A group of crazy, neurotic, absolutely hilarious erotic romance authors working together to corrupt the world... one reader at a time.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

A cast of characters for my books?

The December theme here on the Cabal of Hotness blog is casting the characters of our books using real-life actors. But here's the thing: I purposely don't "cast" my characters. Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like assigning them to an actor limits me. I know what they look like, and I tell my readers enough so they know too, but also so they can form their own picture.

If I said my hero looked like Gerard Butler, as a reader I would think you'd attribute certain personality traits to that hero based on what you've seen Gerard Butler do in the past, whether as himself or one of the characters he's played.

Am I nuts in thinking that?

Maybe. But in the spirit of the theme, let's imagine who could play Rob from Underneath It All. Here's the skinny on Rob:

- professional hockey player
- 5'9", 210 pounds (aka stocky)
- olive skin tone
- dark brown hair
- brown eyes
- Italian descent

I found a guy for Rob's cover. This is him:

What do you think? How did I do?

The reason I liked this "Rob" was the facial expression. Rob, though a sweetheart, has a bit of "I'm hot and I know it" to him, and the eyes, the little smirk etc on this guy capture that perfectly. I can't think of an actor who would give me the same impression.

My heroines are even harder. I know what they look like, but I tend to describe my heroes more than my heroines. I guess the way I look at it, is -- most of my readers are female. They want to hear about the man, not the woman who's going to steal their book boyfriend away from them, as all heroines do.

Do you prefer, as a reader, to draw your own conclusions or do you enjoy having the author compare him to a real-life person when describing him in the book? I'm curious to hear your answers!

-- Cassandra

2 comments:

  1. I tend to skip over character descriptions because I can never remember what someone looks like. And the few real-life references have gone over my head, usually because I don't know who the person is.

    I'm not a writer, so I'm not sure how I would do it. All paths lead to the same place in this instance I think. If you need a real life person to piggy back off of, great. If you don't, great. Then you have to decide if you let the reader in on that, or if it's just for your reference. Of course, you could leave the real life reference out of the book but include it in the behind-the-scenes look on your blog.

    Interesting all the variations writers and readers take.

    I'd love to syndicate this on The Masquerade Crew (and/or possibly on our new Romance site). If interested, please see the following link.

    http://masqueradecrew.blogspot.com/2013/11/would-you-like-us-to-syndicate-post-of.html

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  2. I like a great description of the hero, he doesn't need to be compared to a real person. I like to make my own pictures in my head or refer to the guy on the cover for my visions.

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