Using Pinterest for Story Inspiration
I really don't think there's a whole lot of people out there today that don't know of Pinterest, but just incase you're one of the few in the minority I'll break it down in simple words for you. Pinterest is a place for you to "pin" images with links to various boards on your account and share with the world your findings. Most Pinners use this site to keep track of craft ideas, fashion ideas, nerdy memes, or post beautiful artwork; and many Pinners use this site for all of those reasons together. If you've used Tumblr in the past, this will be a piece of cake for you to use (minus the blogging).
When I was writing my story, I kept having a difficult time describing my main character's seaside cottage home. So, I started looking at various pictures online to see if I could find anything close to use as a visual aid for myself. That's when I remembered my handy-dandy Pinterest account and started a board called "Story Inspiration" (you can visit it here to check out the ever-expanding board). It's helped out so much with trying to describe a place that doesn't actually exist. My two main characters also have to go on various romantic dates, and when you haven't been on a ton yourself the "dating" tag in Pinterest is your saving grace. I even found her new pet kitten in a post!
I've never been one for putting together mood boards (which was a huge problem in design school), but this really makes it so much easier to deal with. These days, Pinterest has the ability to make boards private that only you have access to. If you don't anyone to know what you're pinning about for your story, they don't have to know. If you're in the site as much as I and millions of others are on a daily basis, this is definitely a must-do. If you're new to the site, its a great way to put together a visual representation of what you need. Unlike adding millions of links to your bookmarks folder, everything you need to see is nicely laid out.
What if you find what you're looking for but the site doesn't come with the nice Pin buttons? Almost all of the browsers have Pinterest add-ons that can be installed for ease of pinning. I use Firefox, Chrome and Safari at any given moment because I'm insane and have the add-on installed on all of them. Since I extremely recommend against using IE at all, ever, I couldn't tell you if they have one. If they don't, then that's one more item on the long list of reasons not to use IE.
When you're right a story, how do you keep your thoughts together about things that need to be described in great detail? Do you visit the cities you write about? Or do you write about places you've been to before? Let me know!
