Why Pinterest May Be The Greatest Website For Writers

 

by Teagan Berry

There are countless social media sites out on the internet, each of them offering us different means to share our thoughts and life with other people. For authors, social media can help us out in many different ways. Book promotion, connecting with fans, networking with other authors… and that’s just to name a few.

A little while ago I was introduced to a site called Pinterest by a fellow author and let me tell you, I will be forever grateful to her for it. In this post, along with another one I shall be putting up in a couple days, I hope to give you a few reasons why I believe Pinterest is so useful for authors. Right now, I’m going to focus on the private side of Pinterest, and what it can do for you and your specific writing.

Character depictions, settings, random quotes that mesh with your story… Pinterest is full of pictures and photos just waiting to bring out your creativity. And once I was shown all of these possibilities, I became hooked.

When I write, I’ve always found it rather difficult to conjure up an image of my characters in my mind. Vague ideas? Yes, that I can do, but full-fledged representation? No chance in hell. And I know that I’m not the only author who suffers from this problem. I’ve chatted with others who also find picturing characters difficult. It’s a problems that can have devastating effects on work in progress writing projects and wreak havoc. Sometimes, if it’s really bad, it can stunt my writing and cause a serious case of writer’s block.

This is where Pinterest works wonderfully. For example, let’s say you know your character is female, blonde, and has hazel eyes. Type that into the search bar on Pinterest, hit Enter, and voila! Dozens upon dozens of pictures of blonde females with hazel eyes for you to search through and find your character. Now, it’s not always that simple – sometimes Pinterest requires a little more keyword refinement or tweaking, but it’s there. Something physical and tangible that you can pin to a board and have for reference sake.

I also use Pinterest for fashion-related dilemmas in my writing as well. Recently, I was writing a scene where my high school-aged characters were attending their prom. Of course, when you write a prom scene you need to know what your characters are wearing. Since I have difficulties picturing things in such detail in my head,  I needed to find visual representations of everything. Hair, makeup, dresses, suits, ties, shoes… See? I’m not lying. Literally everything.

Pinterest made my life so much easier for this as well. I spend hours searching through its contents, pinning anything and everything I thought might possibly work for what I was looking for, and eventually ended up with pages of images to choose from and form my magical evening for my characters. And it helped. When I sat down the next time to work on that prom scene, I had a clear head to write. No barriers or questions arose about the visual and what everything looked like. All I had to worry about were the actual words being written down on the page.

As I’ve mentioned before, I write collaboratively with one of my friends for a series of short stories. Separately, we created a number of characters, each with a set description of the way they look, and since then, have thrown those characters into short stories together. Sometimes I will write a story involving her character, or she’ll write one involving mine. During these moments, descriptions can get rather challenging, since I am not the creator of her character, nor is she of mine. This is where Pinterest takes on yet another form of usefulness for us.

Pinterest has two types of boards: public and secret. Public boards are pretty self-explanatory I think. Secret boards are too – they can only be viewed by the creator of the board. Now Pinterest has a way that you can share a board with others and make them collaborators of it. This is what me and my writing friend do. Boards that involve characters we need for our collaborative project are shared between the both of us, and pins are added of physical representations of all things necessary for us to know.

So with a couple of clicks of my mouse, I can have access to a picture of her main character, or the school that she goes to, or the outfit she was wearing for a particular scene of a short story. All of this information which is crucial for the continuity of our stories, I can see without having to bother my co-collaborator every single time I have a question. It makes writing so much easier, I can say that with entire confidence.

 

 

 

Alternately titled Why Pinterest May Be The Greatest Website For Writers: Part 1.

Guest post contributed by Teagan Berry. Teagan writes books, watches sports, and reads. She started her blog initially to beat writer’s block, but it’s turned into so much more. 

44 thoughts on “Why Pinterest May Be The Greatest Website For Writers”

  2. I agree that I did not make this connection either. I do use Pinterest for my personal interests and other creative outlets. I am familiar with the secret boards and have those as part of my independent study of the craft of writing and personal growth. I will definitely start using it for my writing pieces. Thanks.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Great idea – I use Google images for the same kind of thing, but this makes it much easier bc you can easily store and save what you find for future reference. Thanks so much!

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Great ideas, Teagan. I just started saving to Pinterest and I didn’t have a focus. I created random boards of favorite covers, posters, periods, and writing rooms. Thanks for a more practical use of Pinterest for my writing.

    Liked by 2 people

  24. Had to reblog this as I think your suggested use for Pinterest is I am sure, one that has not even been considered by many writers but such a simple idea that can easily be overlooked. Thanks and well done.

    Like

  28. Hi Teagan,
    Good points. I once wrote a guest post about how writers can benefit from using Pinterest. The gist of the post was to have a Pinterest board for each element– plot, antagonist, protagonist, setting, etc. I often use your ideas to get ideas for blog post graphics (just ideas, of course, I’d never copy =))
    Janice

    Like

  31. This is great! I have a Character Inspiration board along with a Writing Inspiration board. I struggle with fully picturing my characters too and I have found that pinterest offers a great solution!

    Like

  32. Reblogged this on Mandibelle16 and commented:
    I have to admit, I’ve found Pinterest very helpful in writing as well. The quotes, images, fashion, even posting poetry and short fiction written to different photo prompts, has been helpful!

    Like

  34. com/2017/07/22/why-pinterest-may-be-the-greatest-website-for-writers/” rel=”nofollow”>Mandibelle16 and commented:
    I own to allow in, I’ve found Pinterest very helpful in authorship as well. The quotes, images, manner, even posting verse and shortsighted fable written to unlike picture prompts, has been helpful!

    Like

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