Mr Bing and Me.

A picture is worth a thousand words

― Napoleon Bonaparte

Mr. Bing and I don’t have the same idea about how my characters should look. Like all writers, we have an idea in our heads of how our characters look to us. In the past, I have collected images from glossy magazines, Sunday supplements, and anywhere I’ve come across an image that would serve as a visual aid in creating characters, settings, or writing prompts. I have scrapbooks of pictures that I collected as a child when I first started learning how to draw.

Martha Wenlock

So when I stumbled across Mr Bing I thought I would play around and create a scene from my new Granny Wenlock novel. My image of Martha Wenlock isn’t one of a young sexy witch, nor is she an old hag with a hooked nose and a pointy hat. Martha Wenlock is Martha Wenlock, aged between forty-five and fifty. She’s a quiet spoken, wise, caring woman of her time.

This is as close as Ai could get to what I wanted.

Martha’s small dwelling, which she inherited from her grandmother, is in a clearing in the woods. Here Martha tends to a herb garden and is surrounded by the peace of nature. It is here where the locals visit her when they fall ill or are in need of care for their children. After about twenty-odd images of witches and old wrinkled faced women, I finally got the result I wanted for Martha. The men dragging her from her cottage look too modern, but still I’m happy with the main subject.

The cottage behind Martha in this picture is more of a house, but when I added the word Hovel (meaning a small, very humble dwelling house), Mr. Bing refused to create a picture. I deleted the word hovel and tried English cottage, but that didn’t help. So my advice is to choose your words carefully.

I’m planning to create a second book this year. For this one, there are five main characters, so I thought I would ask Mr A.I. Bing to create an image of the characters for me. I typed in five characters each with their own personalities. You have to be very careful what you say when writing in your description. As you can see by the some of the selection Mr Bing produce the women looked like fashion models.

The next day, Mr. Bing and I played guessing games. I started adding words like “Stout” and “Ordinary” to the descriptions of the characters. Mr. Bing got annoyed and started adding moustaches to the women, and turned some into bearded hippies. Since many of the pictures depicted the women looking sad or upset by my dissatisfaction with them, I asked Mr. Bing to add smiles to my characters.

Yes, I did want a red-haired character to own a certain type of dog, but as you can see, Mr. Bing started to add his preferred breed of dogs, too. I only wanted my red-haired character to have a dog leash, but Mr. Bing added leashes whenever he wanted. Mr. Bing caused all sorts of weird things to happen, too. In one picture, a character seemed to be pulling the head off a small dog.

You have to be very careful in your wording when you tell Mr Bing what you want. As you can see in my selection is here. If anything it makes you really think about the power of words and how you describe things.

If Mr Bing is having problems then think about your readers. Do they have problems understanding you, too?

Yes, a picture paints a thousand words, but as a writer, you need to write tight, so think carefully about what it is you’re trying to say,

especially if you use Mr. Bing or any other type of AI to create images of your characters. Have fun with Mr. Bing and see whether he creates the image you wanted, and if you do, please do let me know how you get on.

Have a wonderful week

Chat with you again soon.