Mental Pictures

I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of authors who are posting photos to Facebook or Pintrist (or other places) with their picks for actors/actresses for their main characters. It’s gotten me thinking – because I’m not sure I love this idea.

One of the best things (to me) about reading a book is that I get to disappear into my imagination for awhile. Certainly there are pictures painted by the words – but I can put my own spin on them. So if the writer tells me the heroine has long auburn tresses, well, I might imagine that means Megan Follows or I might get another mental picture. (Side note: she needs to get someone to change her IMDB photo – wow that’s a terrible one!) And so on and so forth. I love to get my own pictures in my head – to me, that’s half the fun.

Inevitably though, I tend to be disappointed when a book is turned into a movie because my mental picture hardly ever aligns with the actors and actresses (and sometimes even the settings and sets) who end up embodying the character I’ve come to know and love. In some cases, I decide it’s great and they become my new mental picture (a great example of this is the movie version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion starring Ciaran Hinds). In other cases? I find myself not loving the movie and shying away from re-reading the book for a while until the taint is gone.

Now, with the release of my book creeping into the nearish future (only 3 months!), my publisher has asked if I’ve considered starting a Pintrist board for the novel. I could pin things like places Lydia (my heroine) might frequent, clothes she might wear, the apartment I modeled hers after, etc. And I’ve found myself cringing a little inside. Obviously, if it’s considered a must, I’ll go ahead and do it, but I thought I’d send the question out into the ether and see if I got any reply.

So, for you, as a reader, do you find it helpful, harmful, or a quirky combination of the two to have real pictures for the characters, places, things, etc you’d otherwise conjure from your imagination while reading?