The Casting Couch

You’re starting your book. You’ve worked out the plot, the main characters have names, and you have a general idea what they look like. Or do you?

Some authors have the ability to mentally see what their character looks like in precise detail. That little mole under the left eye. The long eyelashes unfairly given to a man. The tiny scar she has on the edge of her collarbone. The way the hair grows back from her brow.

Unfortunately, I’m not that good at that. I generally manage hair color, eye color, and probably height. I get stuck on coming up with details beyond that. I can’t mentally see them beyond a vague blur of their features.

I flip the idea sideways to make it work for me. If this was a movie, who would I cast in the role of the main character. Then bang (!) I have a clear image of what my character looks like and some physical traits which I can modify depending on my plot needs.

Let me give you an example of how that worked for me.

In the book Watching Shadows - Book 1: Paranormal Shadows I had the character of Tyler Buchanan. I knew the kind of person he was and that he had a quirky sense of humor and charm. But for his physical description… Vague is the word. Until I saw him on television. More precisely, I saw him on MacGyver. Richard Dean Anderson became the physical template of Tyler Buchanan. I aged him a little, put a few gray hairs at his temple and suddenly he became easier to write and describe. His personality settled right in with a perfect fit.

I did the same with other characters in the story. Evan Richardson is Ben Browder. Alonsa Matthews was physically based on Holly Marie Combs.

Now that being said, I realize that how I see my characters and how a reader will see them in their mind's eye are two very different things. This is just my process on one aspect of my novel writing. I pin their pictures to the wall while I’m writing.

Of course there were times I looked at Tyler and said “What is wrong with you?”

So how do you come up with your character looks? Comment below.