When I write, I like to have pictures--houses, cars, clothes, and most importantly, the characters. I go looking for some of these things when I'm in pre-book. That's what I call the time I spend preparing to write a story. Other images I let go until I absolutely need them.
Normally, I look for pictures of my hero and heroine before I write a word, but with the Work In Progress (WIP), I didn't do that. My guess is it's because the h/h weren't clear to me until I started writing. That's strange, too. I usually get a sense of what they look like when they come in and begin talking to me, but that didn't happen this time. It's weird, but I've learned to go with the flow on things like this.
I finally reached a point, though, where I needed more than pictures of the heroine's home and the floor plan.
To say searching for pictures of my h/h is a pain would be understating it. I have this dream of some day just stumbling across the right images for everyone while I'm looking for something else. I've never come close to this, but I refuse to give up hope. Unfortunately, the process is excruciating slow as my characters reject image after image as not being them. Some of the nopes are for tiny ridiculous things.
With this WIP, it was moderately horrible. I only had to spend two days looking for my heroine. I had no idea what she looked like--not even hair color--until I (excuse me, until WE) started looking. It narrowed down pretty fast, so it became a case of finding the right woman with dark blonde hair.
If only her hero had been even half that cooperative. I probably spent triple the time on searching for him. I knew he had dark hair, but not how dark. I knew he wore his hair two different lengths and that became a problem. If the guy looked good with long hair, he wouldn't look good with short or vice versa. I finally found him on Saturday morning.
I half expected my hero to change is mind by Sunday, but so far, the images I've found appear to be the right ones because he hasn't squawked and neither has my heroine.
And the good news is that I found the heroine for another book while I was searching for this one. It's a good thing since the other heroine plays a role in book 1. If I'd stumbled across her hero, I would have thought my dreams had come true. They didn't. He remains at large and at some point, I'll have to go looking for him, too.
