The Trials of Being Ordinary

When I write a story and begin to imagine a character, I quickly develop a mental image of what he or she looks like–height, weight, hair color, preferred clothing style, etc. They often look like someone I’ve seen before. The problem is, none of my characters look much of anything like the beautiful models who make up the vast majority of images available on stock photography sites. Like the vast majority of us, they just look ordinary.–the kind of people you’d see while shopping, or hanging out at the park.

Finding photos to represent my characters proved to be the greatest challenge in my cover design adventure. In my first book, I described my hero as looking sullen and unattractive, and the one in my current story is a bit (or maybe more than a bit) overweight. One of my heroines shaves her head at the beginning of the story. Another has pink highlights. But until I can come up with a really great story about tall blonde beauties with flowing locks, the search for the perfect character image will go on.