When you read how much do you visualize characters

[Aidan of the tavern]

I don't know if this should be in writing questions as its more of a reading question, but here goes.

When you read, how much do you visualize the characters? How strongly do they appear in your imagination? Do you sometimes find yourself seeing them as looking like people you know, or actors? Or do your images of the characters always stay somewhat hazy or malleable? The reason I'm curious is this. At the moment I'm reading Sanderson's Final Empire, and last night it occurred to me that my mind hadn't quite decided how to picture one of the characters, and when I tried to picture them more clearly it felt a bit...inconsistent I guess, with how I had previously thought of them. I know what he looks like, I just hadn't tried to really picture him before. Some characters form quite clearly in my mind, but most of the time they have more malleable representations for me.

Sorry if that was long winded and rambling, what about you?

 

[Svrtnsse]

I tend to have a pretty good feel for what a character looks like. I couldn't describe them in any detail, but I'd recognize them if I met them on the street. If I stop to think about how the character actually looks it often ruins the impression I have of them and gives me conflicting images. Same with buildings and locations and a lot of other things. I know in my head what they look like, but when thinking too hard about them it breaks the image.

 

[Amanita]

It really depends in my case. I always have clear mental images of the country side where the story takes place. The same is not always true about the characters though. If I've watched the movie before I read the book, I might picture them like the actors but I don't tend to do this if it's the other way round. The more strongly immersed I feel in a story, the more clearly I picture the characters.
I'm one of those people who want some information on the way the author wants his or her characters to look like. Sometimes, my mind refuses to generate the pictures intended by the author for a while though. I've recently read a story where elves have black skin, ash-coloured hair and fangs and it took me til book two or three until I actually started seeing them like that in my head.

 

[Svrtnsse]

My mind settles fairly quickly on how a character looks and then it doesn't like to change that impression.

I try to account for this in my writing in that I give a short description of a character's appearance as soon as possible after they appear. I try to keep the description short and vague, to try and give the reader an impression of roughly what the character might look like rather than a detailed description of exactly how I imagine them.

For example this:

On the porch a happy chaos reigned as children of all ages and sizes dressed a large table for dinner. A short, very round woman with long black hair kept a watchful eye over the proceedings.
As Enar arrived she scowled and indicated a large wicker chair that hung suspended from one of the long wooden crossbars running over the deck. “There you are. Sit down and stay out of the way.”
Without waiting to see if he obeyed she turned her attention back to her children and proceeded to oversee the preparations for the meal.

I know exactly how this person looks, but their actual appearance really isn't that important to the story. It's enough that the reader gets that she's short and round and has dark hair - they can fill in the rest on their own. It's her behavior/personality that matters to this one and as that's something that a person experiences much slower than someone's experience I can dish that out bit by bit throughout the story.

 

[Penpilot]

I generally see characters as hazy malleable. For me, it's about the emotional feel. That's what cues what I see in my head. Sometimes what I see is crystal clear, like an actor's face, but for the most part all I see are the broad strokes.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

My mind settles fairly quickly on how a character looks and then it doesn't like to change that impression.

Pretty much the same as me. Even if a later description contradicts my image, the original vision wins every time.

 

[kayd_mon]

It depends, I guess. I do the "casting" thing sometimes, other times I visualize them how the author describes them, and then other times I visualize them just how I want to. I've sometimes pictured a character completely different than I'm supposed to, like a character will be black in my head, and then 2/3 of the way through the book, the author will mention the character's pale white skin. Oh well. Usually when that happens, I keep visualizing them the way I want. I guess others do the same! If an author wants a character pictured a certain way, they need to write the descriptions early on. Hair, facial features, skin color, etc. Otherwise, the reader will cling to their own idea.

 

[Ophiucha]

I have hazy visions of characters, often not influenced very heavily by in-text descriptions. I will almost instantly forget one-off mentions of 'golden locks' or 'green eyes darting across the room', so only heavy repetition or emphasis on physical traits will stick with my mental image. I've often envisioned characters as, not just having different hair or eye colours, but having different body types and races than what ended up in official art or the movie adaptation. Hermione Granger, for instance, I thought was black and a little chubby until the first movie came out.

 

[The Dark One]

When the LOTR movies came out, I loved them to bits, but at the same time I started grieving for my own mental imagery created in response to reading the books over 60 times (no exaggeration). It had been all but replaced by the movies and I HATED that. After watching The Return of the King once, I never watched any of the movies again and waited 5 years before trying to read LOTR again.

I'm happy to say that all my personal imagery returned, unsullied, and now co-exists uneasily with the movie imagery - just as my cat Grishnakh co-exists uneasily with the new cat (Frodo) next door.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

When the LOTR movies came out, I loved them to bits, but at the same time I started grieving for my own mental imagery created in response to reading the books over 60 times (no exaggeration). It had been all but replaced by the movies and I HATED that. After watching The Return of the King once, I never watched any of the movies again and waited 5 years before trying to read LOTR again.

I'm happy to say that all my personal imagery returned, unsullied, and now co-exists uneasily with the movie imagery - just as my cat Grishnakh co-exists uneasily with the new cat (Frodo) next door.

Yes, that's interesting. I'm of the age where I saw the films first, then read the books, and obviously the first time or so I read them I saw the characters as their actors. However, more recently when I read them I see them in a way which feels more triggered by Tolkien himself, especially the bits which didn't make it to film. As much as I love the films its nice to read bits which don't have that baggage.

 

[GroundedTraveler]

I definitely have ideas of what characters are like, but exact features don't seem to stick in my head when I read. Sometimes if I really like a piece of cover art, I will adapt that into my mental view of a character, but for others they remain hazy. I am much more about how a character speaks and what lines they have than what they exactly look like.

I do notice that this bleeds into my writing habits too. I often don't think to describe much of the characters physically and just plan out what cool lines I want them to have.

 

[Roan Davidson]

I always "cast" characters when I'm reading (or writing), using actors or musicians or whatever. I can't make up a person in my head, no matter how vague or detailed the description.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I don't clearly remember visual input (I couldn't tell you what my face looks like without checking a mirror), so I can't clearly visualize it, either. Even if there's a description in the story, it winds up looking like a Monet painting in my head.

 

[Chessie]

I definitely have ideas of what characters are like, but exact features don't seem to stick in my head when I read. Sometimes if I really like a piece of cover art, I will adapt that into my mental view of a character, but for others they remain hazy. I am much more about how a character speaks and what lines they have than what they exactly look like.

I do notice that this bleeds into my writing habits too. I often don't think to describe much of the characters physically and just plan out what cool lines I want them to have.

This is totally me, as well. Its one of the reasons why I love movies made out of books I like. "Oh, is that what they're supposed to look like?"

I would say one of my biggest problems as a writer is adding in descriptions of characters. I force myself to do it at least a bit, but I just want to get to the story!