Ways For Writers To Use Pinterest
Pinterest is a bookmarking site that lets you save images, rather than text links.
Find a page (or picture) you like on the web, ‘pin’ it and add one of its images to a visual pinboard
Pinterest is also a social network: find interesting images and links based on what friends with common interests are ‘pinning’
Images on Pinterest automatically link back to the original page where the images was posted (creating the ‘bookmarking’ part).
There are plenty of ways for a writer to use Pinterest such as:
– Create an Ideas board
Never again sit down at your desk and think “I don’t know what to write!”.
Browse the web and ‘pin’ pictures that suggest an intriguing starting point (or climax) for a story.
Browse other people’s boards on Pinterest, always thinking about characters, settings and story.
Add all these pictures to one “Writing Prompts” board and refer to it as often as necessary.
– Create a vision board for your characters
What does your heroine look like?
What are the various aspects of your hero’s character?
Where do your characters live?
– Create a vision board for story settings
Houses
Interiors
Exotic locales
Mundane locales
– Create a vision board for your story’s antagonist
Start working on your antagonist. Collect pictures of
People (mean people, nice people, overbearing parents, sweet grandmothers. Antagonists come in all forms)
Expressions of emotion
Places that typify your antagonist or evoke the difficulties your characters get into.
– Collect inspirational posters and sayings
Lots of people collect and pin posters of inspirational sayings. You can create your own writing related board.
You can also easily create visual version of favourite quotes that you come across while reading.
Fire up your image software
Create a nice background,
Overlay some text in a nice clean, readable and a large enough size that it’ll catch someone’s eye when they are browsing lots of little thumbnails.
Post to a page on your own website.
When people click on the pin they will be brought to you site, so make sure there is something good for them to discover on the page as well as the picture!
– Build a board full of pictures of Authors that inspire you
Collect pictures of authors: those you love, those you aspire to be like. Look at them for inspiration
Writers you know you must be able to equal,
Writers who are more practiced than you, but who you don’t hold in complete awe,
The Idols of your writing life. You can’t imagine being like them, but reading their work always inspires you.
–Collect pictures of beautiful libraries and bookshelves
You’re in this business because you love books and reading, right?. There’s nothing like gazing at a beautiful space filled with books to fill you with dreams of seeing your book among them. Also, these are popular pictures, often ‘repinned’ by avid readers, and isn’t that your target audience?
– Collect pictures of authors’ workspaces, for inspiration
There’s nothing like a little solidarity to make you feel you’re not alone in your writing journey. Why not pin some pictures of other writers’ workspaces? What does your work space look like?
– Collect funny comics or pictures to give yourself a break. There is a lot of humor and comics online aimed at readers and writers and librarians. Pin a few!
– Collect beauty
Everything in your pinboards does not have to be connected to writing.
For inspiration – to get you in the creative zone – collect pictures of things that you consider really beautiful. Art and beauty tend to inspire.
– Collect cover art of books similar to your story
It can be easy to lose your way while writing, and lose the ‘tone’ you were striving for. A quick glance at a board full of the covers of books written the style you’re aiming for can get you right back on track. Imagine looking at a screen full of hard sci-fi books versus a screen full of historical romance covers. Instant mood-change!
– Create a board for pictures of your work ‘in the wild’
If you have already published work, appeal to your fans for pictures of your work out in the real world. (You can do this through Twitter or Facebook or some other social network if you have a following there).
Collect pictures of your book being read, on shelves, on benches, in boxes arriving from Amazon.
Sharing these pictures creates ‘social proof’ that other people are reading your work: a powerful marketing tool to encourage readers to try your work.
– Create a board about something you really love, whether or not it’s related to writing
Readers like to get to know the authors, to get a look behind the scenes.
Where you write
What your research look like
What is outside your window
Have fun creating your boards and connecting with your audience.
