Ever get writer’s block? I used to, but don’t have as much trouble with it now as I did in the past. This is due much in part to my use of a visual board on Pinterest, which can be found here: http://bit.ly/1pTacsv . There, I can pin photos of all my characters, locales, homes and even the clothing worn in one space where they are all laid out for me to see. Much of my writing time used to be spent at working to picture every detail of the scene I was describing. Even worse, when writing about said subject at a later time and, perhaps, being far removed from the memory I’d conjured up earlier, I worry about failing to recall every original detail. With a visual board, I have a fixed image from which I can draw my particulars. For me, it makes for more consistent writing and less time putting the book’s world together behind my eyes. This is what my board looks like, and from this example, you can see I put everything on there from characters to cars, so I have access to specifics I may not have even considered including:
Housing – One of the most challenging descriptions for me to write has been the ones of dwellings and all the many pieces inside. In The Maura DeLuca trilogy, in books two and three, there arose a need to accurately capture the details of far more opulent housing. When one writes about covens made up of several members who all live together, who are all talented and have money to spare, given each one’s extraordinariness and the sheer amount of time they’ve spent living, it would follow that their houses would be larger and more luxurious than the usual. Since I’ve never experienced such luxury firsthand, real estate web sites come in very handy, because they not only post pictures of the grounds outside, but, many times, the extravagantly furnished rooms within. When I find ‘the’ house, it doesn’t matter if every room is pictured; the whole world inside that house begins to come together and adding on additional rooms within the confines of my imagination becomes much easier. This is an example of some of my locale pins for the dwellings in my trilogy:
Characters – Sometimes, I have had a character in mind without seeing the complete depiction of what they look like. For instance, with my character Aoife, an Ireland-born vampire from the sixteenth century, I knew I wanted her to be a redhead, but was having trouble filling in her other physical features. I did a Google image search for “female red hair” and perused the pictures generated by the search. I knew her when I saw her, and the picture made it much easier for me to describe her features to my reader. Pinning pictures to represent your characters on your Pinterest board can be a great resource for your readers, assisting them with the materialization of your character inside their heads. Just as with movie casting for adaptations made from books, your reader may not love your visual, but at least you’ll be presenting the most accurate depiction possible from ideas inside the author’s head. These are some of the characters found on my board:
Extras – There are lots of little extras your board can assist you with for your writing. I’ve used mine to help me describe food, jewelry and even Christmas ornaments. Sometimes you’ll search for one item and end up seeing another visual you didn’t even know you wanted to include in your story. I’ve also had my board help me choose giveaway prizes. When I found the exact picture of Maura’s vampire-bat ornament for her tree, I thought about how cool it would be as a reader to win a prize which is an exact replica of an item included in the book. Since I found that picture on eBay, I was able to provide Maura’s ornament as one of my holiday prizes. Here’s a shot of my board containing some of those little extras:
I hope this has given you some ideas so that you can create a visual board to help with your own writing. So, sign up for an account if you don’t already have one and get to pinning! Create a stunning visual to complement your words, aid the flow of your writing and assist your readers in bringing your characters and every other element of your fictional world to life.
