Monday, February 2, 2015

Ed Herrmann

I was quite sad when Ed Herrmann passed away at the end of 2014. And not only because I was (and am) a massive Gilmore Girls fan.


When I wrote my first draft of RoboNomics, I had really specific attributes in mind for all my characters. I based them on amalgams of people I have or still do know in real life, with the looks to match.

But once I began my second draft of the story, I also began a Pinterest vision board. And that when I scourged the internet looking for celebrities who most closely matched what I had in mind.

Follow Stephanie's board RoboNomics on Pinterest.

(scroll down. Waaaaaaay down!)

For some characters, I found what I was looking for easily. Ginnifer Goodwin looks almost exactly the same as one of the people I based my main character, Andrea Anderson, on. Tom Hiddleston is a perfect mesh of the characteristics of several people who went into inspiring Dr. Austin Clarke. And Rupert Jennings, the most important secondary character of RoboNomics Book II? Well, that had to be Ed Herrmann.

The exercise does help, I find, in sketching characters more and more clearly in my mind and on the page. Yes, it's a bit of fantastical, imaginary indulgence to try and decipher which actor would play my characters if the book were ever to become a movie. But hey, whatever works -- amiright?!

But now that flight of fancy will never be reality. Ed Herrmann was an awesome actor, immortalized in the seven seasons of Gilmore Girls, as well as all the other projects that he worked on. I just selfishly wish we could have seen more of him, doing what he did best. :(