What can a photo illuminate in a story: Or what happens when FC Barcelona Trio cross the portal to an alternative world? Part (1)

State of day: told ya before I like to disappear, I was busy casting away evil shadows surrounding my house, and even met some Morlocks on my doorway, that was one nasty fight. But! but it wasn’t all bad I got to watch some mind blowing movies :) StrategyKid and I are big fans of historical Asian movies so when he brought the DVD of Red Cliff 1 & 2 by John Woo I was in time for a great treat.

And Aishah Amin has declared the winners of her pioneering contest for best Hijabi design, some of her top ten were really down my allay :) I hope I see more of such contests and maybe next time I’ll participate myself, who knows.

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Welcome everyone for your first part of the long awaited Barca picture posts by Captain Haneen. It’s a post serving a twofold purpose because it’s also about writing ;)

Now, of course when I think about a new character I see her in my head and try as much as I can to capture the smallest details of how she looks, but most importantly how each feeling is colored differently on her face.

When I was younger I was fancyfree & had the time to draw my characters, since I no longer enjoy the luxury of those two, I jumped aboard the techno ship with the rest of the world.

One of the best ways I found useful to keep her memory vivid  in my mind is to find a photo of a real person that matches, of course this isn’t a necessity, but it makes it easier for me, and when the model I use is say an actress; it becomes even better since I’ll be able to find photos with different facial expressions, customs, haircuts, etc, and find what suits the character the most, the bonus I get from this is that the photos -almost always-  gives me more than what I started with.

Of course the opposite can happen; sometimes a character or even some story ideas generate from this person who I saw on Tv or real life and I go all “this guy must be in my book’ or ‘this girl should have a novel of her own."

Hmm. When I started applying this technique to my writing I realized it added more depth to my characters, some traits I would have never thought of came to my thinking and use, better description of their faces and body build. You can take anything, even the person’s voice if you like and mold it all using your imagination to turn this character into a very much real living person, because we want our characters to be real, even if they live in a completely fictionalized world.

After watching his performance in “I am David” I was completely fascinated. Young Ben Tibber’s amazing mixture of maturity and innocence in his face and his beautiful voice qualified him to be the best choice for Jack, the youngest and wisest of my vampires in Nights.

Zhang Jike China’s newest Olympic champion in table tense almost had a part to play in one of my to-be WIPs, until....

until he got completely foreshadowed by the Korean actor Gong Yoo that is.

Even animated characters can have a slot in your WIP; guilty as charged, Cloud Srife was and is constantly appearing in my projects, in fact in an old unfinished manuscript of mine (Disaster’s day); my protagonist was a clear tribute to him, with his Broadsword and spiky blond hair. Along with his grand city Midgar and all the crew of main characters; this great game Final Fantasy7 is an absolutely undying inspiration in almost all of what I write.

Let’s cut to cheese now shall we?!

Now imagine you’re sitting in the attic trying to write a story but you haven’t got the slightest idea about what, SO? You start a pity party of course: how you’re a sad nerd that no one loves and your whole life is wasted on nothing!..etc..

After twenty minutes of fierce brooding you remember why you’re here and decide to start somewhere, SO? “I’ll write a fantasy!” you shout waiving your arm in the air, it touches the edge of something, you look up to find a Pandora box falling straight on your head…you blackout of course, and after another ten minutes of limbo you wake up to hundreds of Barca players photos scattered on the floor around you, and after another five minutes of merely figuring out what are you exactly, your memory is restored and your complaining “I’m stuck! Hmm! Not fair to be stuck alone” glancing at the small faces on the floor with envy “I’ll write a story about a guy who’s in my shoes!” 
 you laugh in 'The wicked witch of the West' style just for the heck of it, then you think “but there's a lot of fish in the sea” so you alter your plan, “why one? I’ll try three! Yea three guys deeply stuck in their places, alone and isolated and they need each others help to get out of the ditch.” 

“Man I’m genius” you praise yourself as you grab a copybook and pen and write this before it flees the scene to the “and may never be seen again” zone, (God! How I hate when that happens):

“the story is about three knights from different backgrounds, each of them has to face his own demons before confronting the enemy approaching their land, all suffering from a different kind of isolation. But in order for them to win they need to learn to work together”

“not bad” you admire what you wrote, now’s time to decide your characters, it doesn’t take you a lot of thinking as you snatch every photo you can find presenting your trio “I will be using the famous Barcelona trio: Messi, Xavi & Iniesta”.

“Now let me see…”

1- Everything about Leo Messi speaks “Man of the People” Messi will be the Hero or Hero in this story.

2- The midfielder Xavi Hernandez seems -and proves- to be an intellectual man with a strong personality, this makes him suitable for the role of the King. So he’s King.

3- The currently third best player in the world Andres Iniesta is well known as an easy going, very nice and a man of class, which qualifies him for the role of the Loyal friend of both competing sides.

“now” you titter to yourself in sheer evil “let’s see if you guys can still be awesome in fantasy.”

This boy's getting a little delusional  don't you think? the box on his head was rather too much I believe...well better stop here.

Okay now that we have learned some loose facts about our main characters meet me next time for a longer version of their background and world building.

Thank you.