your literary stock company

I recently finished Sylvia Townsend Warner's Summer Will Show (review in the what are you reading thread) and the main character being an upper class middle aged woman, I instantly pictured her as Sandi Toksvig, who is my go to for any middle aged, rich female character in English novels from the 19th century up to around the 1950's.

This example is the one I can most easily think of because I just finished that book, but it's not an isolated quirk - in any book I'm reading I will quickly enlist actors, celebrities, cartoons, images from paintings, etc. to portray the characters, based on an initial impression of what their deal is. If a physical description comes in later - say, if a character gets described as short and fat when the person I had attributed to them is tall and skinny - most usually this will be overriden in my head as they have already been "cast".

I had assumed everyone did this, but recent conversations suggest this is not so. Do you? Who are your regular players? And if you don't, how does that work - do you truly imagine original creations based on the book's descriptions? Or does the physical presence of the characters just...not come into it when you're reading?

When I read the first Dirk Gently book as a kid, I pictured Don Adams as the protagonist

I absolutely do this. I can't think of an regular players right now but the last book I read had a rather sensitive and innocent adult character who I couldn't find convincing until an image of Dwight Schultz came to me.

Imagining original creations based on the book's descriptions is hopeless, any time an author goes down the "bold eyebrows perched atop a pair of piercing eyes, firm cheekbones buttressed an aquiline nose above a pair of full lips" route I end up picturing a terrible mr potato head monstrosity.

Imagining original creations based on the book's descriptions is hopeless, any time an author goes down the "bold eyebrows perched atop a pair of piercing eyes, firm cheekbones buttressed an aquiline nose above a pair of full lips" route I end up picturing a terrible mr potato head monstrosity.

do you truly imagine original creations based on the book's descriptions?

Yeah, kind of. At least, I don't usually have specific models that I'm directly importing from somewhere else. I'm sure that my images of the characters are influenced by all kinds of things. But they also typically aren't very precise. I tend to forget most of the physical details that the author gives upfront, unless those details enter into the story in an important way. Like, when I read Middlemarch, I have a rough idea of how Dorothea looks, how Celia looks, but my mental pictures of them tend to stay at the miminal resolution that the scene requires. It's enough to have a vague model, and their distinctive presence comes from, idk, how the author animates them in writing?

https://www.wired.com/2016/01/oscarssowhite-the-subversive-and-cathartic-act-of-fancasting-movies/ (Note: this article talks a lot about imagining non-Caucasians in roles that almost always are played by white cis-gender actors.)

A very common thing in some fandoms. When I can't sleep sometimes I go through my personal fancasts (of silent and Pre-Code actors) for Star Wars or Harry Potter.

People in roleplaying games on LiveJournal and similar sites sometimes had extensive collections of avatars representing their character, often based on the celebrity they liked to picture in the role.

I don't think I visualize characters, or maybe I do, I must in some sense but not in a way that I can recall

I don't visualize too much when I read, I definitely reuse a lot of locations (many of them based on childhood memories)

http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Bu4AAOSwNTFhixNn/s-l1600.jpg

Reading this in my teens has guaranteed that, from thereon, every earnest young Edwardian of either gender I come across in fiction looks like him or her in my mind.

I definitely visualize characters and I don't think slot in actors too often, but maybe I do? I guess I try not to think about the act of reading too much.

Reading 'Wellness' by Nathan Hill and I suppose I see the main male character as a sort of non-descript skinny alt-rock boy gone dad bod based on the descriptions, with his very specific tattoos. But now that you mention it, the main female character has a tinge of s1 Skylar from Breaking Bad, possibly blended with a little Elisabeth Moss in my mind's eye?

no actor or known faces / people fill the written lineaments, and while i don’t think i exactly *visualise* unless the author has specifically made me (lol at otm potato head example), but they do occupy an imaginative space with shape, weight, more than outlines and probably with psychological “features” dialled up, such that if an actor subsequently plays them there’s mental conflict as they battle for that space. ineluctable modality of the visible actor battling with the less substantial but usually more “felt” mental disposition i’ve made out of the words.

Reading 'Wellness' by Nathan Hill

I just finished this book and the sum total of my mental impressions of the physical aspects of the two characters you describe is "white and small" and "white and pretty". I guess I don't usually "cast" the characters of a book.

lol

it’s really annoying when physical attributes of a character don’t get fully established until after you’ve already made up a picture in your mind

I don't do this, except when reading something that's already been adapted into a film. Like The Leopard or that Philip K Dick short story.

Its funny that its a thing. I guess I picture psychologies for the character that could be borrowed from TV or people I've met and then see how that falls off, or is affirmed.

They all look like me

https://cinemasips.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/being-john-malkovich.jpg

Characters in books definitely all sound exactly like me. I'm incapable of giving them distinct voices and accents. Everyone talks in present-day Canadian.

i guess Tale of Genji and The Story of the Stone have been my big obsessions over the last few years and i don't visualise the characters solidly but there is a kind of shimmering vision of them like Fizz described in my head, maybe they're not books that lend themselves to internal casting but i don't think that's a thing i do anyway

thinking about it i realised that for example Stephen Dedalus and the Blooms have never been visual presences in my head either, Leo definitely has never been Milo O'Shea for me

Milo O'Shea is fucking great in everything btw

Imagining original creations based on the book's descriptions is hopeless, any time an author goes down the "bold eyebrows perched atop a pair of piercing eyes, firm cheekbones buttressed an aquiline nose above a pair of full lips" route I end up picturing a terrible mr potato head monstrosity.

lol

actually thinking about it Leo Bloom is probably David Suchet doing Poirot in my head

Male characters all look like Dana Andrews in my head
Female characters mostly like Katherine Hepburn
Unless I know what the author looks like, then they mostly resemble them (esp. PK Dick and JG Ballard)

How people visualize what they read is probably related to aphantasia/hyperphantasia, discussed a bit in this thread:

Aphantasia - the inability to visualise things in your mind

They all look like me

― keep kamala and khive on (wins), Thursday, August 15, 2024 10:47 PM bookmarkflaglink

otm

Male characters all look like Dana Andrews in my head
Female characters mostly like Katherine Hepburn
Unless I know what the author looks like, then they mostly resemble them (esp. PK Dick and JG Ballard)

I pay next to no attention to an author's specific physical descriptions of a character other than in the vaguest way, e.g. is the character intended to be attractive, physically imposing, pudgy and soft, elderly, small but vigorous, etc. What is important to me is placing them in regard to how other characters react to them or clues as to how I am supposed to slot them among the possible 'types'.

Aimless, what I describe in my original post is exactly the last thing you say - casting the characters through ppl and images I already know is a way of reminding me which "type" they're supposed to be.