Personally I give each character a face, either from a person I know who matches their personality or a celebrity that fits the description, even though sometimes it can be really annoying if the author gives more details on the persons appearance and my character doesn’t fit that lol. I’m very curious as to what other people do.
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I usually think of them as naked people
It’s a completely made up person in my head. It only matches a celebrity if a film has been made on the book.
I don’t see characters in my head. I may have vague feelings on what they look like, but by and large I don’t vividly picture anything.
Same. If the author spends an inordinate amount of time describing a specific feature or look, I sometimes take a step back and try to imagine the character in detail, but I can’t “retain” that image for long in my head - the character goes back to being sort of amorphous.
Same, and I usually have very vivid pictures in my head of locations / houses.
Maybe it’s intentional so that i don’t get too disappointed if there ends up being a movie / tv adaptation or
Same. They’re blurry to me if I try to picture them.
But if it gets a movie adaption you know if the actor looks like them or not. Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, then watching the movie, always resulted in the students saying “That’s not what Atticus should look like.” Everytime.
This. I swear they straight up shapeshift but maintain the same “vibe”.
This is true for me most of the time
I don’t see pictures in my brain at all. I read the words and understand the concept, so I know that the character is red haired, etc, but I don’t actually put a picture with the description.
For the main characters I usually associate them with a celebrity or fan art and I picture that while reading but typically any side characters are just a vague idea of what they look like. I get too confused if I try to come up with an exact picture of each character so I just focus on the main ones.
If it’s the type of novel with very vividly described characters and scenes. I fully cast it with actors I like (usually the same handful), and I can hear their voice in my head reciting the speech. The narrator too is usually an actor’s voice that I like.
Same. And if I’m struggling to cast a character, I’ll stop reading and google image search actors/celebrities with the described features and find someone to cast in that role (in my head) before moving on.
I find it difficult to engage with the character until I can put a face on them.
And if there is already a movie/show based on the book, I will sometimes just cheat and use that casting for visualization purposes.
I envy those of you who can do all this in your head.
Most of the times I picture the character as If I could only see their back. I see thier outfit, complexion, hair, even I can imagine their voice, the way they move and the way they smell (if it’s well written). But I’m unable of imagining a face, if it’s described in the book I can only picture the parts of the face separately.
Yup, this is how it is for me!
That’s a really good explanation as how I see it in my mind.
I think my characters are faceless, in a sense that I don’t picture their faces in my head. I think there were some exceptions, but those mostly happened after watching a movie e.g. reading LotR book after watching LotR movies.
Yeah, I read IT last year, and I looked up the actors in the movies to help put faces to names.
I give very basic face shape to each character. As the story develops and you find out more about the personalities, those initial images naturally changes.
Clothed.
I just work off of what the author gives me, if they don’t give me much, my imagination will simply fill in the blank somehow. I think I have a kind of gallery of stock “types” in my head that I can pull from to match a face to a name if I have to.
I usually picture a celeb or reality tv star. For example, The guest by Emma Cline… I pictured the narrator to be Raquel Leviss.
Yes. Books, especially when I get into them become hallucinations as I don’t even feel like I’m reading. It is more a film in my mind watching the characters act or speak.
Mine are kind of smoky or blurry. A general image of the description. If no description, then very soft figures.
I sort of picture their face as an ever changing thing switching out constantly while their other features remain the same
Usually I don’t picture them, but since I started paying attention to authors’ well-worded descriptions, I try to associate the character with a sort of conglomerated stereotype based on people I’ve seen in life or on video media.