The Avalon Project: Pinterest Boards
When Pinterest first hit the scene several years ago, I was on it a lot. Recipes, home improvement projects, crafts… you name it, I pinned it.
Then I started working on The Avalon Project, and it changed everything.
I started a board on my personal Pinterest for character inspiration and pinned nearly 300 images of models and artwork. After I started writing, I dug through these images for each new character I mentioned. Having an image to work from made seeing the characters in my head much easier for me.
When I started this website, I created a new Pinterest account for my author’s name, and created a board called “The Avalon Project”. I moved each of the images over, titled them and divided them into “places” within the story, so they would be easier to find when I needed to look into Avadaine’s eyes, or read between the wrinkles on Narah’s expressions.
Let me tell you – this was a gold mine for me.
Not only did I have a way to keep track of the myriad of characters that started to creep into my drafts, but I could also put the pairs together. I could make sure that siblings had some resemblance to each other. I created the previous generation’s board too so I could keep track of the names and descriptions of each.
And I didn’t have to print them out!
I may have spent a little too much time on it. Maybe. Possibly.
When the Irish Project started to creep into my head, I started a board for that story as well. It is not nearly as fleshed out, but it will get there.
Then I made a board for book covers I like, so that I could start dreaming of covers for my yet-unpublished books.
And another board, for future character development.
I value this tool. There are thousands of jokes out there about Pinterest boards and most have some truth in them, but for writers, the uses are limitless.
Oh, and I still pin recipes. As someone who loves to bake, that will never change.
