For the first post of this weekend
I wonder when you read a book how do you picture the characters ?
Do you look at the cover?
Do you just picture them in your mind while reading the story?
Do you take points from discribtions of the characters in the book?
Do you just make them up yourself ?
Have a chance to win a $10 Amazon GC donated by Tyler May
Tyler May was born and raised in the great state of Michigan, and still happily resides there. She is a stay at home mom to her three beautiful children. Tyler’s passion for reading came later in life when she found a love in romance novels, more specifically the male/male genre. After drawing inspiration from some wonderful authors and encouragement from friends and family; she penned her first full length novel: Angel of Darkness. Tyler draws inspiration from the simple things in life and will never take that for granted. Since Tyler is a LBGT author, she has three hopes when a reader picks up her book(s): She hopes that her books will teach tolerance and equality. She hopes to convey the truth behind the infamous saying, “love is love.” She hopes that the book is more than a story―that’s it a journey with an important message. Tyler’s favorite quote and something she always has tucked in the back of her mind as she writes her fictions: “Everything you can imagine is real.”―Picasso.
And two ebooks offered by Bold Strokes Books
I do gt a picture in my head of the characters and then I fill in the gaps with my own imagination.
I look at covers, but rarely find the people on the covers match what I think of the characters as I read. I don’t usually picture characters physically as I read, just take what’s described and keep reading.
I take the picture on the cover as a starting point and change it as i go.
When reading a book i create my own image in my mind on how characters look and also their houses or offices or the towns they live in i create them all in my mind and it is never the same as on the cover LOL And when i re-read the book later (i love to re-read my favorites) the image is still the same.
Sometimes when reading a book, an image of somebody famous comes to my mind. For example, reading the first of Adrien English series I could easily see him as Monty Clift… But I think somebody mentions they look alike somewhere. Anyway, most of the times I create my “own” image in my head….
I rarely pay attention to how characters look on covers (my favorites are more abstract images) – they frequently don’t come close to my own images, and I’ve seen the same guy(s) on too many covers to feel like they really “match”
I generally create images of the characters in my head based on the descriptions in the text. Sometimes, though I get a persistent image in my mind that differs from the text, but I can’t get it to change. 🙂
Thanks for the post and giveaways, Tyler & Bold Strokes. I do a combo of using the descriptions to paint a picture as I read. I know some people imagine which actor would be who, but I go by what the author describes.
If a description isn’t at the beginning, I make it up myself. I would love it if books came with a short physical description of the characters before the story starts or better yet inspiration pics. I hate it when half way through you find out a character looks nothing like you pictured.
cover and descriptions
Yes I do look at cover. I visualize well in the story.
if the author has used a particular model/personality, I tend to picture them, otherwise it’s a character I develop in my head based on the description given
Yes I do look at the cover and usually picture the MC as the cover.Sometimes I can’t image how the cover could be MC that I image.
I usually don’t take a cue from the cover…most of the time it’s not a specific actor or model, though there are exceptions.
I start with the cover, but find the cover is not what the description the author gives. I also at times don’t pay too much attention to the cover and just get a description on my own as I develop the characters personalities.
Usually I look at the cover for some idea. I don’t usually go out and look for pics of what I think the character looks like. I do like when the author tries to be as descriptive of the character as they can be though because it gives me a general idea of what the character could look like.
If there are people on the cover, they usually give me an idea what the characters probably look like. While reading, I’ll adjust my expectations based on the cover image to what I read. It’s always disappointing for me, when the images don’t fit. For example, I really enjoyed the Offbeat Crimes by Angel Martinez. On the cover of the final book, we see a buff young man, who is likely meant to be Ras, whom I envisioned totally different, because he is a librarian and surely doesn’t hit the gym on a regular basis to look like the model on the cover. So yeah, in my mind the cover models should loosely look similar to the characters in the book, otherwise I’d rather not have them on the cover at all. Good examples are the covers of Charlie Cochet’s THIRDS or Jordan Castillo Price’s PsyCop, where the characters look like what I expect them to look.
I try to go by the description the have as the write but I usually have my own interpretation. The covers very rarely match what they describe
Since covers consists usually of headless torsos, they are not that useful…so I usually just make them up myself. Pointers from the book itself are usually not on page one, and I can’t read imagining faceless characters, so thus making up.
I do notice when the characters on the cover very visibly don’t match the descriptions.
I usually take clues from the characters in the book itself. Problem arises when they are not present early on, and I have to imagine the characters myself, just to find out that my imagination doesn’t match the characters at all. I have trouble continuing the book then.
I picture them in my mind from the very beginning. Even when I found out that my picture doesn’t match author’s, I stick with mine :).
I do look at covers but I usually picture the characters based on what I read, not the cover models.
Yes, I do check covers. Sometimes I buy books with beautiful covers and with ugly covers. However, it bothers me when the cover is really cover and makes me wonder what was the author thinking. If it comes to the money they can spend, there are many other covers cheaper that are not that ugly, they just need to search for it.
I usually imagine the characters in my mind but hardly ever look like the guys in the covers or any real person.