Pinterest is somewhere many of us collect idea for our lives. From home design to fancy dress party ideas, vegan cakes and small bathrooms. If you have an interest in something you can create collections and organise ideas.
You can find my Pinterest profile here.
I use the secret/hidden board function quite a bit for novel writing. I keep them secret as I don’t want people getting confused over what I’m pinning, but also because things change so much when writing something longer, that to set any expectation would spoil the outcome.
For the novel I’m working on now, I have the following boards;
- Location
- Characters
Then within these boards, I have sub-boards, for example within Characters I have a sub-board for each character, using their name as the title. In Locations, I have sections/sub-boards which are named after each location that features in the story.
Filling these boards is so much fun. Before and during the early stage of developing and starting to write a draft, I’m looking for faces to fit my characters. I looking for what they would wear, what era they could be from, what ethnicity are they, what their background has been.
Sometimes I have a person in mind for a character, sometimes I can cast my characters from people in the public eye. Sometimes I need to be a bit closer and look for someone a bit more authentic.
Please bear in mind this is all for inspiration only, I wouldn’t write about someone real and take from the 100% of who they are.
When it comes to locations I’ve taken a similar approach. A custom blend. Some of the locations in my book are real, places from my memory, some are places I’ve researched. All will have elements of real locations.
At the end of the day, I want to create a story where the reader feels like it could be real. Where the characters become rounded people in the reader’s mind and the locations feel as enticing as any travel photography images.
Pinterest really helps me keep on track writing a book and gives me the visuals I find so useful for creating the narrative.
I’ve even got a new secret board for gathering ideas for writing book number two… I’m getting a little ahead of myself perhaps, but it’s nice to have somewhere private to store these ideas and themes in.
Do you have any secret Pinterest boards? What do you use them for?
susan earlam ~ horror author 
I would love your input