Have you ever created a vision board? Or perhaps a dream board? When you were younger you may have cut out pictures from magazines and inspirational quotes and glued them to a poster board. They made your dreams visual, you were able to get those images from your eyes into your head instead of just imagining what they would look like.
In much the same way that a vision board helps people visualize dreams, a character vision board can help you visualize your characters. These people live in your head, you may have an idea or two about what their hair and eye color are, but are you really getting the full picture that way? Or is your character an amorphous blob in your head running around with brown hair and blue eyes?
That’s where these character vision boards can come in handy. Pulling images that remind you of your character, that can inspire your writing and can really make your hero feel like someone instead of anyone.
I have a hidden Pinterest board for the book I’m writing. In that book board, I have subcategories for each of my main characters and settings. First, I go through each of my characters and decided what they look like using my character profile worksheet. Then I go into Pinterest and start searching for those keywords. I look for people that I think best fit what I see in my head, I look for outfits that work for that time period and I pull imagery of lush forests and castles that my characters would be running around in.
It’s a great place to go when you’re stuck or when you’re having trouble describing something in your book. Just don’t spend all your time on Pinterest, or else you’re not actually writing your book!
It’s easy to go overboard with the pinning. Suddenly you have 30 images of your main character and while you like bits and pieces, it’s a bit overwhelming. That’s where I like to use Canva, it’s a free tool that allows you to put images and text into a template and then save that new image.
Typically I will create a character vision board for all of my characters and then upload them to their character page in Scrivener. That way I don’t have to go all the way to Pinterest to see what I’m trying to capture in my descriptions.
Scrivner literally has a spot for you to add a photo of your character, why not take full advantage of the space and add a collage of multiple photos!
If you’re struggling with describing your character thoroughly I hope my character vision board process helps you!
- Kristen
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