Placeholders, the Use Of

I’ve always used pictures of placeholders in my work, just to keep my vision of a character clear until they came alive on the page. Once a character takes off, the placeholder falls away, but until then, the pictures act as touchstones. This becomes doubly important when collaborating. You really need to be on the same page or photo for that. So here are some of the placeholders that Bob and I have used.

Liz and Vince from Lavender’s Blue
I’d always seen Liz as Mary from In Plain Sight, but I’d cycled through several Vinces, never quite able to get it right, until Bob rewrote him and then it was clear to me that he was Tom Hardy from the Mad Max movie. Only, you know, he showered a lot more often.

Liz and Lavender
I wanted two women who were superficially alike (especially from the back) but totally different.

Anemone and George
Bob and I had totally different ideas for Anemone–he wanted Dolly Parton and I wanted Sue Ann Niven (only warm and loving), but since the placeholders fall away as the character becomes real, it didn’t matter. We both agreed on George.

And then when we got to the next series, we needed people who were different. Very hard not to write the same characters when you’re writing first person, so we picked very different faces for the placeholders, which have now fallen away since we’re finishing the second book. I still like how they’re very different and yet still have that Crusie/Mayer vibe.

Rose and Max from Rocky Start

So the plan for placeholders is to find pictures that somehow fit the sense of the character, not so much a lookalike, although that’s very helpful if you’re collaborating, but something that gives the personality, which is why you can use pictures of different people for one character as long as they sum up the character when taken together. Even if you don’t use collage, having pictures as a touchstone as you write is a huge help.