Visualizing your characters

[jaF0]

I know there have been a few past threads on this and I've always said I never got that vested, often not even naming them.

But I was recently smacked in the face and knocked nearly unconscious by a certain image and it got me started hunting for images to help me with mine. Some of them are being gleaned from the picture threads in F&S, the PG and GB, but also doing outside searches.

Some alteration of Veronica Avluv can be a starting base for a main character, but taller and a few years older than what I've seen so far.

 

[ericrodman101]

I like to select an image, usually of a porn crush or a celebrity or model I'd like to see fucking. I nearly always use names, but you've given me the idea of stories without names, just anonymous boys, men, girls, etc fucking and being fucked. Thanks....

 

[JanusGoneAwry]

My female characters are usually a montage of dancers I've met in strip clubs over the years. If I use a dancer's appearance explicitly I get permission from them first and pre-CoVID I would actually share the story with them before I published it.

The names are always changed to, well, you know how the rest of it goes...

 

[TadOverdon]

I usually have a pretty clear image of my major female characters, and then I'll go look for visual material like pictures of actors or porn performers that fit the image.

They're never ideal matches, naturally, but that's not the point. Often it's a matter of someone having the right expression or physical attitude. Sometimes it's hair color and age. Physical type, eye color and so on are less important. But it does help to have an image to "pin" to.

I mentioned to the OP the other day that a performer named Janet Mason has been the worldly stand-in for two completely distinct characters over several books. It got weird for me when one of them dropped into a book featuring the other.

(I also often search out photo reference for places, furniture, and so forth.)

Male characters I often have clear ideas about body type, height, different details but I don't usually look for visual reference material. That's for the sexy guys - I admit that the poor husbands and authority figures who fill out these fantasies are too much an amorphous group of doughy middle-aged nonentities. It's really all about the women, for better or worse.

I think I'm repeating myself from another topic in saying that a few months ago our cover artist sent me an image he put together as a possible cover for the next book, and I looked at it and she immediately became the picture I have in my head for the character. And I've written to that picture. That never happens.

 

[jaF0]

Some alteration of Veronica Avluv can be a starting base for a main character, but taller and a few years older than what I've seen so far.

Her Bio says the performer is 48, but I'm not sure when this picture was taken. Doesn't look over 40 here to me.


https://pics.wikifeet.com/Veronica-Avluv-Feet-1574210.jpg


Too big to post, so link only.

 

[TadOverdon]

I remember her.

 

[TxRad]

My idea book is full of amateur pictures. They are more like real people than actors and porn stars.

 

[NotWise]

I've used photos to envision main female characters, but not male characters. The results have been a mixed bag, and I might be better off not doing that.

For the story I'm working on now, one scene was inspired by a couple photos of one woman. But aside from that scene her character had nothing to do with those photos. I had a couple photos in mind for another female character, and then never described her.

In that case, the photos make no difference. In another case, I found a picture that matched a secondary character and made it my wallpaper. The character was suddenly promoted from secondary to main, because she looked at me all the time, saying, "Write about me."

Maybe using photos to envision a character will help, maybe they'll hurt, and maybe in the end they'll be irrelevant.

 

[DanDraper]

Her Bio says the performer is 48, but I'm not sure when this picture was taken. Doesn't look over 40 here to me.


https://pics.wikifeet.com/Veronica-Avluv-Feet-1574210.jpg


Too big to post, so link only.

That's an older photo of her, you gotta see her now and you can tell she's over 40.
She's still working and still does a good job.

.
.

 

[jaF0]

For the story I'm working on now, one scene was inspired by a couple photos of one woman. But aside from that scene her character had nothing to do with those photos. I had a couple photos in mind for another female character, and then never described her.

In that case, the photos make no difference.

I'm doing one that includes two sisters. I haven't described them in any detail yet and may not, but the visual images I have are helping me define their characteristics, words and behavior.

 

[NotWise]

I'm doing one that includes two sisters. I haven't described them in any detail yet and may not, but the visual images I have are helping me define their characteristics, words and behavior.

I can understand that. If you're visual, than a picture can make the person. I'm pretty visual.

 

[NotWise]

I can understand that. If you're visual, than a picture can make the person. I'm pretty visual.

Edit: Once you start writing, the the visual might interfere with the development of your character. What starts as an inspiration can end as an impediment. Your mileage will vary.

 

[jaF0]

Originally, my character was going to be blond, late 40s, maybe just 50. A story arc possibility came up where she would need to be redheaded, but hey, women change their hair color all the time. So back to blond it is with the redhead days long ago.

Thinking somewhere between these two:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/e2/a1/6de2a1794c2a20a9b233e43a4032d7b1.jpg

https://www.iftvmilfs.com/photos/1/173/14.jpg

This is extremely nice, but doesn't look the age:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/61/cd/6f/61cd6fa714988ba406933fc458e9ba22.jpg

 

[NotWise]

Originally, my character was going to be blond, late 40s, maybe just 50. A story arc possibility came up where she would need to be redheaded, but hey, women change their hair color all the time. So back to blond it is with the redhead days long ago.

Thinking somewhere between these two:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/e2/a1/6de2a1794c2a20a9b233e43a4032d7b1.jpg

https://www.iftvmilfs.com/photos/1/173/14.jpg

This is extremely nice, but doesn't look the age:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/61/cd/6f/61cd6fa714988ba406933fc458e9ba22.jpg

You're being awfully selective about the look. I hope you have a character to go along with it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

For the female characters, I often use photos I find online. Some of them are not head-turning gorgeous, but instead, they may be rather ordinary looking. At other times, they are based on women I knew in the past. (I've used my ex-wife at least three times.) I've used celebrities only about twice that I can remember. And then there is just making up somebody from my own imagination.

The male characters - who are actually less numerous for some reason - seem to be mostly based on people I knew in the past. After nearly sixty-six years, a lot of memories pile up. And I've used versions of myself quite often, but they tend to be both more assertive and more crass than I actually am.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I work off memory or photos of ordinary people.

It’s interesting to see photos of “beautiful” people without makeup and “ordinary” people with professional makeup. It makes a big difference both ways.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I imagine Lenore Rojet, the girl in the Bronx Park East series, like this:

http://cdn77.vintage-tease.com/th1/galleries/13/419/1_989.jpg

She is pretty, but she does look like somebody who could be living in a New York outer-borough apartment house. I found the photo after I had mostly completed the series.

 

[Omenainen]

I’m not very visual. I don’t ever use pictures, I don’t visualize my characters, and am very vague when describing them. It’s more of a mental image for me. Feel of the character.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I found the photo after I had mostly completed the series.

That often happens to me - I'll be writing with an image in my mind and find a photo somewhere and say, "Yes, that's her." Or I'll find a pic and think, I want to write a story about that woman. I've definitely got a character waiting to be written, she's absolutely entrancing.

 

[lovecraft68]

When I wrote just for here, the visual came only from my mind and I'd just go down a list, hair color, eye color, slender, busty, large breasts, perky etc...

When I write something for sale I always find the cover first, and that search is based on the people on the image I select.

I've always felt the characters in the book should match the cover. However, I've read books that show a blonde on the cover and the character is a redhead, which is a bit of a speedbump/[peeve for me.

It tells me the author went for a free image and didn't care it didn't match the story, or they're just to lazy to spend an extra few minutes browsing images.

This could also just be a form of OCD on my end that it has to match because TBH most reader probably don't care, they're not buying erotica for realism.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Fascinating seeing how many posts above describe women in detail and not the men.
My bisexuality is clearly showing here, as my stories either describe both, or more often just hint at what they look like - rough height, physique, hair length and colour, and that much only because readers don't like being surprised if it's mentioned later and it doesn't fit their mental image.

The only time I've gone further in visualising characters was when I ended up with a series (120k words) and I'd been inspired by a guy I met 20 years ago, had to age him up, and a bit of looking on the internet showed my vision was sort of a cross of Rik Mayall and Daniel Craig - and some images were quite inspiring. In the story he's called Adrian and has a gorgeous accent from south/SW of Belfast.

Recently revisited those characters, needing to age them up another couple years. Was wondering what Adrian would look like near fifty. Switched on the telly and HIGNFY has as its guest presenter Adrian Dunbar, and I nearly dropped my tea - hrs practically spot on! Nose is a bit big and voice not deep enough, but basically him. So now I'm watching Line of Duty like everyone else in the country.

 

[jaF0]

Fascinating seeing how many posts above describe women in detail and not the men.

What's even more weird is that I've been going beyond that. The women all have names and dialog. The men don't have names (yet) and very little, if any dialog. What words they say are in response to a statement or question. Not being the intent by any means, its almost as if they're just background props.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Fascinating seeing how many posts above describe women in detail and not the men.

You're right - most of the commenters are male writers which probably explains that bias. I'm a lazy bastard - they're my fantasies so I just write different versions of myself into the men. And I don't need a visual reminder of me.

My beta readers always nag me to vary my male characters more. But I'm always far more interested in writing the women.

 

[ElectricBlue]

my vision was sort of a cross of Rik Mayall and Daniel Craig - and some images were quite inspiring.

Having enjoyed the Young Ones since they first screened on the Beeb, I find that truly bizarre!
You are a very strange person, KQQ .

 

[TadOverdon]

Instead of looking at stills for likeness, more and more I look at moments of porn video for attitude, posture, the way someone moves, expression and how it's associated with action. Environment as well, especially outdoors.

Most performers are not very good or interesting or interested. A few are and they have a clear sense of how they look best to the camera and how to suggest arousal. It goes without saying that mostly this is theatrical rather than authentic, but it helps sometimes anyway.

A lot of this is just practical, helping make things concrete: so you're leaning forward on something, legs bent, the dude's behind you and has one hand on the front of your throat. Is your back arched or curved forward? Arched, we'll say. But where's his other hand? Does it make sense for him to support your stomach or do something to stimulate your or, since he's leaning over your back, does he brace that hand against something for balance?

Or is he the standard porn stud who just never runs out of hands?

Images help visualize that.