Heroines

As in, female protagonists of novels. Now this post might drive you a bit crazy because I'm not going to use any specifics. Sorry about that.

So to the task at hand. I'm just in the middle of watching a film based on a book. And I just finished a different book today. Both books have girls as their central characters and I got to thinking about how I imagine characters when I read a book.

It occurred to me that the former book, before I saw the film version, had a heroine who is a fairly two dimensional character and I imagined her as a caricature or with cartoonish features. The second book, the one I finished today, has a heroine who is much more three dimensional - or at least, I identified with her much more as a person. This girl I imagined as a real person, and almost placed myself at the centre of the action.

Both books are told in first person, so there is nothing to argue on that point. However, if the characterisation and narration are done well enough, something like point of view shouldn't matter.

So, how do you imagine characters, depending on how well you identify with them or not? It'd be interesting to see if it's just me.