If I have a picture of someone who looks very similar to my character, but want to change a few minor things to give her realistic flaws (thinner lips, bigger ears, etc.), or even change her eye or hair color, where would you suggest doing this? What photo editor app is best, or is there another technique that I'm not thinking of. I am no artist, so drawing it is not an option, Thank you!
Are you working on a picture book? Because you don't need to find or create images to create characters or even describe how they look. It's all about the right words to create such images more so than any actual image.
This is for my own personal use, not to necessarily put in the book. I feel like being able to accurately see my character gives me a better sense of who they are and how they do things.
Download some of that Adobe Photoshop! You can do anything with that, and whatever you DO want to do, you can find a five minute tutorial on YouTube to learn how to do it. Edit: Also welcome to the forums!
the picture book comment made me laugh. But Kelsey Alayna I do the same thing basically for my own personal use. I find pictures of what they COULD look like then modify them in my head. I'm sorry I don't have any programs or apps to suggest because I don't use any but I as stated photoshop is the way to go from what I've hear. However, I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this. I love having clear images of EXACTLY what my characters look like even if the the reader may never see them the way I do. And we are happy to have you here!
I do the same thing. I don't use real people though. I tend to go to character creator/avatar creators (like the avatar creator I used for my profile picture) and create my characters. There are so many options from skin color, hair, eyes, nose, etc. I use one in particular for almost all my characters. Its from the shoulder's up. I use it because it gives you non traditional skin colors like reds, greens, purples, etc. Non traditional eye color, options for body marks like scars, tattoos, beauty marks. You can change the shape of the face. 3 pages of nose shapes, eyebrow shapes, lips, eyes. The clothing, though, has less options, but i tend to put them in generic clothes, because to me, the clothes aren't as important as how the character actually looks physically. Once I'm satisfied with how they look, it makes it easier to write about them because they become that much more real. If I can visualize them, I can write about them.
Why? Is this how you define your friends and your antagonists, in terms of their appearance? Try visualizing them by their behavior instead. If nothing else, it will press you to expand your people perceptions.
It's pretty common to express a character's personality through their appearance, and not entirely unrealistic either. Look at R. Lee Ermey (RIP) for example: he looks like a D.I. because he was a D.I.; his physique, hair, deportment, and manner of speaking all reflect it. An example from my own WIP; Cynthea is Lily's mother and creator; Teacher is a retired harrower (a dangerous terraforming profession, think Navy SEAL with degrees in geology, biology, biochemistry, and civil engineering) hired to teach Lily to fly, Lily is the MC: Cynthea studied Teacher and Lily. The two couldn’t be more different. Teacher: petite, middle-aged, and muscled like a marathoner, she moved with certainty and precision. If the first thing people noticed was her size, the second was the resolve that showed in everything, from her posture to the cut of her dark brown hair. Lily: seventeen, pale, average height, and full-figured. Soft, skin to soul; building her resolve was Teacher’s current focus. Progress was frustratingly slow. Lily was cooling herself with relaxed beats of her beautiful dark wings. And with her tail, too, fanning her face with the spread webbing at its end. That'd been so cute when she’d been little, when it had been just the two of them, in those wonderful years before the failures and disappointments. ... They both had brown eyes, but the color was all they shared. Lily’s were shy, hesitant, and gentle. Teacher’s were bright, alert, and sharp, and watched Cynthea intently. Always evaluating. Let her, as long as she did her job. This is from Cynthea's POV of course, but still, both characters' appearance reflect aspects of their personalities, but only aspects. And more importantly, both character's looks influence how people first think of them, which is important to the plot -- as it should be. Perhaps people shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but they do anyway, and first impressions matter. Lily is an (illegally) genetically engineered human modeled on a succubus. Cynthea's choice of that model wasn't entirely arbitrary, it's derived from the physics of how Lily will (eventually) fly and the need for her to (eventually) have children. She is not horny, though, in either sense of the word.
in my writing popular fiction class, we had a whole unit on character development. my professor used pintrest to make a list of things her character would wear, would like, activities they'd like to do. hair styles they would wear. sometimes she'd include people she thought resembled her character. she says it helped her visualize her character and made it easy to write their story. her characters took on a life of their own versus 2 dimensional descriptions that didnt seem real or empathetic. I tried the pintrest thing, but i found that this method didnt work for me. but still, its a common enough thing that it is taught in writing pre-reqs
I don't know what narrative you are using, but how other characters see the main character in the story can be a real eye opener. A single comment by secondary character about the MC can have more relevance to a reader than a paragraph of description.
I don't agree with your professor. I find all the contortions writers put their characters through just to introduce a visual likeness incredibly tedious. Trust the reader to have enough imagination to make up their own image of the character, with just a nudge or two here and there to set general appearance parameters. Unless you really want to collect a readership of unimaginative drones who have to be led by the nose through every scene and subtle story turn.
Please dial back the one-true-wayism and needless personal jibes. You can express your opinion perfectly well without them.
I'm sorry that's how you see it. Need I preface every post with, "In my opinion"? I offer one perspective, and there are no personal jibes. I respect the reader, and don't insult his or her intelligence (or imagination) if I can help it. But I see writers trying to control the reader's perception to the Nth degree, and that is what I'm cautioning against. If it doesn't work for you, at least you've heard another option to ignore.
I'm always pleased when I run across a photo of somebody who looks like my character (in my head, anyway) but I don't really look for the photos beforehand. I guess I get a pretty good idea of what they look like as I write them. How they look is more than just physical features, as well. It's how they move, how they stand, what their facial expressions are like, etc. I haul these out as needed in the story. However, I do have a fairly concrete impression of what my characters look like. I try not to dump too much on the reader, though. At least not all at once. Whatever works. I am a little bit nervous when new authors seem to get quite fixated on listing character 'traits,' especially before writing the story. Too often, these traits emerge in the story as a list, and often too soon for the reader to take it all in. I do like to 'know' what a character looks like, but I think I prefer to conjure up the picture myself, from the hints the author gives me. But to each his own. I've read people on this forum who don't want to know what a character looks like at all, and others who MUST have the laundry list in order to proceed. So ...whatever works, I guess. Nothing is going to work for everybody. However, this struck me the other day, when I was thinking about the issue. While modern writing style is far removed from Victorian style, in many respects, one Victorian storytelling trait seems to be creeping back. It's this compulsion to step aside from the story, to tell the reader exactly what each character looks like—in minute detail. Usually right at the beginning. That's an interesting development.
You could start by not being so condescending so people aren't fooled by the fact that your "no personal jibes" actually do come across as quite personal. I think you completely underestimate how much appearance can do for a character. Done well, character appearances can tell the reader more about a character than even sometimes dialogue and actions. For example, let's say I have a male character in Victoria London whose well dressed with a clean suit, monocle sitting in a run down Irish pub. Right at first appearance, the man appears out of place as he pulls out his pocket watch, completely disinterested in the high energy that surrounds a brawl between two of the locals. That appearance alone, would tell you immediately that this gentleman is one of substance and out of place in this part of town. Or is he? If you observe closely, while his suit is clean, his shoes are quite cheap and worn down to the point of falling apart. As for the pocket watch he flaunts so readily, the facing is cracked and it doesn't work. This tells the reader that his clean appearance is a facade and he is one who wishes to hide his misfortunes, but unwittingly made himself all the more obvious in his surroundings. You see? It's not trivial. It just has to be done right.
I've read novels where the character's personal appearance reflects there change throughout the story. Just recently my friend did it in her own book, and it was a nice touch done well, so appearance is important in some stories. However, there are other ways to show a person nature than how they dress, especially when describing what they look like is often 'telling'. Actions speak louder than anything else, so it is a balance. I personally don't use existing people when I create characters so it's not anything I've ever done. I would consider looking on Google for some suggestions.
Appearance often does reflect character in the real world, and it can and should reflect character in fiction. One of my WIP characters starts the story obese, long-bearded, long-haired and shabbily dressed because he's lost the most important person in his life. But his appearance does more than just characterize him: he used to be well-groomed and athletic, and his appearance is so altered by his failure to care for himself that he's unrecognizable as who he used to be. And that almost ends the story before it truly starts. Real story: I used to have a long unkempt beard. One day I shaved it off and cut my hair, and my wife and I went to meet our best friends. I stood at the door of the building we were meeting them at, and our friends walked past me several times, before finally going to my wife and asking where I was. "I'm right here," I said. So my friend walks over, grabs me by the collar, and says: "What are you doing with my friends voice!?" Of course I had to use that in my story.
You can download Gimp. It's free, but not easy to use if you want to start altering things the way you describe. I would suggest starting with the picture you want, adding another layer and then tracing over it and making your changes that way. It can be a real PITA to do with a mouse though. I understand your want to visualize your characters. I've done the same for mine. That doesn't mean I am going to spend three full pages describing it. It just helps my world be more three dimensional in my own mind. Also I enjoy playing around with that facet of it, and I like to inject as much enjoyment as possible into the process.
Also, as someone (me, lol) who often places her stories in the past, I do research on what clothing was worn at the time and i'd save the images or add it to my character's profile to reference. I was reading a historical romance that took place in the western territories, and the author described all the layers of clothing to her dress (not all at once). I feel like, unless you are super familiar with what they wore back then or majored in costume design, you wouldnt really know how to write this without researching and creating a visual character profile.
It all depends on the story and the handling. Sometimes, looks and dress matter quite a bit: goth and punk have distinct dress styles. In a modern urban setting, colors may identify different gangs or their territories. In older/fantasy settings the type of armor a character wears may show rank. If handled well, the descriptions blend in with the story, if done badly, they can be jarring. I try to make it part of the story where it makes sense to talk about the appearance. One character is a military commander. She is also small, so the pov character is naturally going to describe her as she stands out. Another character (her 2nd) is a rather large hulking guy, his height and size get referenced because he uses a wolf's tooth club(approx 2 meters long) in battle and makes a comment that he is one of the few men big enough to wield it comfortably and that with his size he can get it going pretty fast and that his men all know to leave him a cleared multi-meter radius to avoid getting hit when in combat. Again, the pov character comments on the appearance because the contrast between the two is so huge, it would be stranger if they didn't comment on it.
Perhaps this will come across as blunt or unfriendly, but I don't mean it to or wish to offend. I knew somebody once who saw herself as a writer. In the time I knew her, she wrote two chapters for one book, one for another, and a few pages for a third. All simultaneously, and all while spending (as far as I know) about 70% of her "writing time" designing covers for her books. We fell out in the end when she asked me to critique some of her work, and she wasn't particularly happy with my feedback. I was honest - I didn't feel like it was great writing, and I pointed out a couple of areas for improvement. I digress. My point is, she spent so much time designing covers that the writing was completely crap. It could have been really good stuff, if she'd put the time into it. As far as I know, she gave up writing in the end. Don't know what she's doing now. You can spend as long as you like designing your characters, and if it helps you picture them and helps you write, then go for it. But it won't help your reader. Say you've got your photo/drawing/CGI illustration on your desk, and you're writing the part of your story where you describe your character to us. What do you do? Your choices are a) describe him/her exactly as he/she appears in your reference image - completely bore the reader, or b) focus on the important parts, and let the reader build their own mental image - making all that time you spent on Photoshop pretty worthless. If it helps you WRITE, do it. Absolutely 100% do it. But your power is in the words you write down. And I agree with @Cogito - the power of a character is in who they are and how they act, not what they look like. Your characters aren't created in Photoshop, they're created in your writing. So write. I know how cynical this comes across, so I'll finish with this: do whatever the hell you want to do. It's your process, and your story, and it is absolutely nobody's place to tell you any different. But remember that the end product of your writing is your story, and (unless it's a picture book) nobody's ever going to see any pictures. Also worth noting that I actually do this (create images so that I have a visual reference) but that I spend about 5 minutes on a quick sketch, and add in any important colours, and then I spend about another 5 minutes noting down any particular traits/behavioural characteristics. I've got everything important on two or three post-its, and it took me 10 minutes. Then I can get back to writing, and it'll save me time later on. I'm in a grumpy mood, so I do apologise if this was all a little much. Good luck!
I think it's interesting what The Piper said about someone designing their own characters, because I think that's a terrific idea so long as you realise that it's mostly just for you and for your understanding of the character. I agree completely that when it comes down to it, don't bore the reader with tons of detail that doesn't even really matter. You know straight away you're in the hands of someone new or bad at writing if they want to tell you all about what the character's wearing; what their eye colour is; what their hair looks like. I'm not saying I've never done this myself, but basically people won't remember the majority of these descriptions unless they're really interesting or vivid. If you can describe the character's personality through their looks, then you'll probably succeed more in creating a memorable image of that character. You can sprinkle little bits of description throughout your chapter, but avoid overloading the reader with lots of physical detail. We don't need to know. Drawing, though, is something I've not heard before. I wish I could draw myself (or use Photoshop!). I'd say this is an excellent idea in the same way writing background story is; so long as you don't mind shredding it later, it's great. It can further your own handling of the plot or grasp more about your characters story. I think if you can visualise them and make them come to life through art it's easier to depict them in writing, but you have to understand it's also a different medium. In art, the visuals are everything and their appearance is very important. In writing, not so much. It's a good idea to experiment so long as you get to the point eventually.
This did not come off as cynical at all and I really do see what you're saying! I just finds that knowing all the details of the character can help some people write assuming you're not spending all your time in photoshop as you've said. I personally spend a lot of time on character looks because it helps me to visualize scenes better. If they were in a fight for example I like to think about how their hair moves, what clothes they are wearing that may effect the fight, their face expressions they might make, their body size etc alll the little details. And I tend to do that mentally for every scene. Of course I may not describe it all and I reader will never see exactly what I see but it helps me to build my scenes and think of them as real people.
