Imagination and images

Every now and then when I’m writing, I need to do a description of a character. I have their image in my mind, but when it comes to finding the right words to evoke them. I will often go searching for an image to help me. But as I’ve often explained to people, I’m not necessarily looking for an exact picture image, but a photo that evokes the feeling of the character.

And here’s an example. In this case, I’m writing Marcus’s story (from the Devil Riders series) and his heroine is blonde. We first meet her as a little girl — rather a wild, scruffy little girl. Here’s a bit from the prologue, where she and Marcus first meet as children. It’s from Marcus’s point-of-view.

She was small, maybe eight or nine, and dressed in a shabby, ill-fitting dress. Her hair was a tangle of silvery blond elf-locks surrounding a face that was dirty and tear-streaked. A gypsy child perhaps? Though that coloring was unusual in gypsies. For a moment they simply stared at each other.

Years later they meet again as adults. Our heroine is now much more sophisticated-looking, with her hair long, tamed and coiled in a smooth, elegant chignon-style. But she hates her long hair (for reasons that we learn in the scene) and in an impulse she hacks it off with her nail scissors. Here’s a snippet of the scene. (All this is in draft form, by the way. By the time the book comes out it might have changed a little.)

           Lady Gosforth stood in the doorway. She lifted her lorgnette. There was a long moment of absulute silence, then, “Good gad! What have you done to yourself, gel?”  
         Tessa stood slowly, and shook out her hair again. The last few remnants of long silver-blonde hair slithered to the floor. She lifted her chin. “I never liked it long.”
          “You look like a hedgehog!” the old lady said acidly.
           “Good. I like hedgehogs.”
           There was another long silence as the old lady stared at Tessa through her lorgnette and Tessa stared back defiantly. She would not be intimidated. Besides, what could anyone do? Her hair was gone. It was too late now. 
            Lady Gosforth turned and, without another word, stalked away .

A short time later, Lady Gosforth’s maid comes under orders to tidy up Tessa’s dreadful haircut.  She does, and to Tessa’s disappointment, when she’s finished she looks quite pretty. 

From: https://www.bouncecurl.com/ar/blogs/news/how-curly-hair-should-be-cut-best-styles-and-tips/

That’s the point at which I went looking for an image. So I googled short curly hair, and almost at once this image caught my eye. But Tessa was pale skinned, and her hair is silvery blonde, so I added in the word blonde and kept looking. But I kept coming back to this photo.

And this is what I mean by the feeling evoked by the photo. The young woman in the photo doesn’t look anything like my Tessa, but something about her expression— a wistful quality— feels like Tessa to me. 

So that’s my Tessa, only her skin is pale and her hair is silvery blonde and shorter and  is more “elf-locks” than tousled. But the expression in this lovely young woman’s eyes speaks to me, because while Tessa is strong and brave, she’s also vulnerable and at times wistful. And lonely.

Seems silly, doesn’t it, looking for an image to write a description and finding a feeling/mood instead, but imagination works in odd ways. Or at least mine does.