Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

Another short one. The cover art specs and some of my friends have me thinking about an area where I am lacking: seeing pictures in my head. Oh I have the basics. I know their hair/eye color/skin tone but I often don't have much more.

I wonder if I have always been bad at this or if it grew organically over the years. I used to draw all the time as a kid. Not well but I did it. Then I found fandom which in the 1980s was a completely different beast than it is now.

For starters, my fandoms didn't allow the use of canon characters. You could have a holt but couldn't use Elfquest characters. You could have a flight but couldn't use Pern characters. Hell even most of the fan zines for Star Trek were all original characters. It's pretty much the opposite of today's fandom where original characters are anathema and automatically 'Mary sue's.'

It became common place to base a character's looks off an actor/singer/anime character because it was easier for the fan artists to draw them (back then the stories were illustrated). I wonder if that made me lazy. Rather than really working out what as character looks like I say eh, he looks like John Barrowman (Aneurin) or Aidan Turner (Aaron). I did notice that the spec sheet asked for photo references and I keep wondering am I the only one turning in actors?

I do see other authors posting up inspiration pics on FB (though another pointed out no one has the rights to those and it's technically stealing). More often than not they are models rather than actors but you get my point.

Others like my friends ES, kiramaru7, seta_suzume and cajunshewolf are capable of drawing their characters. Oh what I would give to be able to do that. But I can't not even before the hand injury.

I struggle any more to even think of what ANYTHING looks like. What does the room in the house look like? The house itself? I have no idea. I have nothing in my head. It's like a blank. For someone who obsesses on eyes so much in her text, mine seem to record nothing on my brain.

I can hear the characters but I can not see them or their surroundings. It's a sad thing.

How do yinz tackle this topic?

Camp Nano -

5781 / 10000
(57.81%)

God I HAVE to work on this. I've been doing terrible at it.

Yearly word count -

24470 / 110000
(22.25%)

And from sonjajade anime dub so bad it’s a thing of glory It's soooo bad. It's offensive (purposely in that Archer/Family Guy sort of humor). I've never heard of it...and now I want to see it. I'm not sure what that says about me.

I had a weird dream. It came in two parts. I dreamed I was somewhere (It looked like a craft show in a school gym) and I was telling my parents to look at my left index finger. It had a red swelling on it. I said, does it look like a bite in the middle of it. I touched the spot and the whole thing broke open running out yellow pus. I'm like 'oh, it was a staph infection/abcess.I wasn't too upset but it had way more pus than a finger could hold.

Then I was somewhere with a roommate. I don't know this woman. She was younger than me, Asian with limited English skills. We were driving in a SUV/Jeep thing in the woods. I knew these woods but I was a little worried because it had snowed SO MUCH. I had tried to get up one hill before realizing it would be impossible. I managed to get back down somehow. Then we were in quarry and the snow was pink with red jewels all over it.

My brain...

Comments

[sonjajade.livejournal.com]

Ghost Story is AMAZINGLY bad, like in that hilarious train wreck sort of way. There's a Jehovah's witness character and EVERY TIME something happens she makes a Jesus reference. It's amazing and it's one of my favorites. Definitely in a Shin Chan sort of vein of humor lol

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to find this. The holier than thou Jesus freak was cracking me up. I don't usually go for that sort of humor but this was funny.

[0-mother-0.livejournal.com]

maybe make it a game... the picturing of your characters. If you lighten the mood and take away the stress, maybe it will help. Take slips of paper and write various physical traits (one trait per slip) then make trait piles: one for eyes, one for skin, one for build, one for unique traits, etc. Draw from each pile and voila, you've got visuals. It could even be something you keep in a little divider box for when you get stuck. The slip making you may think of something the writer you can't.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting idea. I DO know their physical traits though. it's describing everything in a cogent way for the art department that's the issue.

There are even sites online that do something I've been doing since my early fandom days. Character sheets, one is so detailed I've gotten bored trying to finish it every time. I thought I book marked them and/or put the urls into a word doc so I would have them but I can't find it

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

And I was talking about htis on FB the other day, that I hoped my readers could get a good idea of what I was seeing when I wrote.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I think it's hard to do

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I like writing description, but then I read a really good descriptive author, and I think I need to do a lot better.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

Yes. This. I know I've taken you to task in critiques for having your characters operate in a vacuum. So much dialog. So much character description. Zero world-building. BAD author! Bad! Bad! But no, I have no solution, unless there's a way to rewire your brain. You know I will dog you forever about the visualization problem, too, because I'm your polar opposite who hears nothing but sees everything vividly while writing it. So of course I write a character who's mainly olfactory. You want a challenge, try writing about someone who navigates the world by how it smells. And oh yeah, it's a historical world that no longer exists, so let's just try to re-create in our imaginations how that candle factory smelled.

I want me some pink snow with red jewels. Such an improvement over plain white. Your subconscious is on crack.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

Too bad our styles aren't closer. If we wrote together, we could have this covered. You see 'em , I hear 'em. As for smell you are on your own!

My subconscious is on crack (and apparently afraid of dying of something bizarre)

[seta-suzume.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because I don't really see very vivid depictions of my characters in my head...
I just have to come up with some way to draw them because doodling helps me think. So I don't think of the way I draw them as very definitive depictions. Honestly, when I occasionally get someone else to draw them, I want them to feel free to interpret them as they like.

For someone who draws, I don't think I have a very visual imagination in general. (but at least because I don't imagine very cool stuff I don't suffer much of that 'it was better in my imagination than it ended up on paper' problem)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I would have thought it to be the opposite for you. that makes it even more interesting that you do what you do.