# How do you visualize your characters?



## Leif GS Notae (Apr 19, 2012)

Since it's the modern age, and everyone has their tabs and computers connected and streaming, I'm curious to know the ways you go about visually "sketching" your character?

I know when I was a video game player, I would often use the character creation screens from games like The Elder Scrolls to get an idea as to how my current "obsession" would look like. I've heard some people using their WoW characters (and those they ran into) as good ways to get a clear look at a character before writing them.

With great mods out there for games like Oblivion (my poor compy can't handle the next game) and Skyrim; you can get a pretty good 3D character made and in a fantasy setting to see if they fit there.

Some use the Hero Generator (though I can't really use it too much); it is a simple way to get a visual, but there's something to be said about seeing your character in 3D.

I know some of the concept sketches from video games and movies that the companies release after they are finished with the project can spark something. Same with places like Deviant Art.

So, what do you use?


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## Caged Maiden (Apr 19, 2012)

I'm old-school.  I use pencil and paper if I really want a picture.  Sometimes I clip things from magazines like a sword I think looks cool or a dress I like and I have a folder of compiled clippings I draw inspiration from when I draw.


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## The Din (Apr 19, 2012)

I honestly have never even tried to visualize any of my main characters, let alone draw them. I like to leave character descriptions open, as each reader has their own interpretation, (exceptions being scars, missing body parts, and the occasional pair of breasts). Thus my own characters appearances remain somewhat of a mystery even to me, which I enjoy and have no designs on changing.  

If I ever were to draw one, I'd probably use photoshop, possibly off a prerendered computer game character. I have been considering doing this for the cover, though would probably stick to silhouettes due to the above reasons.


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## shangrila (Apr 19, 2012)

Generally, I use Deviant. There's tons of amazing artwork there and its not all that hard to find something specific you might be looking for.

I've never used the video game/3D way though. I'll have to give it a try.


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## Shockley (Apr 19, 2012)

I have a folder of 'inspirational' images on my desktop that I base characters off, so it can be a little bizarre to describe it. Just for instance, Osric (my protag) looks like the statue of Rollo the Viking in Bayeux. Another character looks like how Woodhouse painted Circe. Etc.


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## Ireth (Apr 19, 2012)

I've tried drawing my characters, but they never turn out quite like I imagine them in my head. :/ One of these days I might ask someone to draw one of my characters as a commission... it's deciding which one(s) I want art of most that's the trouble. ^^;


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## Jabrosky (Apr 19, 2012)

I love to draw my characters and upload them onto DeviantArt, although I always end up revising their design multiple times due to my fickle muse.


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## Ghost (Apr 19, 2012)

It's rare, but sometimes when I search Google images for something unrelated to writing a photo will pop up that makes me think, "Wow, you look exactly like one of my characters!" Like Shockley, I have a folder of saved images, but they're often a jumping off point rather than specific characters. Only my gods get special treatment. 

For the most part, I have a hard time visualizing characters. I can see their clothing, their body types, and their hands. I can hear their voices really well. I get a sense of their personalities. That's it. I have a character whose personality I'm getting to know very well, and I still can't see him from the neck up.

I wonder if it says something about me that most of my characters are faceless. Two-thirds of people in my dreams have blurry faces or no faces at all.

I can't even draw stick figures well, so there's no way I could draw credible portraits of my characters.


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## Penpilot (Apr 19, 2012)

I don't always have a clear image of my characters. To me they're like mental states that you put on like a costume, so they don't always see themselves. But as I write a character, sometimes they'll take the face of an actor or actors and their mannerisms, inside my head. Generally, I don't put too much into physical description other than to convey the broad strokes, because no matter how in detail a character is described, the reader will map their own vision over it.


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## Jon_Chong (Apr 19, 2012)

I actually don't know how my characters would look like. Rather, I know how they feel like. Like this character has a motherly feel. Or this one is the stoic badass soldier type. I'll drop in a couple of descriptors to keep them from 'looking' the same - a scar, maybe a different weapon, height, hair, eyes - but most of the time I rely on generating a feel for the character and letting the reader decide for themselves how the feel translates to as a picture.


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## JCFarnham (Apr 19, 2012)

I think it's impossible _not_ to cast my stories. It's never been a case of trying to dictate to my readers imaginations though. I'm very visually minded, so to be able to portray and describe any character sensibly I like to have some form of representation for them. 

The entire main cast of my science fiction novel Blitz have been attached to different actors. For example, now I know that the starship captain and mercenary is similar to Cle Bennett, I know he has a comforting, deep, raspy voice.. I can use my own view of the actor to figure out how the protagonist Myra might view him. You might call it a jumping off point (but if the story ever needs to be cast for real I'm ahead of the game on knowing what I want right  haha). 

Oddly enough I haven't cast my urban fantasy, Faebound, which is odd for me. The only person I've set is a character known as the Librarian. Now I can't remember the actors name but honestly it doesn't matter, because I know my charcter is a small, wrinkled old man with an alternating streak of "mafia boss" and "kindly old boy". He almost looks uncomfortable in his skin...

You see, knowing these helps me short cut my way to being able to describe them. It also stops me from contradicting myself. I'd say this stems from my years of finding "PBs" for pbp free form roleplaying games.


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## Cirias (Apr 19, 2012)

I tend to get a good picture of them in my head first, so I know what they look like to me. Then when I'm planning the story out, I'll grab a picture off DeviantArt or somewhere similar of a similar looking character to mine. This helps me keep them in my head when I start to create secondary characters.


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## Steerpike (Apr 19, 2012)

I just have a few notes with salient details of the character's appearance. I don't need more than that to go on, and even if I had more information I wouldn't put it into the story because I think character descriptions are best when they are rather limited.


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## Queshire (Apr 19, 2012)

I have various ways to visualize my characters. Occasionally I use the character generator in City of Heroes, other times I sketch them out, but most of the time, I just visualize them as if they came out of an anime or manga. (I am an otaku and proud of it!)


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## Caged Maiden (Apr 20, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I just have a few notes with salient details of the character's appearance. I don't need more than that to go on, and even if I had more information I wouldn't put it into the story because I think character descriptions are best when they are rather limited.



Totally.  Even when I feel all creative and start sketching, I won't go into too much detail unless the detail is important.  I want a reader to envision the character as they see him, not as I do.  Sometimes, in fact, I have caught myself describing something and not even remembering what color hair my character has or whether it is curly or straight.  It's nice to keep things straight in your own mind, but mentioning a particular feature more than a few times is just tedious to read, so I'm a minimalist too when it comes to physical descriptions.


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## Ophiucha (Apr 20, 2012)

I couldn't draw my characters to save my life, and the sorts of appearances I favour for my MCs tend not to be options in the average RPG. At least one chubby character, at least one who is missing a hand (it's a strange recurring theme with me; I blame Tyr), and usually a fair few POC, which a lot of RPGs don't accommodate for. If I'm bored over a weekend, I might do a 'casting' for my characters, finding celebrities or models they look a lot like, but I don't really use it as a reference. I just do it for a bit of fun.

I guess I visualize my characters with bullet points.


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## Leif GS Notae (Apr 20, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I just have a few notes with salient details of the character's appearance. I don't need more than that to go on, and even if I had more information I wouldn't put it into the story because I think character descriptions are best when they are rather limited.



While I can understand that point of view, there is something more confirming by seeing your character in "living and breathing" visualization. I know I've looked at what I thought was my MC and thought 'they don't fit that role, but they look like a supporting character no problem.'

I always try to keep the visualization of the modern culture in mind when I write my stories, if there is something that applies and draws interest, I will use it. But when it boils down to it, books are much like TV and movies when you cast. It is culture defined, not culture opposite. 

It's the curse of living in this modern age.


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## Argentum (Apr 20, 2012)

I do the same thing as Cirias. I picture the characters in my head first. I usually don't go looking for a picture to attach my character to, because if I did, it would make me feel like I depended on someone's picture in order to actualy create my character. I wouldn't be able to feel like that character was entirely mine and would feel a whole lot like cheating to me, personally. But I do like surfing through Deviantart, picking out all the pictures that remind me of my characters to save in a nice little album.


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## The Dark One (Apr 20, 2012)

This is amazing. It's never occurred to me (as I write) what my characters look like. Certainly not the main character...I tend to mostly write in 1st person so the main character probably looks like me (in my mind). I give few details re appearance of the main characters, but enough (as relevant) about non-narrator characters.

The first time I had a book published, I felt weird about the fact that the main character was portrayed on the cover. I remember being relieved that the face was obscured...and now I understand why.


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## Aidan of the tavern (Apr 20, 2012)

Like several people here, the images I have of my characters are often hazy.  I know what they look like, but not to the point of seeing their faces exactly and intricately, with a few exceptions.  I've tried drawing them, always comes out a load of cobblers, so I don't really bother.  I just have images in my head I guess.  I also have a terrible fear that if I were to provide my reader with illustrations I would be replacing their image of a character with an inferior one.


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## Steerpike (Apr 20, 2012)

Leif GS Notae said:


> While I can understand that point of view, there is something more confirming by seeing your character in "living and breathing" visualization. I know I've looked at what I thought was my MC and thought 'they don't fit that role, but they look like a supporting character no problem.'
> 
> I always try to keep the visualization of the modern culture in mind when I write my stories, if there is something that applies and draws interest, I will use it. But when it boils down to it, books are much like TV and movies when you cast. It is culture defined, not culture opposite.
> 
> It's the curse of living in this modern age.



I think that approach is taken by many. Some authors will try to communicate all of that detail to the reader, others want it for themselves because it helps them understand and 'feel' the character better. Whatever proves successful for any given writer should be encouraged. Even if I develop a good deal of detail about a character, I don't generally share it with the reader. Readers develop a mental image of a character very quickly, so if you're going to share a lot of detail I think it has to be done very quickly after the character is introduced. Even then you can expect that the reader will incorporate one or two primary features into her own mental image, and that's about it (speaking in general terms). I've read books where the author applies a little bit of description early on, then four of five pages later mentions another physical characteristic, then another a few pages after that. It's too late at the point. At best, the reader will just ignore it and continue on with her own visualization; at worst it will be jarring to the reader because it will conflict with the image they have in mind.


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## Holdwyne (Apr 21, 2012)

I ran across an article online from Lucia Zimmitti. She is a Writing Coach and Independent Editor ( among other things). The article gives some great exercises in character development designed to make you really flesh out a charater far beyond that you might need to ever portray in your writing, BUT...This development should help you to know your character so intimately that you can write them as real living breathing characters that will create that sympathetic or Empathetic connection we would all like to make with the reader. Its not a long article and well worth reading.. The exercises will take you some time but IMHO it will be time well spent and may even help you to eliminate some of the more common issues you can run into when a character has not been fully developed.

I hope I am not breaking any rules here by posting a link.......if I am, please accept my apology and moderator remove the entire post. I could I suppose write the gist of the entire article in here but I really do abhor plagiarizing.... 
For those who havent seen this article
Check it out!!
Create Vivid, Memorable Characters


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## TWErvin2 (Apr 21, 2012)

My characters exist in my mind's eye. It's more of a snapshoot than a super-detailed image. When characters are described to readers, it's along that lines, giving them just enough to build their own image of the character, based on some physical description, but also upon other details, such as dialogue, name, relationship to other characters already established, habits, profession, etc.

While it's handy to have a consistent image, trying to control the reader and demand they 'see' the character exactly as the author does isn't a solid course to follow.

It's interesting seeing cover art created, or even 'fan' art created depicting characters and how it matches and diverges from the image I'd formed, while writing (my works) or reading another author's works. I guess the same could be said for translation of a book to film.


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## Holdwyne (Apr 21, 2012)

I am not certain you can ever actually control the readers image of the character. Even if you have fleshed the character out in your mind or in notes you will only write so much in and the reader will still need to fill in the blanks.

Besides that, Every person see's another person through different eyes. For example, If you took a group of friends and asked them each separately to describe a person known to all of them in detail, while you would get some similarities, you will as likely get many observations that are different.

We see things differently therefor we fill in blanks differently. While the general traits come through to most people quite strongly, the subtleties of a persons characteristics are seen in varying degree's by all of us and in some part based on who We are and what is important to us.

So can you Over characterize, perhaps in writing to much specific detail about the person,yes,  but not in how they respond to or react to things Based on how You fleshed them out IMHO....these things should be kept consistent, at least until they change as the story progresses and the character matures, grows, or learns more as needed to support the story line.....

But everyone does write as individuals and should do what they are comfortable with, And share what works for them as You have.....
If what you are doing works for you, than who am I to argue it. The new writer should be shown options, ways others do things that may also work for them so that they can try the various methods and find the right choice for their needs.

Since this is a forum for everyone from the beginner to the veteran, I thought perhaps this article might be valuable to some, just as Your method some will also find valuable....Me, I like a clear picture so that how my character will respond to situations that arise flows naturally with little thought needed...........But that's Me...


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## The Dark One (Apr 22, 2012)

Holdwyne said:


> I ran across an article online from Lucia Zimmitti. She is a Writing Coach and Independent Editor ( among other things). The article gives some great exercises in character development designed to make you really flesh out a charater far beyond that you might need to ever portray in your writing, BUT...This development should help you to know your character so intimately that you can write them as real living breathing characters that will create that sympathetic or Empathetic connection we would all like to make with the reader. Its not a long article and well worth reading.. The exercises will take you some time but IMHO it will be time well spent and may even help you to eliminate some of the more common issues you can run into when a character has not been fully developed.
> 
> I hope I am not breaking any rules here by posting a link.......if I am, please accept my apology and moderator remove the entire post. I could I suppose write the gist of the entire article in here but I really do abhor plagiarizing....
> For those who havent seen this article
> ...


Of course, this is about developing/knowing your characters as opposed to visualising them...

The method I have developed myself for developing/knowing main characters and important tangential characters is to write short essays on them, describing important features but also minutiae that may or may not ever make it into the story. The important thing is, when I'm generating the prose, I know the characters so well it naturally comes out in the narrative as distinct from any specific descriptions.

I don't think that specific descriptions are that helpful unless they are important to the story - a character is six foot five, or blind, or a hunchback - you need to know that. A character has brown hair. You don't need to know that.

Described features need to be important enough to have a potential impact on the plot.


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## Helen (Apr 26, 2012)

Leif GS Notae said:


> Since it's the modern age, and everyone has their tabs and computers connected and streaming, I'm curious to know the ways you go about visually "sketching" your character?



I don't think I do that. 

Their function is first and foremostly important.

The function then tells me what sort of person may be needed to fulfill it.


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## gavintonks (Apr 26, 2012)

I do image searches and download stuff that catches my eye into a folder and then sort and sort and sort until I have stuff I really like


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## JBryden88 (Apr 26, 2012)

I'll admit, I use Skyrim. Especially since my characters belong to a culture that is a mostly semi-barbaric one, it's very easy to use Skyrim with enhanced mods (to make characters a little less dirty and/or blocky) to make up the characters from my story)


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## kennyc (Apr 26, 2012)

The Din said:


> I honestly have never even tried to visualize any of my main characters, let alone draw them. I like to leave character descriptions open, as each reader has their own interpretation, (exceptions being scars, missing body parts, and the occasional pair of breasts). Thus my own characters appearances remain somewhat of a mystery even to me, which I enjoy and have no designs on changing.
> 
> If I ever were to draw one, I'd probably use photoshop, possibly off a prerendered computer game character. I have been considering doing this for the cover, though would probably stick to silhouettes due to the above reasons.



I there can be danger in trying to describe all the details of a character, you want your reader to actively fill in their own details after you have sketched in enough to make the character feel real to the reader. It is a collaborative act from there on out. IMO.


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## gavintonks (Apr 26, 2012)

A character is the living vehicle of your words and story, so building them real does not mean you need to describe them as such, when you have them complete in your mind they get a voice of their own which allows you then to describe the essence leaving readers to form their own pictures, it like a simple Japanese line takes years of practice to look simple when in fact its no, but its the understanding that helps produce the right essence


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## Aidan of the tavern (Apr 26, 2012)

One of my characters is played by Liam Neeson.


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## Justme (Apr 30, 2012)

I seek out pictures of that which reflects my mental image of the character, so I can describe him/her more vividly.


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## SeverinR (Apr 30, 2012)

I have found pictures online of the general idea of two characters in one book, the others I only picture in my mind.

I do a search through fantasy pictures regularly looking for the right picture.

I have a story base set up on the picture I found, but haven't yet established the story.


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## studentofrhythm (May 3, 2012)

I've browsed art sites and downloaded a lot of images of old paintings, as well as some (mostly candid) portraits from Flickr.  For at least one of my characters I found a painting that matches my image of her almost exactly.


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