how you can use pinterest to improve your characters - pt. one | character images

So, I guess it's October.

Which means NaNo is coming at full speed and ahhhhhh!!!! I am excited but scared at the same time. I shall be tackling the first draft of my novel, Gifted, this year and eep! I just can't stop being enthusiastic!

But then, in the beginning of November, shall come this thing, this thing that will make your stomach leap with excitement and dread all at the same time.

Starting to write.

*cue horrified gasps*

Yes, yes, 'tis true! But do not worry, my cupcakes, I shall bring forth my amazing writer-ly wisdom and direct you down the path of success! The path of VICTORY!

*cough*

Anyway, today I'll be posting the first of three parts in a series about how you can use the amazing Pinterest to improve your already amazing cast of characters. Because, hey, who likes underdeveloped characters? (Hint, hint: no one.)

pt. 1

CHARACTER IMAGES

I have about...six different boards for character images on my Pinterest account. And they are all very, very useful to me.

"But why?" you ask. "Why so many?"

Well, my lovelies, I like to try to be organized - in real life and online. The real life thing doesn't work out the best, but the online thing does! Therefore, I have six different character image boards, which include:

Teenage Girls
Teenage Boys
Little Girls
Little Boys
Women
& Men

wait, what? aren't we talking about character images? what are the character boards for?

Why, my lovelies, character boards hold loads and loads of images of random people that I have found on Pinterest! You see, what I do is when I find, say, an image of a random teenage girl, I will save that picture to my Teenage Girls board, and later on, when I am looking for a new character image I will go through the images I have saved and choose one that looks like my character.

so...what is a character image, exactly?

Usually, for my characters, I find a model/actor who looks like I would imagine my character would, and "choose" them to be my character's visual "image". Usually, once I find an image for my character, I'll make them their own board and start saving as many pictures of the model/actor as possible (check out Raven and Baie's character visual image boards).

If I can only find one picture of my character's visual image, I usually just stick with that and work with what I have.

how on earth do character images help me improve my characters?

When you're writing your book, you want to have a clear picture of what your character looks like in your mind. You don't want just a faceless person who you try (and sometimes fail) to describe to your readers.

It's kind of like drawing. Freehand is fun and expressive, but copying something - say, drawing a picture inspired by one you saw on Pinterest - will give you a clearer view of what it will look like in the end. We as authors should want to know exactly what our characters look like so that we can describe our characters' physical attributes to the best of our abilities to our readers.

Do you use character "images" for your characters? If you do, do you like it? If you don't, does it sound like a good/fun idea? Talk to me, peeps!

stay beautiful,