Maybe because I'm one of those who's been "poisoned" by movies, TV and other media, when I'm writing or coming up with a story I tend to have a specific person in mind as who I feel best fits the "role," as though it were a movie or TV adaptation. So as I wrote in the other thread, an example would be if I were writing Catcher in the Rye in the '80s as a (muuuuuch) milder American Psycho, in which case the bad-boy teenage rebel Caulfield would be the bad-boy teenage rebel Charlie Sheen. Were it still the '50s, easily James Dean, Elvis, Marlon Brando or Sal Mineo would be candidates for the role, if it were optioned as a screenplay.
As such, I find it difficult to "describe" the characters any more, or even try to work out what I'd say, than "dark, brooding, and always in trouble, young, handsome, brilliant -- and headed for disaster, he was a 'rebel without a cause,' the James Dean of his neighborhood, the Charlie Sheen of his family." Or "The new doctor on the cardiac wing made hearts skip a beat and blood pressure leave the stratosphere, every bit a George Clooney or Patrick Dempsey." Something like that. Or without the names, just a visual image I've got in my head that then doesn't translate to the page. It's as if I can see X actor/musician/athlete/politician (public figure) in the role, and I end up just writing dialogue, knowing how X person acts, talks, dresses, their public personae and/or what they're known for in film/albums/sports/politics (etc.).
But I read somewhere that this is not a good idea, that 1) the readers should have their own image, based on either a little more original description or something generic enough that they can fill in their own details; 2) X public figure may not be as well known in 20 or 30 years, and the image would get lost in translation (and the story somewhat dated as a result); and 3) this might open the door for a lawsuit, even if you're not saying anything bad, but you're using X public figure's "likeness" without his/her permission, one of the very same reasons you can't Google-Images a picture of Sheen or Clooney and put it up for free on a blog or website.
My thoughts on this are: For 1) the fact that James Dean and Charlie Sheen tend to evoke the same kind of understanding of a rebel bad-boy archetype, there are certain universally understood images that don't need much further explanation. For 2) the answer to #1 applies, this time about the same universally understood images carrying through time. (In 50 years there'll be another James or Charlie.) About 3) I'm not so sure, although I believe this has been done before. You're setting up an expectation that the reader already has about X person, i.e. the charming, handsome doctor is Clooney or Dempsey, rather than the troubled bad boy Dean or Sheen, and vice versa. When people picture Julia Roberts they don't think shocking or exotic, like Madonna; nor do they have an image of the Girl Next Door when thinking of the Material Girl. And so on. Unlike a blog or website where there's a picture of the actual person being used, something like this, I would consider to be a description of a character who is like that person or exhibits similar traits or has a similar profession/personality/evokes a similar image of said person's public or "fictional" persona. (Clooney isn't a doctor, but he played one on TV.)
What are your thoughts? As I wrote in the other thread, I tend to gravitate towards the more escapist, light-hearted YA stuff (like Meg Cabot and Anne Brasheares rather than Suzanne Collins or even Stephanie Meyer), a lot of which is considered "chick lit" and both, too, being escapist "popcorn literature" tend to be more visual and make use of elements of the pop-culture spectrum, like the escapism found in movies and TV. Can someone maybe point out some examples of other books where something like this is in play, i.e. the writer had a specific actor/politician/athlete/other public figure in mind when crafting his/her character(s), and/or examples of the "name-dropping" style of description I wrote about above? On the Road maybe not a good example, since Kerouac was already friends with Ginsberg and Cassady, the inspiration for other characters in the book. The "James Dean" image sure comes about in Twilight, with Edward, and I know Nick Hornby once famously said that when he wrote High Fidelity, "it was like John Cusack was reading my book." (Bruce Springsteen has a cameo in both the film and the book, too.)
Anything else, or other comments to offer?
