Capriccio Padovano by Bernardo Belloto

Here is the painting I chose for my character, Evangeline Lindenmayer, for her bedroom.

Evangeline has simple tastes and isn’t given to frills and furbelows like her mother, whose taste runs to the lavishly extreme and frou-frou.

This is one of the fun and necessary things a writer must do when they are building a character. I think about everything from her hobbies, her looks, her gifts and talents, her character defects, to what she might carry in her reticule. (That’s old-fashioned for purse.)

I have to pin down her speech, her favorite colloquialisms, and the way she laughs. I figure out the way she thinks and reacts to stress. I searched for a while before I found this painting and I think it’s perfect! I’d love to have this hanging in my bedroom.