kinesthetic figure of speech, right?) Do you think incorporating more visual information would be good to appeal to visual readers? Or do you think giving information in the way your own mind works is more likely to feel real because that's the way you experience it in your own imagination?

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It is probably okay for writers to let their point of view (and/or) main characters perceive/process the way they do, because those characters need to be the most real/believable, and I do think that doing it the way their own minds work is more likely to feel real to readers, especially at the start of their learning about this kind of characterization.

I think writers should have other characters perceive/process in other ways, though, just to help them be different from the writer and from the point of view characters. You don't want all of the characters in your story to perceive/process in the same way unless that is part of the culture or genetic heritage (as in aliens) that you are trying to show in your story.

As writers become better at developing characters who perceive/process differently from them, they can experiment with other processes in their point of view characters.

There is more to being visual than saying "the man had brown hair." The words you use can set the image even when there is no "physical" element - like the "ferret of a man" description.

I've used the practice of modeling my characters after somebody else (mannerisms, speech patterns, temperments, physical attributes) many times before, and liked the clarity and the direction it offered when the time came to determine how my characters would behave in a given situation.

However, when I got back into my science fiction stretch, I essentially abandoned the practice. Especially since I use mostly non-human characters. The last thing I want my aliens to do is emulate obvious human behavior, so I detatch them from anyone I've ever known or seen or heard about.

I just recently began work on a young adult novel, and got several chapters into it before I realized I forgot to reestablish my practice; my characters were flowing mindlessly in whatever direction the story's action wanted to take them, instead of exhibiting any level of resistance or reaction based on their own personal / physical / spiritual / etc. traits. I put the manuscript aside, and spent the next however long it was working on my character sketches. Looking at the manuscript I have now, it was well worth the time I invested.

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I'm not sure how this plays out in writing, other than I suppose an auditory sequential learner might prefer if you describe things in an orderly fashion, say going left to right in a room or something like that. Visual-spatials probably won't care the order, but they might prefer that you describe the most important things first.

I am a highly visual processor. Hallmark: I don't get lost. I "see" the places I go as though from birdseye, looking down at a map. I don't need a GPS system in my car. I like maps. I can almost always point north, no matter where I am or whether I've been there before. Fun for party tricks, let me tell you. Other weird ways I "see" the world - to do simple math in my head, I literally move along a numberline that I see in my head. It's just like the one that I had on my desk in first grade, not kidding. Only mine is infinite. When I need to get up to a higher number, it sort of scrolls to the right. To do negatives, no problem - go left. What this means is it takes me a LOT longer to do some mental math because I'm traversing distances.

Seriously. I know, it sounds nuts, but for every person who thinks I sound nuts, someone else is going to say "OMG! I thought it was just me!"

Had a funny conversation about this on another writer's board where several of us realized we know where things are in our notebooks by sight. "Oh yeah, I know I wrote that down, about 1/2 way down the page, first third of the notebook, it's in blue ink, I circled it - it's in the right margin...." and on we went. There's a bunch of us fruitcakes out there. Some estimates are that as many as 60% of people tend to process things in a visual/spatial way as opposed to auditory/sequential.

However, I don't necessarily "see" the characters I am writing in great detail. I have them in approximations, in abstract perceptions in my head. I am still newish to writing, but have been working hard for about a year to learn everything I can.

One thing I am finding is that I need to do a fair amount of "what motivates/frightens/excites this person" kinds of brainstorming before getting too far into the story. My tendency, which I think is a standard novice tendency, is to resort to very simplistic physical descriptions. Stuff from a police blotter - height, weight, hair color, eye color, etc. A good description of a character might include none of that. "She carried herself hunched, as though she'd given up already." or "She had a worn-out look about her, her eyes drooped down and the skin on her cheeks sagged." Not that these are Hemmingway, but they're better than "She was about 5 feet tall and had light brown hair. Looked to be about 50."

So, all this to say - I don't think it much matters if you don't know exactly how your characters LOOK, but I do think it matters that you know exactly how your characters ARE.

I'm a professional sculptor, have been a professional singer and done a wee bit of acting. I see my characters fully-fleshed, see their gestures, hear the timbre of their voices ("timbre" not "timber" - look it up), the rhythm of their speech. I'm allergic to perfume, which I used to enjoy wearing, and if someone walks by with perfume on, I may enjoy the scent before sneezing or developing asthma. When my hubby sprays his Right Guard in his bathroom two rooms away, I'm often drawn to go chew on his neck a bit by the scent (heehee - there are lots of reasons we're still happily married after nearly 37 years - this playfulness is one of them).

Because of my reactions to scent, I suppose, I enjoy including references to scent in my writing. I think scent is one of those things that anchors some of our memories - think of coming home on your birthday to smell the delicious aroma of your birthday cake in the oven. Instant smile, right? And I'll bet you can smell that scent when you think of that memory.

One of my main characters in my novel (Ethan) is serious, shy, very responsible, and has a very dangerous temper he had to learn to control early (accidental magic caused some serious problems when he was young and lost his temper). So he developed the habit of clenching and unclenching his jaw over and over while he tries to control his temper. Both he and Jake, his brother, will rake their fingers through their hair when they're impatient or confused sometimes. And when they meet the girls who will become important to them, they notice the scent of the girl's hair, perhaps, or how the sunlight glitters in her hair, or that her hazel eyes change color with what she's wearing, or the light, or how her nose is just lightly dusted with freckles. As an artist, I notice these details about people, so I include them in my writing.

It's fun to pick actors as the models for my characters. I have some pictures of guys who resemble my heroes taped to the bookcase over my desk - good for reference' sake, and nice decor, as well, LOL! And as someone else here wrote, I spend the time when I can't sleep hearing them talk through various scenes, so I know their voices and how they'll react in various situations. It's like being at a party, listening to friends talk after a while.

I think the details one character notices about another can help the reader get to know both characters better. That's what I like to read, and that's the way I write.

I'm apparently part of the 60%...although I was always under the impression that the percentage was much lower.

Long before SIM cards caused us to forget phone numbers, I usually only remembered dialing patterns. If somebody asked me for a phone number, I would trace the pattern in the air with my finger to figure out what numbers to tell them. That amused a number of people.

As far as directions go...after I drive somewhere new for the first time, I've got it memorized forever...unless they chop down all the trees or demolish all the buildings or something else to mess with my visual cues.

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What it amounts to is that the picture I have in my head is fuzzy, but if you started showing me pictures I might be able to recognize my characters, or at least to say, "Yeah, that one's close. Too grumpy, though," or something like that.

I always know what their voices sound like (they're talking all the time, after all). But now that I think of it, their voices are probably as fuzzy in my head as their appearance. I mean, if someone with just the right voice for one of my characters called on the phone, I wouldn't "recognize" them. I'm sure that there are loads of people, though their voices vary, with just the right voice to suit me, just as there are loads who look enough like the character that I wouldn't be upset (by virtue of appearance, anyway) if they played him/her in a movie. I've got a better idea of what words my characters use, and of their intonation, than I have of exactly what their voice sounds like, though I'll certainly know whether it's smooth or raspy, high or low, rich or reedy.

Habits and mannerisms tend to spring from character, but usually have a random component. The same character traits could probably result in someone who, when angry, stamps his foot, slaps the side of his leg, or clenches his fist. I don't worry about that type of thing until my characters get angry, and then I pick one (and thereafter make that their preferred, though not exclusive, method of showing anger).

Of course, there's a non-random element here also; character's who aren't married aren't about to twist their wedding ring when nervous; bald men (or women) won't run their fingers through their hair, though they may well rub their hand over the tops of their heads.

I guess what it all amounts to, for me, is that I don't really know any aspect of a character until it shows itself in the story. Sorry, that's not true; I've got a core character in mind before I actually start writing about him/her. But most of the details show up in my head when they show up in the book, and not before. And details of physical appearance rarely show up.

I dunno why, it's just the way I process things.

When it comes to physical description, my secondary characters generally get more than my main character. For one thing, my main character sees them so she is likely to think about their appearance. She wouldn't describe herself and I work in close 3rd. The other is that I am aware that readers generally tend to assume that a main character looks like themselves. Identifying with the main character is fine. I don't want them identifying with secondary characters who may well get killed off.

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The other is that I am aware that readers generally tend to assume that a main character looks like themselves.

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