Life coming to Characters

One of the things that I find as a lot of fun is characters. I love to play around with them and add quirks visualize them and one of the things that I like to do is cast an actor of actress for certain characters. I realize that a lot of people do this, but a lot of people don't as well. So, I'll give you an example.

Character:
Jocelyn Alphonsine Frey (her name is completely German)

Age: 15-16

Appearance: She has dark hair and blue/gray/green eyes. Her hair is long and she's not really tall. She's a goth sort of girl who doesn't smile or laugh very much do to her childhood. She's not really skinny, but slightly on the slim side.

Family: Lisa (aunt) and Corey (cousin)

For Jocelyn I kind of knew which actress I wanted. It helps if you have seen the actor in something before, and in this case I have, but not often. So this is who I came up with.

This is Lucy Hale. She has been in the ABC family series Pretty Little Liars (I don't watch this) and some other movies. She guest starred in an episode or two of Wizards of Waverly Place.

She is 21 years old and 5'3. If you want to know that age and height of an actor, you can go to IMDB and look at the trivia/biography. I think she really looks like a teenager, usually I don't like to think of older people playing people who aren't in their age range, but I think it's fine in this case.

CAUTION: When you look up actors you may get inappropriate images, be VERY careful about what you look at. I would try not to look directly under images, unless you know the actor (in terms of what they do) well.

Another thing, I save a file of what actor is which character. I highly recommended doing this. One problem that I had was I didn't write the actor's name's down, some of them, I didn't know by sight. So I had to look all of them up over again, and that took a good hour or two (then I didn't save it and I had to go through it again).

I have done this for nearly all the characters that have speaking parts. It's so much fun, I'm serious. If you are have writer's block, but still want to work on your book, then this would be very helpful. After your done, you might have some new ideas!

So do you do this in your writing? If so, which actors/actresses have you 'cast' in your books?

By the way, Merry Christmas to you all! Have a good one!