Two grey eyes, with lids to them - Charlie Butler

I recently took a fun, online test – one of those things people do when they’re meant to be working – and discovered that I have really bad facial recognition, or, to give it its fancy name, prosopagnosia. Actually, I’ve always known this, but gilding the knowledge with a Greek polysyllable makes it feel much more respectable. Apart from giving me a ready excuse in various embarrassing social settings (“I thought I knew you from somewhere, but then I have so many nieces. It’s the old prosopagnosia playing me up again.”) it explains a difficulty I’ve often had in writing.

In short, I’m just not very good at describing people. I do usually have a sense of whether they’re old or young, tall or short, fat or thin, and will happily say so. I know whether they’re smiling or frowning, and anything that’s directly relevant to the plot I will duly mention. But the acute observation of physical idiosyncrasies, the play of changes across a face, the significance of a hairstyle, none of these comes easily to me. My first-draft descriptions turn into catalogues, blue-tacked onto the action, and it takes a lot of work to integrate them – which usually means, in practice, discarding 90% of what I’d originally written. Maybe that’s not a bad thing: the most effective parts of a book are often written between the lines, after all. However, I still envy people who can (or so it appears) conjure up a person’s history and character through their physiognomy with a few bold Raphaelesque strokes, or hold our attention as they show, à la Sherlock Holmes, how much information can be read in the face, clothes and body language.

Since I’ve got started, let the ABBA records show that I’m equally useless at recognizing flowers (I can do roses, dandelions, buttercups, tulips, daffodils, and er, that’s it) and makes of car (Mini, Robin Reliant and Citroen 2CV are okay, and maybe a Renault Scenic, but that’s only because I drive one). If you found yourself acting as getaway driver for an armed robbery at a florist’s, I would be your ideal witness. Luckily I do know how to look things up in books, though.

Hmm. I don’t seem to have done a great job on selling myself as a writer, today. Perhaps next time I’ll make a list of my good qualities! At least I’ve never been tempted to write a Mary Sue character. I mention that only as a way of pointing you to this fun, online test...