Size Matters

When I first came up with my detectives for my novel, Dark Water, I wanted them to stand out. From a personality point of view, they're both strong, intelligent, and insightful characters, and the more I write about them, the more I see in them.

I also wanted the characters to contrast one another, physically. I wanted the older, more-experienced detective, Mickey Calloway, to be a towering figure, at two metres tall (more than six-and-a-half feet tall). By contrast, Erin Hayes would be just over five feet, at 154 centimetres.

When I asked ChatGPT to create an image of the detectives, I provided a full description, including their respective heights. It came up with a good first attempt, though the height differences weren't quite right and Hayes looked older than her 28 years were.

So I had ChatGPT try again, stressing Hayes' age but not so much her height. And the vertical difference between my detectives wasn't stark enough, so I tried a third time, noting the importance of getting their height correct.

What the AI took came up with threw me off, because the difference was staggering. So much so, that I deleted the image that it had created, thinking the tool had made a big mistake (it wouldn't be the first time).

In that image, it had looked as though Calloway was standing next to a little kid. The AI must have come up with the wrong proportions, I told myself, and had ChatGPT create Hayes such that the top of her head came up to Calloway's shoulders.

After a bit of tweaking, the created image looked pretty much the way I wanted the detectives to appear. I've shared this image before but here it is, again (I find I'm reusing images in my posts a lot, of late. I hope you don't mind):

But if I wanted to stick to my initial thought of having Calloway two metres tall and Hayes just over a metre and a half, I needed to know what that would really look like. So I turned to HeightComparison.com.

This handy site lets you enter the height of two or more people and will then create a 2-D shadow of that person, based on the sex that you provide. When I entered the numbers for Calloway and Hayes, the outcome was eye-opening.

ChatGPT, it seems, got the height of the detectives correct. Seeing this comparison, it was apparent that I had created a giant and a teenager. It made my characters seem comical.

There is only one reference in the book, so far, that talks about their height difference, but I don't think they have to be extremes. With the differences in height that I had created, almost anyone who would encounter the detectives would want to react in shock or make some sort of comment, and I wouldn't want that. It would become the defining characteristic and be a distraction.

I still want Calloway to be a large, broad, imposing figure, who is two metres tall. When he walks into a room, he commands attention and is, perhaps, feared by some.

But Hayes doesn't need to be so short. I want her to be someone who, when seen for the first time, is not identified as a small person. I want her to be seen as someone who is, while "ridiculously beautiful," according to Calloway, is someone who is regarded as a person of authority.

I've added 16 centimetres to Hayes. For those who still use Imperial measurements, that brings her to roughly 5' 7". To further illustrate, I put my own height into the tool and came up with this comparison:

This new height for Hayes seems more realistic to me and I think will help with how I bring the two detectives together for the first time. I initially made Calloway to be a stereotypical gruff cop who dismisses his new partner straight off. He sees her, thinks her beautiful but tiny. He questions how she'd hold up in a tough situation.

But I never wrote about how Hayes sizes up Calloway (no pun intended) on their introduction to one another. She is simply the rookie inspector who was introduced to Calloway, and I had written from Calloway's perspective only. I'd like to round that scene out and share Hayes' perspective, too.

Once I get the descriptions of my characters sorted, I'll get back to focusing on the actual story. But now that I've seen how my detectives stack up to one another, I truly see how size matters.