Robert Redford was a stone hottie back in the day.

t looks up early Redford works on IMDB

Still not my type. And definitely nothing like the mental image of Jack I'm trying to convey. Similar build, maybe. But totally different bone structure, and Jack isn't blond.

Not a big deal. As long as readers think he's sexy, it's all good. But sometimes I wish I could draw even a little bit so I could capture what I have in mind.

Susan, Susan, Susan, ixnay on the over-escribing-day. When you get right down to it, it doesn't matter what an author thinks his or her characters look like. What matters is that the reader--all fifty-four million of them--knows exactly how they look. They can look like a favorite movie star or the guy behind the counter at Best Buy, or the new pediatrician, or the second fiddle in the civic symphony, or the local weather person. Crush objects, upon whom a reader can hang your character.

Truly, I like characters described, at most, with maybe height, relative to other characters, eye and hair color, or a prominent jaw, or a flying eyebrow, something unique to the character, without a detailed photographic description. So your Nathan Fillion can be someone else's Robert Redford and still be Jack.

Especially for those that think Nathan's ugly -- do you want to saddle them with that? The feelings his appearance conveys are more important -- but don't depend on the appearance to spell it out.

No, no, no, I really don't overdescribe! I know better than that! It's just always weird to me when someone in my writers group names an actor that I just can't imagine fitting the scraps of description I've included. I think all I've said about Jack is that he has chestnut hair and light brown eyes, that he's lean, a bit on the rawboned side, and has hands that would make Teppy a very happy woman indeed. Oh, and he has some sexy scars. Only scattered throughout chapter one and not in those words, because some of them are anachronistic, and my readers would wonder who the heck this Teppy person was.

Hee. Now I want to read a book set in a historical period with fancy-dress and told in Buffista-speak. It will sell exactly 74 copies--to us. But it would be fun! Maybe we can get the writerly types together and write it en committee, like Spiral.

Or perhaps I've had a few too many gingersnaps this evening and the sugar rush has made me giddy.

I made a great point of not describing a female character once upon a time. She was my that-world avatar, and I was looking out from her eyes, so to speak, and I never "saw" her. So aside from the fact she was young and female, I left her appearance to the reader's imagination. Imagine my surprise one evening when I turned on the tv and, in a short-lived summer replacement show set in a completely different historical place and time, there was an actress who just clicked as my character. I'd never pictured her, and here she was. Sort of unsettling.

Hee. Now I want to read a book set in a historical period with fancy-dress and told in Buffista-speak. It will sell exactly 74 copies--to us.

I occasionally amuse myself by imagining character dialogue or introspection in the most modern, slang-ridden terms possible. Or I'll "interview" them and we'll use literary and pop culture references a century or two past their time. Jack's character really clicked for me the day "we" had a nice discussion of Lord of the Rings and how Sam is a saint and a hero, but Jack is nothing like him and would appreciate it if I stopped writing him as such.

I hate it when they do that.

I said, stand over there and say this.

"I'd rather discuss the permutations of swordplay, with an undertone of definite allusion to sex."

But we're not ready for that part yet!

"Who's not ready?"

Stop that! Or...at least have a talk with my husband, would you?

I hated it at the time, but Jack had a point. He's a much better character since I decided to let him have an edge.

"I'd rather discuss the permutations of swordplay, with an undertone of definite allusion to sex."

oh oh oh...might I tag this?