I’m a very visual person.
It’s practically useless to tell me something, because you really need to show me.* You’d think this would complicate being a writer, eh? It does in a way, which is why I love things like Pinterest where I can find visual representations of the worlds and characters I want to create. I have a great imagination, I just don’t have detailed visuals.**
I don’t imagine faces.
Apparently (according to a brief googling) one cannot imagine faces that they haven’t seen, but pfft. I think people (definitely artists) must piece together their own “imagined faces”. I’m sure authors do this, too.
So, when you read, do YOU imagine the characters’ faces?
Do you piece together the author’s description and create a visual? Or do you have blank-faced individuals roaming your imaginings? Um, that does sound rather creepy, right? But…but that’s what I do.
Yes, I imagine castles and countries, and clothes and food, but I cannot imagine faces. I imagine what they wear! Their hair colour! Their body shape! BUT THEIR FACE IS JUST A BLUR. I apologise for shouting at you. But it bothers me. I have faceless mannequins partying in my head as I read.
* Seriously you don’t want to see me cooking in the kitchen with a recipe I haven’t tried before. I WILL ASSUREDLY MANGLE IT.
** This is quite odd, I admit it.
When I watch book-to-movie adaptions, 67% of the time the actors aren’t what I envisioned, but I don’t even care because FINALLY I have a face for a character! Once I’ve seen a movie, that actor is the book character forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
But, while I love movies for giving me faces, I revile book covers if they plaster a face on the front.
This seems a little contradictory, but let me explain! Oftentimes I feel like the cover models are a) bland, b) don’t fit description in the book, or c) everyone looks basically the same.
Like the Gallagher Girls UK covers all feature girls faces. Which girls? WHO CAN TELL. Same with the Gone series covers. I haven’t got a clue who is who. And the cover for The Age of Miracles features protagonists who are WAY older than 12.
The only time I maybe imagine a vague face as I read is because of word association.
This is kind of ridiculous (and I’m embarrassed!) but if I know someone in-real-life with a character’s name, that’s how I visualise them. Or if their name reminds me of something else….
For instance: Remember Augustus Waters out of The Fault in Our Stars? Prior to the movie, I imagined him with red hair and kind of on the rounder side. Why?
ROALD DAHL’S AUGUSTUS GLOOP. And also Gus-Gus the mouse from the Cinderella movie (with his love of food) didn’t help things.
I’m eternally grateful that Hazel’s Gus is much better looking than the greedy chocolate eating Augustus Gloop. (And if this visual of Gus being a chocolate loving German gets stuck in your head…you’re so welcome.)
BASICALLY: BOOK FACES + MY BRAIN = BLANK CANVAS.
And I need thank the internet for inventing Pinterest so, as a writer, I could at least figure out how I visualised my own book characters. And while we’re glamorously thanking things, let’s thank MOVIES for existing, particularly when they are perfectly cast.
so! i’m extremely and incredibly curious to know if this is just me. do you put faces to book characters as you read?? do you rely on imagination or authors’ descriptions or movies most?? and while we’re talking about about movies: tell me an actor who was cast in a book-to-movie adaption who looks EXACTLY how you envisioned them??! LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS!
In answer to my own acting-casting-perfection question, Shailene Woodley is exactly perfect for Hazel Grace Lancaster from The Fault in Our Stars. (Although not for Tris. But I won’t get into that now!)
Cait @ Paper Fury
…is currently singing the Augustus Gloop theme song while finishing off this post. It’s irritating. It’s kind of scary if you pay attention to the lyrics. (Roald Dahl was a disturbed, though fabulous, author.) Cait would also like to mention that it was tortureto read the comments on her recent cake book tag post. Everyone’s descriptions of glorious cake was delectable. Currently Cait is finishing off Isla and the Happily Ever After.
I do visualise characters, both when I’m reading and writing. It probably helps that I used to draw a lot as a kid. Sometimes, I even draw my own characters. They never turn out perfect but… In my stories, my characters hair, skin tone, face shape, body shape and eyes are all determined by how they looked in my head the first time I pictured them. Seeing pictures for characters from other books kind of skews my own personal visuals though – like the official character art for Nico Di Angelo gives him blonde hair. This…feels wrong. When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, I thought the casting was pretty much perfect for the major three characters and Ginny, Neville and Luna (not the first film but…) too.
WHAT?! How can Nico be blonde?! He's the son of Hades…he must have black hair. *googles*Ohh, but you drew as a kid? That is awesome. I always wanted to art when I was small and ended up creating murals of stick-figures going to battle and it was very detailed and very unimaginative. ha.
I actually don’t visualise much at all. I’m not good at it. Settings, yes, perhaps, but I’m really bad at visualising people. Which is why in my mind, everyone in Harry Potter looks like either the actors from the movies or the drawings I’ve seen of them 😛 Does that make me weird??? AM I WEIRD, CAIT?
ME TOO. We are completely twins on this matter. Why are settings so much easier?? I totally see EVERYTHING in Maggie Stiefvater's books, but until I saw her drawings of the characters I didn't have a clue what they looked like. Yes, you're weird. DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD ANSWER DIFFERENTLY?
SAME with Maggie Stiefvater.
Ha. I had to go google the Gone covers because the only ones I’ve seen for that series are just plain black, with the titles in large font in different colours for each book…
I soooo prefer the black covers (and I own those kinds thank goodness). xD
I generally have quite a clear image of the characters in my head! Some books I find it harder to picture the characters’ faces in detail but most of the time they all have distinctive features. If I struggle to picture a face in detail, I cast actors/singers/famous people as those characters! Very interesting post! 😀
OMG LET ME STEAL YOUR BRAIN. Okay, wait. That sounded severely awkward and creepy. So I shall remain at a distance, but envious.
I’m not a visual person at all, so like you, I don’t picture character’s faces. There’ll be a rare occasion every now and again where, for some reason, I’ll paste a celebrity’s face on a character because of some weird association I made in my head. For instance, I pictured Jo from Cracked (Eliza Crewe) to look like Leslie Winkle from The Big Bang Theory. But that doesn’t happen very often – other times they’re just blank faces, really. So when the movie comes out, I’m a little weirded out at first, but then I’m happy that I’ve got a face for this person.
You and I are like blank-faced-imagination-readers. WE ARE SISTERS IN THIS, INGE.
HA HA HA OMG AUGUSTUS GLOOP!!!! And Gus Gus!!! I have to admit, I would be lying if I didn’t say I hadn’t thought of Augustus Gloop and Gus Gus while thinking of TFIOS.
And err…yes I do visualise faces in my mind when I read. They are sually attractive, especially if it’s the lead protagonist or love interest and I base my visualisations of the facts in the book and the description and if there’s none, I just make up one and plop a visualisation of something I imagine the character to be like off their temperament and how they act.
And I don’t usually like book cover models either, except I have to admit, The Ruby Circle by Richelle mead I was like, that’s a pretty spot on representation of how I imagine Adrian and quite a lot how I imagine Sydney (although maybe more like Silver Shadows cover Sydney) but otherwise, I use them as just a basis for my character visualisation. I guess as an artsy person I like making up things and YES I AM FOREVER THANKFUL TO PINTEREST!!!!! (and fan casting, even if I don’t agree with them all)
Thanks for sharing Cait! xoxo
It's impossible to unthink once you've got it stuck in your head, though, right?!! XDHa! YAY FOR BEING ABLE TO VISUALISE THOUGH. I envy you. 😉 I shall just be over here, sulking with my blank faced imagination. *le sigh* Fan casting is so hit or miss with me. xD Like I saw an epic version of Rangers Apprentice fancasting that had Liam Neeson as Crowley and just YES. It was too perfect. Other than that I've always been iffy with it. xD
One thing which I do often is give someone a name based on thier face. Like there is this girl at my school, and I KNOW that her name is Deborah, but she is such a Natalie. So I just call her that in my head. I don’t have much trouble with imagining people. harry Potter is, in my imagination, a mix of Daniel Radcliffe and the boys on the covers. I’m sometimes really surprised by movie casting, especially if I don’t know the actor that well. I’ve only seen the Giver trailer, but Fiona is very different to that in my imagination.
I think that Emma Watson is the perfect hermione (of course) and Ansel is a very good Caleb. And chloe Moretz is an excellent Mia, but whats his face isn’t really my Adam (while being quite handsome and all)
This was a very interesting post. Thanks, Cait!
I imagined EVERYTHING in The Giver to be different to what it was in the movie…but after seeing the movie? I was really happy with their choices. xD
Yes I do visualize characters but I think it’s more of a “I associate characters to movie or celebrities I know” visualize. It is easier for me to imagine hot guys and girls that way because I rarely see protagonist go ugly.(ya know what I mean?) But rely on who’s on the cover? No. Because they are unfamiliar and sometimes you see them again on another book. I think the Legolas on the movie series LOTR was pretty much how I would’ve imagined him except for the eyes, because I was wishing for more “clear” eyes. But it was Orlando Bloom so I let it go. 🙂
Ugh, yes, it's especially difficult if covers get reused. (Although actors get reused too, I suppose? But it's less usual for, at least, book-to-movie adaptions? I THINK? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.) We can let a lot of things go because Orlando Bloom. Yes.
I try to imagine what characters look like, but often times, they come out as VERY vaguely “sketched” cartoon characters in my mind. I actually like it that way sometimes because sometimes when authors put in just the right dash of description, it can work wonders. Other times, not being able to visualize a character is really frustrating. Which makes movies the bestest thing of ever. Ever since I saw the LOTR and Hobbit movies, I have always visualized the characters as they are in the movie. I CAN’T UNSEE THEM. The same goes for The Book Thief. In those cases, it all works out because the actors/actresses perfectly fit the characters in the book.
Oh oh yes! Some authors are just PERFECT with description and they say 2 words and we get like the entire visual. Others spend ages describing and I'm still not sure what the character looks like. *sigh* I CAN'T EVER UNSEE THEM EITHER. Like I never imagined Four to look like Theo James but I caaan't unsee it now.
Most of the time, I think I have at least a rough vision of the character. It may not be really detailed but the most prominent features will be there. Like their hair or height. Sometimes I completely imagine a person -but not often. When I’ve seen the movie or TV show adaptation, that character will forever be the actor in my mind, there is no changing that! 😀
EXACTLY! Once the actor is there, there is noooo going back. xD I'm the same!
OH MY GOODNESS I AM NOT ALONE! HUZZAH! I have *horrible* imagination. I can’t possibly imagine a face when I’m reading a book. If there’s a movie, I can definitely picture the actor, or if the book has a popular fancast, I use those! But when there isn’t? NOPE SORRY YOU GOT NO FACE. And when there are faces on book covers? I actually *don’t* use those to visualize. For example in the Vampire Academy covers? THAT IS NOT MY ROSE. But thank you for trying. >_<
WE ARE UNIMAGINATIVE TWINS, AIMEE. HUZZAH HUZZAH! (I don't feel so alone now either. hehe.XD) I totally just caaaannot put a face to a character. IT DOESN'T HAPPEN. *sigh*
I’m a pretty heavy visualizer, to the point where movie actors who deviate too far from my mental picture of what their book counterpart should look like kinda break my suspension of disbelief. Then again, actors who look just as I pictured the character make me so happy inside!
It's so hit or miss for acting casting, right?! Sometimes it can be SO OFF. Like I love the Divergent movie, but it took me aaaages to warm up to Theo James as Four. (I think he's too old.) hehe. But I can't unsee it now. xD
I’m so glad this isn’t just me! I wouldn’t say I’m visual, but I always think I should know what a character looks like. Then I don’t and I get very confuzzled. If I force myself to imagine the face of a character, then my mental picture keeps changing. Shailene Woodley wasn’t how I imagined Hazel. But Nat Wolff was the PERFECT Isaac imo. That augustus thing… that’s just so terrible and sad. I’m trying to rid myself of that mental comparison…
Yes yes Nat Wolff was perfect and actually I think he makes a great Q too. XD
I too am a visual person and have an extremely hard time picturing characters at all. If I’ve seen the movie (for books that have one), I visualize all of the characters in the book as their actors in the movie. But I really struggle with Eric in Divergent, because he’s supposed to have Snape-like hair, but he’s bald in the movie… If there isn’t a movie or I haven’t seen the adaptation, then, well, I guess I visualize the characters to some extent. They’re just generic-looking people whose features are little fuzzy in my head and don’t necessarily look exactly like the description (because, let’s be honest. Sometimes the descriptions don’t make any sense.). And THANK YOU. I too despise book covers with faces on the front. Sometimes the covers are done well and I like them, but most of the time they look like every other cheap book cover and/or the illustration looks nothing like any of the main characters. Which is especially frustrating for those of us who can’t visualize characters!
I struggled with Eric too! And also because Eric is supposed to have a face full of piercings and he has like…2. ha. But now that's ALL I see as Eric. Once I've seen the movie, nooo going back. xDI know right?! I don't want to gaze at a generic face on a book cover! I WANT ART. I love that books are visual art on the outside, and imaginative art on the inside.
I’m visual too, Cait! Pinterest is AWESOME!!! I think my brain pieces together pictures I’ve seen that go with characters and kind of squishes the face together so it’s actually like three faces in one, because even if I have a model for one of my characters, they still never looks //quite// like that model in my head.
And when I read I think it’s like half and half? I sort of know what they look like but they’re not a faceless mannequin? I don’t know EXACTLY what they’re face looks like, but they do have a face XD
PINTEREST IS THE BEST. It saves my life quite regularly. *nods* Particularly when authors are big on pinterest (like Sarah J Maas and Ag howard) and like pin SO MUCH STUFF and I can go fangirl and see what they're seeing. :')
I kind of half-know them. I can picture their body shape and the most prominent features on their face, but the rest is blurry…sort of like if I didn’t have my glasses/contacts on at the time. But then I start looking through Pinterest. When I find a face that fits, I know it instantly, but I can’t picture it clearly beforehand.
I totally relate to this!
I don’t like these vacant looking models on the book covers to tell you what you should think of for the characters-I like to imagine for myself or have something like the cartoon Harry Potter on the cover to give you an idea but still let you use some imagination. Of course once you see the film, you’ll forever see the actors face instead which can be a good or a bad thing!
Cartoons are THE BEST. I wish more book covers are painted/drawn art illustrations. Like the one on the Ink cover? I love that style.
My characters are also a blur. If there’s a description of their body, I’ll see it in detail but faces are always vague. I get the hair color right but that’s it. It’s super hard to give a face to someone you’ve never seen! I also never look at faces on the covers because they’re never accurate.
I actually don’t imagine much of how they look like, so much as what they wear, how they move, etc. I mean, we’re all born with our appearance and don’t get to change it much, but what defines character is personality, and appearance really isn’t the best judge of that. (And honestly, Augustus Gloop and Augustus Waters? No. No no no.) But I know what you mean about faces taking up 99% of the cover — please give me something PLOT-related, thank you very much.
You got me thinking, though — I rarely have ideas on how my own characters’ faces look like, either. Especially since the current WIP takes place in China and I can pretty much ignore eye and hair color, so it boils down to face shape and eyebrows and those weird things that don’t mesh into an entire physical appearance.
What they wear is REALLY important. I especially love it when authors can, like, describe it perfectly in just a few sentences and I totally SEE what they're wearing. For some reason, that's as needed as a face for me. XDHA BUT YOU CAN'T UNSEE AUGUSTUS GLOOP AND AUGUSTUS WATERS. I shall refer to the awful phenomonom of confusing their appearances as Glaters. Or maybe Watoop?Sometimes when I'm plotting a book one of the first things I do is find a face on pinterest and EVERYTHING goes off that one face after that. Otherwise, I'm hopeless. My pinterest is all full of settings and costumes. XD
THIS IS MY LIFE. I have the hardest time imagining character faces, except in a very few cases…but anyway, my favorite perfectly-cast movie characters are probably Sam Claflin as Finnick in Hunger Games! (most of the cast in Hunger Games pleased me greatly, though.) BUT ALSO WHOEVER PLAYED MINHO IN MAZE RUNNER BECAUSE HE WAS FABULOUS.
ZOMG SAM CLIFILIN YES WAS PERFECT I COMPLETELY AGREE. Actually I adore THG casting. The only person who made me do a doubletake was Haymitch, but now he is SO Haymitch I can't even remember what I was expecting.
I visualize characters’ faces, but they’re usually never super definitive. Like you, I’m better at imagining their hair, their skin, their eyes, etc. When I watch movies the actors’ faces usually then become how I imagine the characters from the book, though I prefer my original version of the characters. Also, and this is funny, I have a “default mom” look. No matter who the mom is or how she’s described, I always picture mothers in books as a slightly below-average height white woman with short curly reddish-brown hair. I just can never imagine a protagonist’s mother any differently!
Ha! I can totally relate to the “average mum” look. I basically have the same but just with brown hair and tired eyes. XD HA.
I have the same problem as you!I love to visualize things in books,and I can perfectly see what the character wears and even their gestures and actions but never their face.Even when a character’s physical appearance is perfectly described-I can’t get them right when I try to envision them.
I know some people visualize book characters as characters.But I can’t do that either.
It's sooo annoying, right?! I love that I know what they wear and their hair colour and their style and personality, but sometimes I do wish I could conjure a face too.
Well, I wrote this lengthy answer and my Kindle did one of its spontaneous shut downs, so now here is my short answer. Lol. Yes, I see faces and unless I have seen the movie first (Heidi will forever be Shirley Temple to me), or it is one of my reoccurring pop-up actors like a young Sean Astin (he was my Peeta, Tris’s brother, and Mal; just to name a few), they seem to be original, sculpted by my brain, faces. I never apply cover art to characters; weirdly. I am still trying to figure out who those guys are on the front of The Raven Boys book. Ha!
Oh, I definitely do this. ALL THE TIME. Like, I won’t shut up about it if there is a particular character description in the book, but I CAN’T BLOODY FIND THAT CHARACTER ON THE COVER YOU KNOW. SO. ANNOYING. And CAIT NO I don’t want Gus to be a chocolate loving German, that way I’m just going to imagine him getting stuck in a pipe. NO. You be evil.
YOU ARE SO WELCOME FOR THE WATERS/GLOOP IMAGINE. Augustus Gloop getting stick in a pipe. Omg. I think Hazel would be laughing though….
I actually do picture faces! Although depending on author description the faces aren’t incredibly detailed, just enough that I picture a face. But often I find myself picturing a stock face too, I’m assuming a face I’ve seen at some point since we can’t create new faces in our head? Haha. I had a friend I talked about this with once who said she didn’t picture faces as she read either. I think I have more problem picturing intricate worlds as intricately as they may be more so. But if things went my way I would want to picture everything I read just like a movie in my head, without having to have a movie! 😛
LUCKY YOU. I COVET YOUR FACE-IMAGINATION SKILLS. hehe. But, that's true, sometimes authors don't really go into details with the face anyway, right? I guess it's hard. “They have a facey looking face.” *headdesk* How am I even a writer?*crawls away to corner of shame*I love it when books are like movies in my head. It doesn't always happen but some are just movies from page 1. LOVE IT.
Most of the time the actors in movies look NOTHING like how I picture them (and it’s a mix for me, some characters’ faces are blurs and some I can picture clearly). Most movies thus ruin my own images for me because they CANNOT BE UNSEEN, but Emma Watson was pretty much exactly what I pictured as Hermione in Harry Potter (in the earlier movies, anyways). I hate faces on book covers 1000%, but I ALSO despise when the author goes FOREVER without giving at least a very basic description of what the character looks like (height, hair color, SOMETHING). If I don’t get some sort of details in the first few pages I’ll make up my own in my head, and it’s rather irksome to be picturing a brunette only to find out 50 pages in the MC is actually blonde (and usually once I’ve “seen” a character in my head I can’t change it!)
I do like a few details in books! Like it really stood out to me, when I was little, and reading Narnia, that CS Lewis NEVER described his characters. It just bugged me so so much. I wanted to knooooow. I think a little description is needed AT LEAST.
Ugh yeah I don’t do a lot of imagining with books. Usually I completely ignore the description given for an environment, person, or even a situation, and then just rely on what I’ve seen before. It’s like my brain is saying “nah this is too much effort to come up with”. But ugh covers. The Age of Miracles has a better cover in the US, I mean there’s no person on it haha. Kind of why I didn’t recognize the book til I went to eh Goodreads page. Anyways. yes to movies, yes to pinterest, no to book covers, yes to Cait. Oh this reminds me how I just finished Throne of Glass, and I felt that the illustration of Celaena on the cover didn’t fit with some of her personality in the book. Maybe it’s just me. Well because of that I couldn’t shake off that image, sooo…
Sometimes specific names just give me details, like I REALLY had trouble reading The Darkest Part of the Forest and imagining Hazel as “red head”. I just had Hazel from TFIOS in my head so the Holly Black's Hazel just HAD TO BE BROWN AS WELL. *deep breaths*UK/AUS almost always gets the sucky covers. 🙁
I tend to end up imagining characters to look like famous people. For example Chaol in the Throne of Glass series is absolutely Chace Crawford to me and I have no idea why. I don’t think he’s even described as looking anything like him but I tend to associate faces with personalities or how I expect people to be. I don’t do it for everyone though. Celaena is just a blur of silvery beauty.
OMG I CAN SEE THAT BEING CHAOL. I REALLY REALLY CAN. I'm never going to be able to unsee that. XD Yes yes though, Celeana is a blur of silvery beauty with a misspelled name because dang it, I never get the a and e's right.
I don’t usually see perfect matches for book-to-movie adaptations. Although, I have experienced a few close calls. Like with Twilight… I thought Kristen Stewart was just… wrong. I didn’t really realize who would’ve been right until I saw Nina Dobrev when she was cast in The Vampire Diaries. That was exactly how I’d pictured Bella. Something similar happened with Harry Potter. Ron just wasn’t right in my eyes (although I do like the actor; he’s got great comedic timing in the films). When I read the book, I imagined Ron with much sharper features… and I didn’t see that onscreen until I saw who’d they’d cast as his twin brothers. That was how I’d imagined Ron when I’d read the first book.
Oh, well.
As for imagining faces, I’m not terrible at it, but I do often have somewhat-faceless characters running around in my brain when I read. It actually doesn’t bother me that much. What does bother me is when an author doesn’t even bother to give hair or eye colour, or body type, or any distinguishing characteristics. My brain just doesn’t know what to do with that. How can you visualize a character when you have no clue what they look like? You can’t. They’re just amorphous blobs, and then my brain will sometimes give them shifting hair colour and body types (which might be cool if it’s a fantasy, but it’s weird when you’re reading contemporary or historical fiction). I’m very visual when I read, always picturing everything in my head… so I like some good descriptions. (The other thing that drives me nuts is when an author gives us descriptions too late. I remember one book I read where I found out near the end that one character was actually black! That was jarring.)
I never even read Harry Potter when I was little so I've ALWAYS know who the actors were and it's totally stuck to me. But I had that sort of experience with Narnia. Like I had the old Narnian faces stuck in my head and it took me for eeeever to switch over to the newer Narnia faces. (Remakes kill my brain. haha. Even though 99% of the time I'm glad they exist.)It does kind of bother me when there's NO description in books, but at the same time I think authors do it to leave the floor open for the reader to create. (Although it makes it doubly hard when there's a movie, right?!)
I’ve got problems too with the faces. I do visualize them, but always a bit blurry, because no author creates a proper description of the characters. I do way better with my own characters, because I can add to them whatever I want. But with book characters I usually only have half-completed faces and usually only of a few main characters. I never have a definite picture of a character in my mind though. Because in the middle of the book that damn author usually gives me a detail, that changes the whole way I have to imagine the character so it isn’t the same anymore.
I’m not sure about the movie adaptations. The do give me clear faces, but I remember how Jennifer Lawrence’s face seemed way too round for the Katniss face I imagined (I imagined Katniss a lot skinnier) and how Meggie from Inkheart was simply too old in the movie. The only exception for the face is Harry Potter, except for the Deathly Hallows movies, where he is too old too, but that’s mainly because I watched the movies as a little girl even before I ever read the books.
“Augustus Gloop -this nincompoop -don’t remember the rest of the text” *hums*
Well, I think authors do their best to create good descriptions. 🙂 And sometimes, I know they can be vague, but I think authors also leave it a bit open to our own interpretation.
YES. Characters ALWAYS have weird vague slightly terrifyingly blurry faces to me. EVERY once in a while I might make out a feature like a pair of glasses, or the dark scruff of a beard, but otherwise — vague, undefined, blur-city. Even if I’m thinking of an actor for the role, whether it’s a book I’m reading or a character I’m writing for, whenever I really stop to examine what I’m imagining, it’s always a CREEPY FACELESS PERSON.
I’m kinda glad to know I’m not the only one.
YES YES YOU AND I ARE QUITE ALIKE THEN, THIS IS ME EXACTLY. I nearly died reading The Raven Boys when I realised in like, book 3, that Gansey sometimes wore glasses. I don't know how I missed that in the first two books. *headdesk* But it completely threw how I thought of him. 0_0
Ah, such an awesome post!
Anyway, I am very similar as you when it comes to visualising faces of book characters. I can imagine hairs based on author’s description, but otherwise I have these face-less people in my head LOL But once actor is casted into th emovie/tv show I cannot get his/her face out of my mind when reading book.
And there is one actor who is PERFECT image of book character and THE BEST cast ever for the TV show. I am talking about Sam Heughan who plays Jamie Fraser in Outlander. They could not have picked anyone better.
Yes! COMPLETELY. The movie-actors-casting just gets totally stuck. And that's not always a bad thing, but sometimes it does take me a while to warm up. I never was quite 100% happy with the Divergent casting, but I'm okay with it now. 😉
Whoa! This actually happens to me! I can’t imagine faces (well I can – but blur). Oh my days that’s weird. And so creepy. Yikes. We book lovers have freaky minds. (Why am I surprised?)
DO NOT BE SURPRISED. If there's a freaky odd or weird thought to be had in regards to books or cake or rulership: I'm most likely having it.
For me, I picture a vague outline of the characters. No distinct facial features but just fuzzy outlines. If the cover has faces then I’ll visualize based on that. I love your Gus example LOL!
Vague outlines = YES. Me too.
I visualize almost every book character that I read; it happens so naturally that i don’t even notice it at times. But I won’t lie, I actually like it when there’s a face on the cover, because it actually helps me “see” the character better, no matter how bland they look. I haven’t read many books adapted to movies (shame on me, I know) so I usually just rely on the author’s descriptions. 🙂
And authors' usually do a tremendously good job at describing so THAT IS GOOD. XD I like it when they use like just a few words and I get such a clear picture of the person. 🙂
I can’t imagine facesXD But when it comes to my own characters I kind of know what I want, just not what it would look like on a real faceXD I would know that I wanted a guy to have high cheekbones, chocolate brown eyes, a defined jawline and brow, and a slightly crooked nose from where it had been broken, but I could not sit down and draw the character or imagine what he looked likeXD I just have to get in pinterest and find someone (preferrable an actor) who looks like himXD
I honestly don’t think there ever has been a time where the actor/actress looked exactly how I imagined.
It's handy to get actors, right?! Because they you can get multiple pics. HA! I usually end up just picking random faces though because I can never find the “right” face otherwise. *sigh* Finding faces is hard work for we writers. 😉
I’ve always known that I don’t have the most visual mind (though I can’t stand when a book doesn’t go into hyperdetail about the surroundings and the people, go figure) but now that you’ve mentioned this, I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. I’m reading Red Queen and now I can’t stop focusing on the fact that there’s basically a blank space for a face.
SORRY BUT NOT EVEN SORRY. haah! We shall obsess about our faceless imaginations together. 😉
AAAAAAAAAGGGH, this is one of the banes of my writing life. I can visualize pretty well when I’m reading, and I know what ISN’T the right face, but I can’t picture the right face, and I’m sure I’ve spent hours trying. I’m an artist, I should be able to draw the main character’s face, right? But nooooooooo….
I FEEL THE PAIN, HANNAH. THE STRUGGLE IS IMMENSELY REAL.
I completely agree Cait. I’m so busy trying to keep up with the twists, turns and action scenes that I suppose my brain doesn’t really have time to process what the characters look like. Of course, I tend to visualize them a bit more if we have an actual picture of them (for instance, the model on the cover or an actor from the movie adaption, etc); but otherwise I’m pretty much a blank slate too.
And a actor who was cast in a book-to-movie adaption who looks EXACTLY how you envisioned them? Hmm…every character from the Percy Jackson movie adaptions.
…. Just kidding. (You probably thought I was crazy there for a sec. I mean, let’s not even start the debate about those movies vs. books, but all I can say is: REALLY? The casting directors obviously never read the books…) #RantOver
Great post Cait! ♥
So I’m a very visual reader. I just have a natural tendency to visualize everything I read. It doesn’t even occur to me while I’m reading; it’s only after when I start thinking about the story in my head and it’s like Oh hey, I already have all these scenes constructed in my head. As for characters, I do have visualize them to an extent? Like the faces are always very blurry but I have their overall build & features composed in my mind and I see bits of the face like maybe the eyes or the nose, one at a time but never as a whole. But yeah they’re never very exact, always a little blurry which is why it doesn’t totally throw me for a loop when movie adaptations come out with their own characters. Like for Paper Towns, I would not have chosen Cara Delevingne as Margo. In my mind she had darker hair that was a little shorter and bangs but it wasn’t like that image was super exact so it’s like ehhh that works too.
So anyway really really interesting post! I don’t know if I made sense at all in that comment but hopefully if you can take anything out from this mess, it’s that this post was fantastic!
I wouldn't have chosen Cara Delevingne for Margo either. Although now that I actually focus on it, ALL I CAN SEE IS THE ACTOR. Gah. I think Nat Wolff is quite perfect for Q though. But I totally get what you mean! You made perfect sense! 🙂
Haha! Love this post Cait! I don’t visualize faces of the characters but I imagine a voice for each character that is distinct (mostly the main protagonists xD). I am a visual person too. I learn and remember better when I see things. But it’s so hard to visualize faces with only words to guide you.
YES! Thank goodness there are artists out there who can visualize better than us and make fanarts. Bravo for their creative minds
Omg, I never thought about voices!! I sometimes have voices! I think, though that I just have a generic guy or girl voice. haah. I am soooo a visual person. LET ME DO IT, DON'T JUST SHOW ME.<– My life's mottoI love fanart so so much. I so WISH I could do fanart.
I actually don’t visualize character faces either. I kind of ignore their visual appearances and forget how they look (unless it’s expressly made a point that they have FLAXEN HAIR or something). But hey, didn’t John Green say something about how his characters’ physical appearances are the least of his concerns? So.
Seriously, everybody’s making all this fuss about how characters look/don’t look in movies, and I’m sitting in the corner going, “But he FELT right, even if he DIDN’T have the right eyes or hair.”
When I’m the one doing the WRITING, on the other hand, Pinterest is invaluable to me. It is one of the Greatest Tools of Writers and has helped my forgetful nature. I mean, I forget my own characters’ appearances as much as I forget those of other authors. Whoops.
Oh I totally can get onboard with that. I like a little description, just so I have a vague idea, but it's not my biggest worry. Like it DID bug me that the kids in Narnia never got described. -_- But, as a writer myself, I always suck at adding in description. I almost feel like readers enjoy it a LOT when they can make up whatever.
I have sort of vague, fuzzy faces associated with characters…and some characters I imagine better than others. The actress who plays Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies looks and sounds exactly like how I imagined Luna! She’s perfect. And though I haven’t read The Fault in Our Stars, I very much liked the actors who were chosen to play Hazel and Gus. Gus was good-looking…but it in a normal sort of way, ya know? It was really refreshing and added to his adorableness.
I haven't even gotten up to Luna in reading the hP series. *buries self* BUT I WILL SOON. And yesss, I think TFIOS was perfectly cast. Apparently Isaac is supposed to have blonde hair though, and he has black in the movie?? But I don't even care, I think he looks perfect. XD
I never put whole faces to a character. Not my own, not anyone else’s, and like you said, only if I see a movie with an actor does that face become the character—but even then it can change. I have flashes of what characters look like when I think about them. Distance the eyes are apart. Lip shape. Eye color. Hair design. Just flashes when I’m daydreaming, small movements that really wouldn’t identify a person but are still meaningful to me anyway.
But yeah. No faces. It’s not that they’re faceless, either. It’s just that they have invisible faces, and I never think to look for them because I can’t. *nods*
Invisible faces! I LIKE THAT. That sums it up rather well. (Although, mine are truly just blurs of nothingness. #disturbingCait)
I’ve thought about this before and am happy you have put this to words! I think it really depends on the book and how much I get into the character. If it isn’t something really grabbing me, then the brain isn’t working too hard to fill in blanks. It’s already mad that the story is less than exciting. But, for my favorite stories that don’t have movies made first, I can clearly picture my favorite characters’ faces in my mind.
OH LUCKY YOU FOR BEING ABLE TO PICTURE FACES! I envy your imagination. 😉
I actually do visualize characters’ faces. But apparently, I don’t visualize them the same way anyone else does. like for some reason, I imagined Hannah’s character with glasses. They never said he has glasses, HE JUST GOT THEM.
BUT I”M SUPER PICKY with movies, they have to cast them well. LIKE PERCY JACKSON. THAT CAST JUST SUCKED. Even Percy wasn’t right. so yeah. no.
Katniss was good though.
It’s weird that you don’t visualize faces, Cait. You’re like…. it’s like you imagine creepy doctor who characters. :-O
BUT YOU ARE AN ARTIST so this is understandable. (And your fanart like IS THE BEST. I would literally die happy if I could fanart.) XD Eh, Percy Jackson sucked on like every single level. Except it had some good lines. I giggled. PJ 2 was better I think. KATNISS WAS PERFECT. I am weird and creepy yes.
*whispers* I’ve never even THOUGHT of character faces before now. >.> So no, I don’t think I do visualize them if that’s the case. The only exception has to be when I’ve watched the movie before the book — and the actor’s face has been ingrained into my brain. xD
These sneaky actors…they just like to ingrain themselves in our brains, right?! 😉 JUST KIDDING. (And being seriously weird as I answer comments. Gah. I need sleep.) XD
I imagine faces. In fact, I imagine everything. It’s not necessarily based off how they’re actually described. They just sort of pop into my head, and they stay there. Like, even though I’ve seen the Harry Potter movies a million times, whenever I read the books, the characters look just like they did when I first read them – even though some of them look nothing like they’re supposed to. xD
HAHAHHA OH GOD I AM INFINITELY GLAD THAT THE REAL GUS LOOKS BETTER. That is totally hilarious! Sometimes I imagine the character faces, but oftentimes it’s what’s inside that counts (is that weird?). A lot of the time, I barely take notice of the author’s description of them, and the book cover doesn’t resemble what I think of the character at all. Great discussion topic Cait!
I can’t visualise character faces. The clothes and bodies, yes but the faces? Nope… most of the time, if the book has already been made into a movie I picture the actors and if it hasn’t, well, I picture actors that match the description sometimes. But no, I don’t create a face based on what the author writes. I just can’t and I’ve tried but I always fail hahahaha
Ohhhh my goodness, but I have DWELLED ON THIS VERY THING FOR SOOO LONG. It’s agony!!! I SO wish I could imagine faces (it would be a true talent if I could!), but I can’t. I just CAN’T. Just like you, I imagine their clothes and hair and shoes and even their freckles, but they have no face. I’m a very visual person and see everything else perfectly in my head, but faces? Naughta. Anything I have to put their face it to is good for me, like in The Selection trailer, for The One. I mean, I generally don’t like covers with the characters on them for the same reasons you said, so they don’t help me imagine them very much. But I like book trailers so I can put a face with them, even if there’s no movie. Sometimes if there’s no movie I choose my own actors/actresses to imagine them, so I have A face. 😉
I see faces. I usually get a pretty good picture of what my character or someone else’s character looks like by the book description. And yes when the book is turned into a movie I see that actor’s face as that character forever and ever and ever too lol. Fortunately most of the time at least for movies I like they case someone appropriate. And it is frustrating when they put a picture of a character on the front of the book and they look bland. I never really thought of that until now.
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I guess it really depends on the book. Sometimes I have a very strong visual of how someone should look, and then it’s ruined if the book is made into a movie, because the actor’s face looks nothing like what was in my head–for example, Four in Divergent. (Not that Theo James is hard on the eyes! But his face wasn’t what I pictured.) And then for some characters, I don’t really have a good idea of their face. Even for my own characters that I write, some have faces, and some are a little blurry if I think about it. I wonder why that is?
I visualise the character but I don’t tend to visualise their faces in much detail. If you ask me to think about a character, I know what they look like but as I get closer to their face the detail disappears and they’re kind of a blurry face.
Ugh, I hate it when they put a face on a book cover. For the exact same reason you gave! I couldn’t say it better. Give me some amazing art or something- just no faces.
Usually when I’m reading I might have a vague idea of what a character looks like, kind of the same when I write. I know, but I don’t know at the same time. They’re not total blank faces. I know they have this color hair, or deep set eyes, or a goofy smile, or a pale complexion, etc. But if they had a police artist come and draw the character from my description, it wouldn’t come out right. 😛
But there are those rare moments when I just know that character should look exactly like this or that.
I think the Hunger Games movie got down the characters faces just perfectly. Especially Haymitch. I don’t know how they did it, but everything about those movies are just about spot on. (Except Haymitch didn’t fall off the stage in the first movie. . . I was sitting in the theater waiting for it to happen, and it, it didn’t. I mean, it’s the Hunger Games, you’ve got to take all the laughs you can get; why would they cut it? It’s not like it takes a long time to fall of a stage or anything. . . okay, I’m done.).
I’m one of those weirdos who doesn’t see any sort of mental image at all when I’m reading. (Or at least nothing I’m super conscious of.) I never have any mental picture of what a setting or character or anything looks like, and it bothers the heck out of me. I’m also super bad at remembering what my family and friends look like (or being able to like … hold it in my mind). I think I just must not be a very visual person.
I would say we’re blank-face twins, but the whole reading experience is like … visually blank for me. 😀
Definitely not just you! I am the worst at it! I get a vague, and likely incorrect sense of a character’s appearance, but that’s about it. And I am the same- if I see a character in a movie, that actor is now ALWAYS the face of that character. Except Tris/Shailene, and President Coin/Julianne Moore. I had a VERY different picture of them both, so now in my head, they are mash-ups of what I pictured, and the actors. But a lot of characters I had no preconceived visuals of.
OH OH and I hate the face covers too! Because they don’t help me in any way. I am NOT seeing that person’s face on the character, ever. I have no idea why, but I do not. Maybe someone should do a study on this or something, this topic fascinates me!
I do not visualize faces at all. I think the only character who has a face in my head is the Darkling, and that’s all because of Tumblr and all the edits for the series with Sean O’Pry as the Darkling. It was the most perfect pairing, and it was so right, so that’s how he became the face of the Darkling for me.
But for everybody else, nope, sorry, you’re just blobs of vague nothing in my head!
Yes, I imagine characters’ faces all the time, which is why I have so much trouble going to see a movie based on a book I’ve read! They just NEVER get it right 😀 I understand what you mean, though, because I kind of have to connect to a character to be able to ‘see’ their face, and show not tell is definitely a big part of that.
And the book-covers that have a face of them might skew my own imagination, but usually that’s OK, if the face on the cover is close to how the character is seen in the story as well.
Great question! So many interesting answers, too.
Have a great weekend and happy reading.
I pretty much agree with you on all counts here! 🙂 (Though as a resident of the UK, may I say that the only Gallagher Girls covers I’ve seen are the ones with the girl’s clothes – wow, that sounded weird, but you know what it mean – and the heart typography thing? Also the neon/black Gone covers.)
Yeah. Photos of faces on books are something I hate a lot…? But at the same time, I find it crazily difficult to imagine fictional people. When I write, I usually have to describe from someone I know and then change a couple of features in my head.
I don’t visualize faces either, it’s more that I have a vague idea in my head, that I can’t describe. I never can find a face that matches what I have in my mind. When there’s a face on the cover I often couple that with the character, although sometimes it doesn’t fit and annoys me. And I prefer covers without faces because then I can imagine them myself. And when I see a movie I always get annoyed as the character look nothing like I imagined them, they never do. Sometimes a movie character fits the image in my head, but that’s rare.
Nope, I can’t visualize faces either. And sometimes I like the cover models, but it really irks me if they don’t match the description of a character in the book…
Also, I totally think the Gallagher Girls’ US covers are better. Why do they change covers for countries anyway?! What’s the point unless it’s a different language and you need to change around the image to fit the words or something?
I can’t visualize faces either! I try so hard to, and I feel weird for not being able to, but I just can’t! I’ll usually have hair flowing around a blur of a face (and quite often that hair isn’t even the right color- I guess I don’t pay attention to descriptions very well). I love movie adaptations for that too! It gives me a solid visual; granted, sometimes I don’t like that visual (I agree with you on Shailene Woodley not being perfect for Tris) but a lot of times, even if it isn’t perfect, I’m okay with it. Like, Shailene is perfect for Hazel, I agree, Ansel Elgort, I think is perfect for both Augustus and Caleb, and I could go on, but I’ll stop here. XD
I was actually just thinking about this the other day! I was thinking it was so strange that when I read the character’s faces are just a complete blur to me and now I know YOU HAVE IT TOO. I’m so relieved. :’) It’s quiet a strange phenomenon, really. Everything else is quite detailed in my brain (I like visualising things as well — perhaps that’s why it takes me so long to read certain books), but the faces are just … blank. Kind of the things of nightmares now I think about it… xD But YAY I’m not alone!
I’ve found that it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to visualize the main characters in particular. I can easily picture secondary characters, but I struggle with the MCs, especially the male characters.
Even with books that have the MC on the cover. Like with the Winner’s Crime. Kestrel is right on the cover, but I still had trouble putting a proper face to what “my” Kestrel looks like.
For fun, I have started envisioning some characters a POC, because why not.
I think I try to visualise book characters faces to some extent, but then tend to forget them when I see the movies! I know that you mean though, that it can be very hard. When I watched Harry Potter some of the characters were completely different to what I pictures, like Sirius and McGonagall. But then I watched Twilight after reading the book and the characters were spot on. So I think it varies, or depends on how in time I am with the author. I hadn’t really thought about it until you mentioned it here, so it’s an interesting concept!
AmandaSays
I am also HIDEOUS at applying faces to characters. For example, if someone is described as good looking (but with other features like a crooked nose and cute overlapped teeth etc etc), they will only appear as a vaguely good looking blur. And if the book is told in first person, then I don’t imagine ANYTHING (except in an explicit moment of description) because, for the duration of that book *I* am that character, so it would be would to visualise someone and read from the first person, you know?
As for books … I’m pretty sure Daniel Radcliffe was my Harry Potter. He was just so perfectly adorable and dorky, and 100% what I imagined him to be 😀
No, I don’t visualise characters at all. In fact, I kind of hate too. I don’t like to have my “worded” characters as an image in my head. I don’t know why but I just… its more like their vibe and their spirit, their personality etc. that I envision. Like Will Herondale. He isn’t a person in my head, he’s more of a mannequin in an old-fashioned suit and he’s good-looking and black-haired and hilarious… and that’s what I conjure in my head.
But once I see a movie the actor’s face is usually stuck in my head – which is why I put off seeing book-to-movie adaptions for as long as I can. I agree with most of the HP cast but movies like City of Bones ruined my mental images!
What’s terrible is that my own main characters barely have faces. o.o I think it’s because I’m *in* their heads all the time, never looking at them from the outside. I can see my secondary characters far better.
But yes, when a books gets made into a movie, the actors’ faces often take over my imagination when I reread the books. (Ahem, NARNIA. XD)
It really depends for me. I think most the time, I have like an aura for each character. Unless I’ve watched the movie, I won’t really picture specific details. For example, I’ll ‘feel’ the hair colour (if it’s described) but not the length (unless it’s specified). Most of the time, I just ‘feel’ (not really picture, just feel, idk how to explain) a Caucasian character just because that’s just the most common thing. I love it when race is a bigger part of the story though. It really really helps me visualise characters!
This is where fan arts come in handy, Cait. As long as the book has a big enough fanbase…when you google the names of the characters THERE THEY ARE. And you’ve got a great variety of faces to choose from (oops, that sounds weird.) Some people out there are just so talented and the art is fabulous. That’s what I do when I can’t visualise character character faces. They’re a blur to me, too :P.
I do it too! Yep, blurry faces 🙂 unless I’ve seen the movie first then I visualize the actors’ faces. Emma Watson as Hermione from the Harry Potter series was EXACTLY how I visualized the character:-) I visualized both Ron and Harry as much thinner and taller.
Wow! It used to bother me SO badly that I couldn’t seem to imagine faces, I was worried I was the only one (I also have a mild fear of forgetting what the people I love look like because I have trouble remembering what faces look like when they’re not nearby). What I ended up doing was drawing characters as I read books for a while… I found that sort of helped – as features were described, I’d add/alter as required. From that exercise, I discovered that most of the faces I drew had the same base structure, and now I no longer draw them, I just imagine that base in my mind. In that capacity, whenever I read books, all characters start out having the same sort of face as each other until features start being described.
I never picture faces. And about 90% of the time I picture main characters with regular brunette hair, straight and simple, unless there’s some reason I wouldn’t. I don’t know why. I skim over descriptions because I just don’t CARE; I mean, if the way someone looks is going to demonstrably change how anyone interacts with them in the book, it’s going to come across somewhere else or it just doesn’t really matter. So I have blank canvases, and they all look almost exactly the same. It’s also why, when I’m writing, I struggle to do that same kind of description; I don’t picture my OWN characters any differently. In the book I was working on for the better part of a decade (by which I mean more than half), there were at least 3 male supporting characters that I later realized all looked exactly the same. If you bothered to read my descriptions. My solution at the time? I just removed the descriptions all together.
Soo … That’s an area for improvement.
I am THE WORST when it comes to visualizing character faces. I’ve seen some bloggers put up dream casts with their reviews. I could never do that because I suck so badly at seeing the characters’ faces. I can get a general idea but I wouldn’t be able to say, “Oh yeah [book character] reminds me of [insert famous actor/model/person here].” Nope never. I wish I could but I can’t. So, like you, I see a blank face.
I am hopeless for dream casts. I always have to skip doing posts like that because I literally CANNOT envision actors for the rolls!! >_<
What a great post! I do visualize faces when I read … and often I even ignore the author’s description and just imagine my own version the the character. I’ll never forget my disappoint in going to see the movie adaption of “LeStat” and being soooooooo disappointed. Oh well, serves me right for seeing a movie after reading the book. Nine times out of ten it is a disappointment.
Hello, Cait. I have the same exact problem as you. As a struggling author myself, I find it hard to envision my characters because their faces are completely fake. Even when I try to just look up pictures of random teenagers with the same characteristics,, I immediately forget them. In fact, if I don’t meet with someone in person for awhile, I forget their face! It kind of scares me, as my memories are full of faceless people, or just blobs overall. Have you done more research on this? I tried to, but I couldn’t quite get the cause of this. The closest I got was aphantasia, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t visualize anything. Anyways, it’s nice to know that there are people out there with the same problems that I have! I wish you the best of luck with your future ventures as a writer with this phenomenon.
Ahhh we are TWINS IN THIS. *hi fives* And I do the same with finding faces on pinterest or whatnot…and then promptly forgetting about them anyway.😂 Ah, my characters are all complete blobs. And I’m the same with people IRL too *nods* Although I looked up the symptoms of face-blindness and I’m pretty sure I don’t have that because I CAN recognise people’s faces I just generally don’t look at them very much. (Have you googled prosopagnosia before? It’s super interesting!)
Descriptions of their hair, eye, skin, limbs and everything else: yes. But the actual character’s face as a whole? Nope. I really can’t visualize a character’s face, and I’m disappointed because whenever the author says that this particular characters is attractive, I can’t seem to call up an image of his/her face. :/
I make my characters in the Sims 4 or Black Desert Online. Both games have superior people building!
I’m the same! They’re usually just really basic “people models” in my head with the described hair and physique. Maybe a freckle or two.
I can imagine faces that I haven’t seen before. Whenever I read a book I give faces to the characters as described by the author