I am busy writing my second book of the Dreamweaver Chronicles and deciding to add some sketches to the book. Thinking of adding weaponry, banners, flags, plants and a few other things. I was also thinking of adding sketches of the main horses as well as of the main characters.
This is where I have a bit of undecidedness – should I go ahead and sketch the characters, portraying them as close as possible to how I see them, or should I leave it up to the reader?
When reading I often imagine the characters in such detail that seeing them on the cover doesn’t bother me, but would love to hear other thoughts and ideas!
If you would like to know more about my book and the process, please visit my facebook page, Nicua Afriqa Dazyl. I am also on Amazon as well as Goodreads (Nicua Shamira). Love to hear from readers and other authors. I just finished writing a small collection of short stories entitled ‘Otherworldly’ and hope to do another soon again.
Firstly, well done on being so productive!
The illustration question is a good one, but not easy to answer. Personally I don’t think a book could ever have too many illustrations. In fact, I often wish I could envision the characters the way the author intended them to look.
I have done many illustrations for school textbooks and initially I found that most of my illustrations depicted white males. This was not intentional, but simply because I had such a good reference at hand (being a white male myself). I had to train myself to draw a variety of different characters representing boys and girls from all cultures so as not to alienate any readers.
Since your work potentially has a worldwide audience, I guess that is something you might want to consider too before illustrating the characters in a way that may be limited to your own personal reference framework!
Either way, have fun. And when in doubt, illustrate! You could always leave the final decision of whether or not to include a particular illustration to an honest critic, like a good editor perhaps.
What a brilliant reply, thanks Immi! 🙂 so good to hear from you and thanks for the advice, definetly taking it to heart! Illustrations it is! 😀
I like to rely on the author for a little hint as to the looks of the characters – I really find it very, very hard to visualize people in pictures – they just do not become 3D in my thoughts, actually I cannot even conjure an expression. I do know, however, when an illustration has let me down, and just been “a character”. Oh, but let us know what they look like!! Definitely! XXXXXX