Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud brings up some very interesting points not just regarding comics, but also about media in general and the ways we perceive information. He notes that after making a character’s face less detailed and more abstract, we (the viewers) can relate to the character more. This is because the less detailed the character’s features (especially facial features), the easier it becomes for us to project our own ego image onto the character and assume the character’s role as our own. I think this likely applies not just to visual media such as comics and cartoons, but to storytelling in general: the less you specify about a main character (especially when telling a story from a first-person perspective), the more likely an audience will “become” the character, and relate to the events and relationships in the story much more deeply. Since the goal of all storytelling is to engage an audience’s attention, this seems like a very effective means of accomplishing that. As a side note, I’ve been thinking about writing a story of my own, but don’t know where to start; perhaps first creating a character who is not so much a person as an idea, a generality whose shoes you can fill and whose life you can experience firsthand, while still incorporating a few key specifics to drive the story forward – perhaps this would be as good a starting point as any.