So, I have a good handful of stories… some of them I’ve put storyline images in to help readers envision what I’m envisioning. Others, due to laziness or some other mysterious reason, I leave blank when it comes to images.
However, I’m curious for the readers in the chat. Do you enjoy when stories have images that relate to the story? An example would be showing what a main character looks like, what the scenery looks like, etc. Or do you prefer leaving the visual imagination completely up to yourself when reading stories?
I honestly like both and it does depend on the story, because an excellently written story doesn’t need images to improve my reading experience. Let me know what y’all think!
Good question! I’ve always thought that if the story’s well written it won’t need pictures to support it. To that I must say, though, that a story having pictures is not a sign of bad writing quality. Some of my most favorite stories here have pictures or references.
To me it is a nice surprise when photographic references are added, but it’s true they also hold the risk of not matching the readers’ taste.
I like them especially when it’s only 1 or 2 and they focus on showcasing the basic aspects of the man (face, hair, attitude, dressing style, or body). Pretty similar to the kind of pictures you’d find if you were to come accross their profile in a dating app.
I also prefer those pictures being displayed at the very beginning, disconnected from the story. This way one can keep the mental image while they read, and adapt it to the different situations all through the story.
So yes, pictures! Photographs! Drawings! Keep them coming! As long as they don’t become the main focus of the story, they can be powerful tools.
I started making collages for my stories almost right from the start, in the nineties. My vignettes were originally very short stories in jpg, text and images together. I got complaints when I put images throughout the text of my stories, some love it, some hate it. Because some of the collages can be spoilery, I decided on just putting a collage at the bottom of the story and mentioning at the start that it was there. It leaves the reader with the most flexibility. I recently started to make a smaller collage with just the portraits of the characters and give a link to it at the start, so people can at least check out what the characters look like. I think people prefer different things, so flexibility is key.
Whenever these kinds of question come up, I think of mainstream fiction. How well would a book sell without a cover image? If you don’t put a picture of your hero (or whatever’s applicable) on the cover, probably very few people would buy it. Likewise, some books include pictures or maps within them while others don’t. I personally like the occasional picture in a book, but I don’t mind if they’re absent.
Of course, print novels and the like aren’t quite the same as a story on the internet, but like the other posters here, I still think it’s appropriate to include a few links to images here and there, whether you bunch them all up at the top like I prefer or you scatter them throughout the story like other authors do. I don’t recall if this site supports actual embedded images, but I know I’ve seen that sort of thing somewhere. I personally find those a bit more distracting, so my advice to anyone doing that (here or elsewhere) would be to keep it more limited…but maybe that’s just me. You do you.
I’ve never been into the images, because often I don’t find them fitting the overall vibe of the story. It clashes with the more normal picture in my head of who these characters are and what the scene looks like.
When I see the image of what is ostensibly supposed to be the character, and it’s a model doing a professional photo shoot, I don’t think of it as representing the character. They’re often too attractive, the picture is staged, and it all feels obviously fake. The character isn’t a model (usually), therefore the picture of one doesn’t make think its them or even similar to them.
The image needs to be of a similar looking man in the kind of picture the character would actually appear in. Like it was something pulled off their Facebook.
To put it another way, when I see images of these drop dead gorgeous models in professionally composed photos, in a story about some 20-30 something guy on a bus or coffee shop, it doesn’t make me feel like the world is being illustrated, it makes me feel like I’m reading someone narrating a porn video.
This is just me, though. I know some people like the pictures, and more power to them. I’ve got uBlock hiding nearly all images on the site, so I don’t see them anyway. But you asked for an opinion, so there’s my needlessly contrary opinion.
Just you know, you can use the “Safe for Work” option under the “Theme” dropdown to remove all images from the site! (Except for the images of the rating badges.)
I completely get this and I feel the same way with way too obviously ai pictures. (Even though I am guilty of using one or two despite me not knowing they were ai at the time…)
I love when people write characters as real people, it makes the stories even hotter and easier to imagine yourself in. Whenever you have picture perfect mannequins being presented it takes out the human element. I think a lot of us developed crushes growing up to real life people as well, aside from celebrity crushes, so most readers have somewhat of a connection to reality and not perfection. Good take, love hearing everyones perspective!
As long as they don’t become the main focus of the story, they can be powerful tools.