Write what you know.

[dameboudicca]

You know, that advise you get all the time. It has some truth to it (especially if not taken to literally).

But what do you do if you suffer from prosopagnosia (facial blindness), when you couldn't describe the face of someone you knew if your life depended on it even? If you are incapable of reading facial expressions (at least, if they are not really exaggerated). Does that mean you have to write stories about faceless beings who never shows the slightest hint of an expression on their faces? It would be all right if your character had the same condition, but if you don't want that...?

This is not just a question out of idle curiosity, I have these problems, and so far I have avoided it by using generic descriptions (put together from stuff I've read), but it feels a bit like cheating (no, no, not word-by-word, of course not - but still!) - and I'm terrified someone will, eventually, see through it. After all, I know it's fake!

Or, do I have no choice but to continue as I do now?

[somewhat cross-posted]

Comments

[feuervogel]

With prosopagnosia, do you still *make* facial expressions? Like raised eyebrows or whatever?

I find that what I do when I'm writing is say the dialogue (out loud or in my head) as if it's words I'm saying in a conversation, and let my expression react naturally. If someone with prosopagnosia doesn't *do* that, then it's probably not useful for you.

I have to say, a POV character with prosopagnosia could be interesting.

[ar]

All of what feuervogel said, and also--it could just end up fitting into your writing as a stylistic quirk as you hone your style. In a post-Hemingway world, leaving descriptions thin on the ground isn't unheard of. So depending on what your abilities are with regards to making facial expressions, I'd experiment with trying to describe and with consciously leaving it out, and then I'd get some other people to read it and see what they thought about it.

And I agree that a POV character with prosopagnosia could be really neat. ♥

[lea_hazel]

There are a lot of ways to describe a character's emotions. Body language, tone of voice, language. As you said, trying to describe something you've never seen will probably end up sounding stilted, but you don't have to describe facial expressions to create a rich and evocative text. There is also environmental symbolism, if you swing that way.

And don't worry, there are thousands of authors who don't have prosopagnosia, whose descriptions still sound like they were copied from books they read.

[cesy]

If it helps, "write what you know" is good up to a point, but it has big caveats. For instance, most people only know what it's like to be one gender. Does that mean you should never write characters of different gender? Of course not - you read about people of that gender, talk to them, find out what the differences are (and what is just urban myths or stereotypes), remember how many things about being a person are just the same and how much you still have in common with the character, and then write them as well as you can, and get feedback from beta-readers of that gender if possible.

I'd say that principle works for a lot of other things as well - both things like race, disability, sexuality, etc. (though you have to be more careful with those) and also things like career, hobbies, personality traits, etc.

So I think you're doing the right thing in putting descriptions together from what you've read, and the best thing is to continue like that, and also ask a beta reader without prosopagnosia to give you feedback occasionally on how you describe facial expressions.

[melannen]

You don't have to write what you know - studying how something works from the outside and thinking it through is a perfectly valid way of writing.

There are some really great writers who are totally blind, and you'd never know from their descriptions. There are some really great writers who have severe Asperger's, but you'd never know from their characterizations. One of the best things about writing is that if you get a good enough theoretical knowledge, you can fake it, even if you'd never be able to apply it in real life.

What people have said above about continue to learn from what you read, and getting someone to check your work, is a great idea. I'm a very non-visual person, so if I don't force myself, I can write entire stories with no physical description at all, and I have a lot of trouble linking faces and expressions as I experience them with the words I have to use in the language, and both those things have been very helpful. If you want to go beyond just copying other people, though, I have a few things I use.

My problem isn't the same as yours, so I'm not sure how much my solutions will help, but here's what I do:

Make a chart with all the quantifiable physical characteristics of your characters, and fill it out - even if you're filling out some of it at random. I use a set of questions I got out of a book that are based on the interviews police sketch artists use to get descriptions of suspects out of confused witnesses - if you're interested, I'll dig up and post the list.

Once you've got a pretty good idea what they look like, even if it's only in words, find visual references for each character that at least match on the big things like sex, race, and hair color. Refer back to the references whenever you think it's time for the description. (A lot of people use photographs of celebrities for this, or stock photos - I know there's a website I've used before where you can actually search a photoarchive based on what the people look like, but I've lost the list. Meanwhile, searching flickr tags can be helpful. I actually prefer using old painted portraits, because they give me the gist of what the person looks like, but aren't as specific as photos. But it can be really hard finding paintings of people who aren't white, so I fall back on stock photos a lot.)

You can do the same thing for facial expressions - there are whole catalogs of photos and videos of people making faces which are labelled with what the expression and emotion are supposed to be, and they're indexed so that you can go, "This person is sad. What does sad look like?" and get a whole page of sad faces. Visual artists - especially animators and cartoonists - use them a lot, so you can find them pretty easily by looking at art reference books (though the print versions tend to be expensive). There are also free ones available online; look for "facial expression reference" and you should get some ideas.

Then get your visual references out, and just describe what you see, feature by feature, as if you were describing a mechanical drawing or a plant or something. It'll probably be stilted and way too detailed at first, but do some as exercises, and use your writer's sense and what you've learned from reading to figure out what parts of the description to leave out, and which to put in, and when you actually need a physical description and when you don't, and how to make it flow naturally with the rest of the narrative. Treat the faces like any other background research, figure out when you're infodumping and when you're not dumping enough.

If you *really* want to get into learning expressions the hard way, there's a whole science of facial expression, why we make the faces we do, which bits are cross-cultural and which aren't, how the standard-issue human brain does its sensory processing and how that gets translated into conscious concepts. Paul Ekman does a lot of pop-sci stuff about it that's fairly easy going to start with, though sometimes the pop-sci gets a bit sensationalistic, and does a little too much assuming that everyone has a standard-issue brain. Anyway, I've found it fascinating and sometimes helpful; I have no idea if you will (or if you'd've been exposed to too much of that sort of science already.)

[rodo]

If people only wrote what they knew, most books would be really boring. And everybody has to write about something they are not intimately acquainted with, unless they're writing an autobiography, maybe, but even that relies on research and second hand information.

The others made great suggestions already. Study what you don't know, try to understand it as best as you can and have someone else read over your story if you're unsure as to whether you did it right.

You're definitely not the only one with this problem. I understand why you feel unsure, though, I always feel like that when I'm writing anything romantic. A good beta reader definitely helps.

[ailelie]

1. Ignore the face. Humans express emotions through more than facial expressions. Point out a tightening fist, slumped shoulders, feet that won't stay still, a kicked out hip. Use words and silences. How do you know when someone is angry? Happy? Sad? Use *that*.

2. So many people focus too much on the face, because it is easy to read, and then ignore the rest of the body. This is something many writers have to overcome. Your ahead in that respect. Don't worry about what you can't do, and focus on what you can.

3. What what you know does not mean write only what you have experienced. There are many ways to 'know' something.

[ailelie]

Write what you know*

[bliumchik]

I think people have made excellent points, and it very much depends on what you're comfortable. I lean towards the ones that say you should just write about the things YOU notice that tell you about emotions and leave out the face, but want to add that you don't have to describe the person being viewed when you can just describe the viewer's reaction. Let your POV character notice that someone is angry without describing how s/he can tell.

If you use any one of these suggestions ALL THE TIME you're going to end up with stilted writing, so try mixing them up a bit, then get someone to read over them and tell you what works and what doesn't. Try it out on a whole bunch of unrelated scenes so it doesn't matter if you get it wrong. Eventually you'll figure out what combination works best for you.

[dameboudicca]

Actually I don't know about the average person with prosopagnosia and their facial expressions. I know I make them less than the average person, but that could have other explanations.

Sometime I perhaps should write about a character with prosopagnosia - it could be fun! (At least I know a lot about that!)

[dameboudicca]

As it is now, the descriptions are often at a bare minimum - perhaps some eye colours, and a smile or two - and most of the time that is quite enough, but there are those moments when I still feel like something is missing.
But still, no one who has read anything I've written has ever noticed any lack - it could be just that I am overly sensitive knowing my own weakness...

[dameboudicca]

Thank you!

At the moment I have kept my descriptions to a bare minimum, and knowing my own weakness I have tried just what you mentioned - body language, voice et c (after all, that is what I myself use to understand people). I don't mind writing something a bit different from everyone else (that should be a good thing after all!), I just don't want to come across as TOO odd - odd in a way that would be a hindrance to the reader's understanding of my story!

[dameboudicca]

I agree with your notion of 'write what you know' - perhaps a better way of putting it would be 'write what you understand'. It can be really fun to try to understand something different from yourself. But there is a limit, when you really CAN'T understand, when someone tells you something and it's just words. Understanding faces falls into that category - it's like advanced algebra, and I wouldn't write about that either...

But I will ask my readers to keep an eye on my descriptions to make sure they sound truthful - and not like anything copy+pasted from someone else's text! :)

[dameboudicca]

Thank you for your reply, it was very informative!

For me 'writing what you know' have always been on a 'write what you can understand' basis - but facial expressions and looks are in the 'can't understand category' and they are so important to so many people I can't leave it out entirely. Learning is out of the question (I've tried), but lists sounds like a good idea (that one you are talking about sounds like it would be good! I don't need to tell a reader anything - but I should know, at least)!

And then practice, practice, practice... ;)

[dameboudicca]

Perhaps 'writing what you understand' is a better way of stating it. But I still don't understand faces, so the problem remains - trying to fake understand can ring so very false to the reader. But asking my readers about my descriptions of people and such and see if it seems believable might be a good start. So far no one has commented on it, but that doesn't mean it can't be a problem!

[dameboudicca]

Thank you!
Perhaps it is easier to focus on what I don't know and worry about that, than look at what I DO know and focus on that. It ought to turn out different anyway! And when it comes to writing, different is mostly a good thing! :)

[dameboudicca]

Yes, I think you are quite right - using what you DO understand is a good thing, and trying different methods is also good. Doing the same thing over and over again, whatever it is about, is always a bad thing in writing...

[sweet_sparrow]

My take on 'write what you know' is that 'know what you write' is a much better thing to say. Kind of what cesy is saying, really. As others have said there are a lot of ways to relate people's emotions that aren't facial expressions and using those instead will actually probably make your writing better because it means you avoid the whole "Floating head" problem that can be quite prevalent among writers who focus too much on the facial expressions and forget that agitated people might, say, snap their fingers, or that enthusiastic people might use their arms a lot when they're speaking and focus only on the fact that their faces look annoyed or excited or the like. You do have choices, as others have pointed out, so I won't go off and repeat them. (Although, I'd like to add, if a visual file on faces won't help you, perhaps you could cobble a textual one together instead?) But, like most people, focus on what you notice and try not to worry so much. You'll be absolutely fine if you don't use (a lot of) facial expressions. ^-^ They're not the be-all and end-all of writing, not even close. Experiment if you want to, but don't feel obliged to write them in. I'd guess that a lot of readers just read over facial expressions without getting any/much additional impact from them, actually. But that's just a guess based on... not a whole lot of data to back it up. It'd be an interesting question, though. *rambles*

[azurelunatic]

Coming way late to the party, but supporting the definitely-use-body-language-you-know party. If the lack of it turns into an issue later, it's not that horribly much different than a field of science you don't know: you find an expert who's willing to assist, who can go through and say that this works, this doesn't, there should be something just here, and the like.

I go at expression of emotion from the "how does Character X display Emotion Y" angle, and it's only sometimes most prominently the face. Sometimes even when it's supposed to be the face, it's actually the position of the whole head: tilted, pointed towards the other party, chin lifted (and head tilted back), head bowed, turned away from someone.