Face of a hero (or three)

One of my challenges as a writer is that I'm a kinesthetic person, rather than a visual one. So, while I have a strong sense of my characters, I find it hard to actually get a clear visual picture. But I need an image, so that I can study it and work out how I might describe the person in visual terms if required. And to pin up on my notice board as inspiration (or perspiration, in some cases ;-) )

So, since I don't get to see a heap of TV or movies these days, I gave my batty writing group some brief word pictures and asked for suggestions of faces that might work for two of my characters in books I'll be seriously working on shortly - Cole Tanner in Shadows and Light, and Morgan 'Gil' Gillespie in Dark Legacy.

For Cole, who can pass as a local in parts of Central Asia (the '-stan' countries), Kris suggested Nicholas Lea:


Hmmm.... Yum. Yep, I could drool look at that face for a while ;-)

But he's a little young for Cole, unfortunately. And, as a friend of mine once said about someone, 'This is his first time around.' Now, I'm not really into reincarnation, but there are some people who seem to have older souls than others, and Nicholas (in this photo anyway) doesn't seem to be one of them - whereas Cole knows life on a deep level. So, Nicholas is going into the resources file - and he may well appear as a hero in another book... yes, there's a definite possibility...

Angie sent me a link to a website with thousands of photos of aspiring actors and models, and I found this guy (a model called Loukas), who isn't right for Cole either, but I'll post him anyway in case it prompts someone to think of other suggestions:



(The face shape, skin, hair is right, but the mouth seems wrong to me - a bit self-indulgent, pouty, soft. Which Cole definitely isn't in the slightest. And the eyes/expression aren't quite right, either. All in all, this guy just isn't deep enough for Cole.)

Now, for 'Gil' Gillespie, last night I rummaged through a few pics I'd saved over the years, and found this one:


Give him black hair and dark eyes, and this particular photo of Clive Owen could well be Gil - tough, hard, and walking sometimes on the edge of the law. Not to mention droolable. Oh, yes....


I didn't ask the Bats about images for another hero, Ronan. Ronan appears as a colleague and friend of Cole in Shadows and Light, and will be the hero in Shadows and Dreams. Ronan gives the impression of a less complex personality than Cole - a fun guy, less serious, taking life lightly, although in reality he is a dedicated and serious professional. He just hides it well ;-). (Of course, in his story, he will be thrown into some extremely heart-wrenching situations....)

I found this image on the model/actor site, and it kinda works. There's a depth of character there, but you can see there's a grin not far below the surface:




But for Ronan, I suspect that I'll come back to Hugh:




Oh, yes, we do men well here in Australia ;-)

This 5 minutes of bliss was brought to you by Bron's usually-Boring Blog.