Visualizing faces.

[mohk]

This bugs me enormously

I read a book and develop definite, clear mental images of settings and objects, even bodies, but I just cannot get a picture of characters' faces in my mind.

It gets to a point where characters either remain faceless for the duration, or I assign them a face of someone I know/saw in a film/etc. (For example, Kaladin from the Stormlight Archives obtained the face of Russel Crowe in Gladiator )

Is this a problem shared by anyone else?
I wouldn't half mind reading some tips on overcoming it if you have any

 

[Miggy]

I don't have any tips but I usually do the same thing. Other fictional characters would blur into what I'm reading and just take the form.

I think maybe it's hard because faces change all the time with all the different emotions, so if you do get a picture of a face in your mind, you then have to render it and reanimate it each time something happens.

 

[Extollager]

Interesting thread! I don't think I usually visualize faces that much, and yet obviously I have some sense of how a character should look because I almost always "don't agree" with how that character looks when an actor or actress is cast for the part.

 

[Grunkins]

Faces in fiction are shifty things for me.

 

[Kylara]

I get glimpses, through a heavy fog, and often they are turning away from me...but I can see their "piercing blue eyes" or "sharp cheekbones", "petite, rosy lips"...hair is always there though, whether described to me or not...I tend not to mind, I find once they have faces they don't fit so well (especially bugs me after watching films of books where the actor doesn't fit to me, I always see them in connection to that name forever more ) not having one fixed allows for growth and development, and I can always feel comfortable with them when I visit them again...

 

[Mouse]

I don't think people can visualise faces in their minds, can they? Not clearly. I can't. I can't even visualise members of my own family in my head, not clearly. Sure, I know what they look like but I can't see the detail.

 

[HareBrain]

I can see their "piercing blue eyes" or "sharp cheekbones", "petite, rosy lips"

For every character? Even Sauron's petite rosy lips?

I don't think people can visualise faces in their minds, can they? Not clearly. I can't. I can't even visualise members of my own family in my head, not clearly. Sure, I know what they look like but I can't see the detail.

I agree. It's very difficult (in my experience) to describe or draw someone from memory, unless you've previously made a particular mental note of certain features whilst you've been looking at them. (So I guess Mouse can probably describe Ben Barnes down to the last skin pore.)

 

[Kylara]

Haha I find Sauron very easy, one of my favourite characters in literature actually, although I guess I see him much more like a presence...

I always think that the eyes and bits around the eyes are the best things to see if anything comes through the fog...

 

[mohk]

Glad it's not just me
Hadn't considered not giving them a face a benefit... Just assumed the more intimately I knew them, the more I could connect, and having a face could only help with that.

 

[nightdreamer]

That's interesting, because I usually visualize my characters to considerable detail. In fact, when I go to a stock image source to try to find a model that looks like him/her, I'm invariably disappointed. Nope, nope, nope. Finally I have to settle on a gross approximation. Maybe it's just me. I've tried to render them with DAZ3D, but even that doesn't work; I'm not that good at it.

 

[Extollager]

It's very difficult (in my experience) to describe or draw someone from memory, unless you've previously made a particular mental note of certain features whilst you've been looking at them.

Do you all find that it may be easier to visualize the faces of people whom you are or were not emotionally close to than those you were?

 

[Vince W]

I find a well written character, and not just a physical description, makes it easier to visualise their faces. Poorly written or secondary are often very generic in my mind. I guess it comes down to my emotional involvement in the character.

A character I feel more deeply about is definitely easier to visualise.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I had a well weird moment in Tesco's a couple of weeks ago when a guy walked past me and he looked exactly how I imagined one of my characters. I'm sure he was wondering what on earth I was staring at. And I'm sure I've never seen him before (plus this character's been knocking around my head for longer than this chap looked like he'd been around. Gosh, that makes me feel very old. ) Bizarre, though.

 

[Montero]

Faces no, don't bother too much. I just pick up the expression from the description but not in an entirely picture it sort of way.

I think I pick up more on the overall impression - the suggested way of movement, size etc - the sort of thing you get from seeing someone in the middle distance in the street - the book equivalent of a distinctive walk.

I do pick up on voices. Goes both ways - just re-reading the Dark Materials Trilogy and I am now hearing the voice of the actor from the film of Northern Lights, who played Lee Scoresby the texan aeronaut. But not the other voices funnily enough. (Mind you it is a very distinctive voice.)

There is also Lindsey Davis Falco books, which are basically narrated by the main character. Have listened to audio tapes of some of them and now I hear that voice in my head when I read one of the books.

But most of the time I am just reading, if I don't have a voice to associate with it.

 

[Mouse]

(So I guess Mouse can probably describe Ben Barnes down to the last skin pore.)

Anyone would think I was obsessed!

I had a well weird moment in Tesco's a couple of weeks ago when a guy walked past me and he looked exactly how I imagined one of my characters. I'm sure he was wondering what on earth I was staring at. And I'm sure I've never seen him before (plus this character's been knocking around my head for longer than this chap looked like he'd been around. Gosh, that makes me feel very old. ) Bizarre, though.

I've had this. My office is directly opposite a park. The park keeper looks exactly like one of my characters, to the point where I find myself staring at him every time I see him.

 

[nixie]

Never really thought about it. Although like Extollager, I rarely agree when an actor is picked to play a character. Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, somehow I can't picture it. He's not tall enough for a start.

 

[clovis-man]

It gets to a point where characters either remain faceless for the duration, or I assign them a face of someone I know/saw in a film/etc. (For example, Kaladin from the Stormlight Archives obtained the face of Russel Crowe in Gladiator )

Oddly, I watched and enjoyed the Master and Commander film with Russell Crowe as Patrick O'Brian's Captain Jack Aubrey. But I simply can't see him when reading the books. I'm down to the last couple of volumes and just don't see him as other than a very large, ruddy Brit with a Stentorian voice. The doctor (Maturin) is seen by me as a scrawny, weasel-like geek. I just can't help it! Great characters all the same.

 

[Vertigo]

This is something I despair about, so I'm well glad it's not just me. I always stuggle to accurately visualise characters described in books. I have individual snapshots so to speak. Depending obviously on the description, I can see the crooked smile, or maybe the raised bushy evebrow or whatever, but I can rarely put them all together into an impression of a face.

Even though I cannot say what they look like, I can say what they don't look like (at least to me). So I still have a problem when an actor doesn't 'match'; they don't raise that bushy eyebrow or smile that crooked smile.

The worrying thing is if I myself can't visualise a face from a description how on Earth am I supposed to write such a description and know if it's any good

 

[Ursa major]

I had a well weird moment in Tesco's a couple of weeks ago when a guy walked past me and he looked exactly how I imagined one of my characters. I'm sure he was wondering what on earth I was staring at. And I'm sure I've never seen him before (plus this character's been knocking around my head for longer than this chap looked like he'd been around. Gosh, that makes me feel very old. ) Bizarre, though.

This - seeing one of my characters - happened to me at an orchestral concert a few years ago.

One of the two principal characters in my frame story was sitting right behind me, in one of the six seat reserved for guests of the Art Centre. The only difference between this woman and my character was that the real person looked about ten years younger. Thinking about this the next day, I realised that if I dropped the character's age, it would solve some niggling, but seemingly intractable, problems I had for the conclusion of WiP4 (i.e. the end of the series.)

So now the character is the age she should always have been, thanks entirely to serendipity**.


** - I suppose one could argue that this solution would have eventually presented itself, but despite it being obvious (once discovered), it had never once crossed my mind. (Note that the problems this solved didn't appear to have anything to do with the frame story's characters' ages, but the solution did.) So a richly deserved, "Well done!" to whoever gave this anonymous person a seat at that concert.

 

[steve12553]

In many of the books I have read if the author has included a very detaied description of the character it is usually in the early part of the book. By halfway through the book the charcaters actions and other small clues in the text will have left me with an impression of the character which may look nothing like the original description. Actions by the character will remind me of someone I know or a character in a movie or television show and the character will develope a life of its own. I guess as long as they don't start talking to me when I'm not reading that's OK.