Ever since I started using the 'Backwards
Casting Method' for the heroes and heroines in my books I've found the
right visual aids help to capture the essence of my characters. A picture can
tell a thousand stories as the saying goes and it's certainly a handy way of
keeping a clear mental picture of them for the descriptive passages in my
stories. When I blogged about heroines I said:
"Even looking at pictures while casting a heroine
can be a test of whether or not we like her enough to tell her story... If she is crying in the picture or has a determined tilt to her
chin or a sparkle of mischief in her eyes she seems more human somehow, more
real...
We need to create a heroine that the reader wants to take the journey
with... whatever conflicts she
has or past problems that hold her emotions back from the guy we know is right
for her, they need to be real and understandable. It's one heck of a challenge
for any writer. To not only make her story believable and real, but to make
her someone the reader would like to know, maybe even be
for the the space of a couple of hundred odd pages."
So having started a Hero
Database with the help of my
Pink
Heart Society
friends it seemed only right to do one for heroines.
My advice would be once you
find the look you're aiming for do a Google picture search of her name to see
what you discover. You may well find a picture of her that captures
the 'mood' of your story better (and you'll see the proof of this with the
ones I've listed here because some are repeated with different looks.)
You can find the Hero Database
here.
