Writing and reading are about communication. The writer imagines a story. They transform their ideas into words. The reader takes in these words and reconstructs the events the writer imagined.

But it’s not an exact process. A reader will ‘see’ things very differently from the writer. Even if the writer includes detailed descriptions they can’t cover everything. And that’s before we get onto other senses — the sounds and smells of a scene, the sensations on the skin, the internal emotions, the taste of food and drink.

So much of both reading and writing relies on imagination. And everyone has their own way of imagining things.

I’m not particularly visual in my imagination. When I read, I have only a vague internal image of the characters. It’s the same when I write. I focus more on the characters’ internal lives. I might have a rough sketch of each character — sex, age, size, maybe one or two distinguishing features. But beyond that, nothing.

But if I want this new series to be character-driven, I need to know the characters in more detail. In order to bring them alive on the page I need to ‘see’ them.

Some writers use images of famous actors playing particular roles. I don’t watch much (anything?) now. But I like the idea of having some kind of visual representation.

So I’ve turned to AI.

I’ve been dabbling with NightCafe for AI image creation for a while now, so I started prompting it to give me potential images of my characters. It’s not an exact science, though. I’m sure the AI sometimes ignores words in the prompt. It seems to have a bias for males with facial hair, and even when I include phrases such as ‘clean shaven’ or ‘no beard’ or ‘smooth chin’ it still comes up with stubble and beards.

But I’ve persevered, altering settings and adjusting prompts. I’ve gone through all the images NightCafe provided, looking for those that I feel best fit the vague characters in my head.

Let’s have an example, a character called Norm. He’s a part of a small crew on a spacecraft. Norm’s the mechanic, happiest when he’s prodding around behind an open panel, screwdriver and spanner to hand. He’s also a fantastic cook. His crew-mates tell him he could easily become a top chef, but for him, cooking’s a hobby. And a way of interacting with the rest of the crew (he’s not the most gregarious of characters).

There’s a downtrodden edge to him. Older than the rest of the crew, he’s had a ‘normal’ life, but he’s ended up on his own, down on his luck. He’s let himself go physically.

But he’s happy on the craft. It feels like a home of sorts.

After a lot of trial and error, here’s the image I selected for Norm.

The look of this character seems to fit my idea of Norm. There are subtle things in the image that add to his character, like the straps over his shoulders. They’re grimy, through a combination of neglect and grease or oil. They suit his character.

Let’s have a look at another member of the crew. Chelle is young. She comes from a good background, but she’s rebelled, to the point where she’s turned her back on her family and ‘run away with a degenerate bunch of ruffians’. She has a sharp tongue, and isn’t afraid to say what she thinks. She’s also very intelligent.

Take a look at Chelle:

My understanding of this kind of AI is that it draws from a large pool of source material. The larger this pool, the greater the variety the AI can analyse. But if there are any biases within this source material the AI will, naturally, replicate it.

I assume that’s why the AIs used in NightCafe tend to default to white characters.

I rarely (if ever) ‘see’ my characters as being a particular colour or from a particular ethnicity. In this new series, humanity has spread to the stars. I can’t see that happening unless different countries work together, so I’m assuming a lot of integration. But as humanity settles on new planets, new moons, and in craft that are in effect drifting cities, the old prejudices and cliques will be replaced by new ones. As generations adapt to slightly different gravitational or atmospheric conditions evolution will push different groups into new areas. Add to this biological and genetic manipulation through technology, and our current ideas of ethnicity will become ancient history.

This is a long-winded way of saying that, in the galaxy of this new series, it doesn’t matter what colour someone is.

However, I still need diverse characters. And if the AI keeps giving me white characters, it isn’t helping. So, to force some variety, I’ve experimented by adding prompt terms related to colour and ethnicity. Not because I ‘see’ characters as coming from a particular country or group of people, but because I want variety. Seeing an image that is ‘different’ to my (biased) perceived ‘normal’ will be a reminder that my characters come from different planets, from different groups of people.

For Chelle, the images NightCafe gave me only started to feel right when I added ‘Asian’ to the prompt. After quite a few that didn’t hit the mark I settled on the one above. From this image I can imagine a younger Chelle, with ‘perfect’ hair (before she cut it and let it do whatever it wanted). I can imagine her using make-up as her culture deemed normal, before she let her internal character show in a more natural look.

There’s also a combination of toughness and vulnerability in this image. It reminds me that, for all her insults and tough attitude, Chelle is still discovering who she is. In many ways her attitude is a way of hiding, or a way of coping with a universe she isn’t quite ready for.

As with the uncertainty and the down-trodden look in Norm’s image, Chelle’s image opens up the possibility of changes throughout the series. Neither of these characters are one-dimensional. They’re going to grow. While I ‘know’ that from the way I’ve imagined these characters, seeing these images reinforces that for me. These images provide a reference, something I can look at as I write, reminders that these characters are ‘real’.

It doesn’t matter if readers ‘see’ Chelle and Norm in the same way I do, or if their internal images are nothing like these AI images. Readers need to engage with the characters, and that only truly happens when the characters feel ‘real’. To make this happen, I have to write about ‘real’ characters — not ideas of what a character might be, but characters who are flesh and blood, characters who exist. These images, and the images I’ve come up with for other characters, are going to help immensely in this.

Of course, there’s far more to writing than imagining realistic characters. But a story, let alone a series, isn’t created in a single step. Next time, I’ll talk about another aspect of this project, another step in the realisation of my ideas.

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This is part of an on-going series of posts documenting my work on a new space-opera. If you’d like to get early access to these posts you can do so by subscribing to my Substack for free.