Describing sexy guys - not quite the right post title, but best I can do.

My husband was reading some of my main WIP and said "Yeah, but what to these guys LOOK like?" The story includes the typical physical description, and as you're reading it, the personal quirks/habits...about 4k in, one is very well defined; at about 6k in, both are.

My husband has a BA in visual communication, and for about 20 years worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, before closing his studio and dedicating his life to spoiling me rotten about 10 years ago. . He's a very visual kinda guy. As he read more, he had a better idea of what these guys were like, but still didn't have a picture in his head. I'm failing somewhere - lol.

So I went on a hunt online to try to find pictures even vaguely related to what these guys look like in *my* head. (No luck yet - lol.)

Anyway, it was interesting. I found some pics that even made husband go "Whoa!". I found pictures of guys that were the right age/looks-kinda, but entirely inappropriate, because though they were the right age, they looked like well-developed 15 year olds. I found pictures of actors that I thought were sexy - but I thought they were sexy several years ago in an entirely different kind of way. e.g. Mel Gibson in Braveheart is killer. Mel Gibson now, is...sexy, but not the kind of sexy I'm looking for. He's older-sexy. lol. (He is 2 months and 2 days younger than my husband )

My husband is 53, and this could have been a touchy subject. But I think he was reassured that most of the guys I thought were the most sexy had dark, curly longish hair like he does - lol.

Anyway, I just started writing again a few months back, but even when I wrote years before, I never did (and don't now) use photo references to picture male characters. I can see them in my head, but they don't resemble anyone I know or have seen. I've read of recommendations to do so, but it sort of doesn't work for me.

Part of my problem is that the first thing I find sexy is a voice, the second the eyes, the third - the way they move, the fourth the hair or the butt, the fifth - whatever I didn't pick for the fourth, sixth, the sense of humor, seventh the smile...you just can't get a lot of that stuff from a still photo. Also, I think my imagination is better than reality .

(Oddly, the women in my stories nearly always resemble someone that I know. :shrug: )

Anyway, describing people in your stories...do you go from pictures? People you know? Totally your imagination? I'm very curious.

I think I need one of those identikit things like the police use to build my perfect male protagonists

J.

ELMontague said:

Personally, I don't try to describe them.

Click to expand...

Well, I don't usually, either. I mean, gotta leave something up to the reader's imagination, yes?

In short stories I definitely don't give anything more than a very cursory description. In longer works, I've been giving the basic "his longish tousled dark hair...blah blah" and perhaps mention the color of his eyes, and the fact that he works out or something. (Though I do have one piece that I'm working on that from the MCs point of view he is described as "overgrown hair, half-beard, tattered clothing, general griminess and especially, the blood dripping on the pristine upholstery of her car"...but that's important to the story. lol)

His question just sort of struck me as odd (we both read a lot); I've never been asked that before, and I've never heard him wonder about a story before so far people description goes. (We did have an interesting night, one night, both trying to draw pictures of what Spider Robinson's "Callahan's" looked like. COMPLETELY different, and we'd both read all the stories.)

On the other hand, he's read about these two guys and this woman over and over...many more times than a reader would. Maybe he simply feels like he ought to know this by now.

I definitely start out with pictures in my head, though - they just aren't pictures that I can find anywhere except inside my head.

J.

Definitely writing to a female audience, and my husband, especially with his art background, is very visual. It struck me as odd, that someone wouldn't have their own picture after reading something several times. (Or I guess he does, he just doesn't feel like it's the right picture - lol)

I read a lot about writing, though, and have read several articles suggesting using models/actors/whatevers as prototypes for their characters. I can't imagine working that way. Especially with actors, I'm afraid that my characterizations would get caught up in roles that they've played.

DeleyanLee said:

I suddenly KNEW she was basing this hero off of Keanu Reeves. Now--this is just my personal opinion, but Keanu Reeves is one of the most UNsexiest men in Hollywood.

Click to expand...

Yep, that'd kill it for me. He's actually number 28 on some UK list of the 100 sexiest men...I thought "ew, Keanu Reeves?!" Tom Cruise is number nine on that same list, and I've never found him sexy, either - I've never seen anyone whose shoulders sloped that much.

I tend to like the more rough and tumble look, though one of my MC's is a bit more "slick" than that.

J.

MargueriteMing said:

Let me get this right...your husband is an illustrator, he isn't doing anything, and you aren't tapping him to do illustrations for your stories? Do I understand you correctly?

Click to expand...

Yep, that's right. lol - maybe I should just have him do an illustration - then he'd know what they looked like

He used to work in airbrush/pastels/ink/chalk/etc. - but a chunk of what he did was commercial, plus a lot of graphic design, etc. His studio produced a lot of museum exhibits and stuff like that.

He did some "art for the sake of art", though, and was quite good at that, as well.

scarletpeaches said:

I don't think describing looks is at all necessary. Unless it directly affects the story of course, and it rarely does.

I don't give two hoots what my characters look like. I care about what they DO.

And WHO they do.

Click to expand...

lol...

I care about how they smell and how they sound and how they move and...more stuff like that.

Maybe it's because I'm nearsighted.

SFLP said:

I care about how they smell and how they sound and how they move and...more stuff like that.

Click to expand...

Ah, and THAT is probably part of the problem with my husband. I'm assuming he doesn't give a rat's ass how the guys smell.

Interesting. My husband and I just had another conversation about this, and I/we were trying to think of someone blond (sorry blondies) that I think is really sexy. I couldn't think of any, and he tried - in RL we point out beautiful people of the opposite sex, where we think they exist, so that's not as weird as it sounds - and he couldn't come up with any either.

In the three stories I'm working on now, the bad guys are all blond, the good guys all have dark hair.

Seems way weird to me. (Two of the blonds are very sexy, they're just evil, as well.)

Anyone else have preconceived notions as to what a "good" character looks like as opposed to a "bad" character does? I apparently do, without even realizing it.

J.

ELMontague said:

Bad characters look like the good guy.

Click to expand...

Hmm. Makes me go all Freudian.

I never realized that all the bad guys in my stories were blond until just before I wrote my last post. But when I was growing up, the blond guys were always the good guys.

One story doesn't have a specific antagonist, in that sense. (The situation IS the antagonist.)

The other two, though, one has a psychopath who is considered a close friend of all involved, who is the villain; he's blond. The other is just an inherently evil, fucking-with-people-is-fun guy who can project emotions onto others...he is blonde as well.

With the first guy I mentioned, especially, it's not immediately apparent that he is the bad guy - he is sort of bland. But he is truly an evil SOB, even though everyone loves him at the beginning of the story.

I don't have any huge traumatic stories in my life involving blonds (though I DO brunettes - lol), so I can't quite figure this out.

I even looked back into my old stuff - only one story that I've written had a non-blond male antagonist.

Therapy, here I come! lol