Visuals as Inspiration and Shared Point of Reference

When co-writing, how do we get on the same page about what the people and settings in our world look like?

Ms. Lee and I learned pretty quickly that we don’t automatically have the same image in mind for how our characters and their personal spaces appear, or how the broader settings in our manuscript look. Is the family estate a Colonial Revival home or is it more of a Romanesque Revival mansion? What do the interior spaces look like so that we both know how to move our characters through them? Is our FMC someone who has an edgy personal style or does she embrace a more classic look? These details matter.

We want the various settings in our story to help set the tone and provide atmosphere. Even when descriptions are brief, we want the characters’ personal styles and spaces to reflect their personalities and backgrounds. We want it to be easy for our readers to immerse themselves in our world and understand the uniqueness of each character and to easily distinguish them from each other. Therefore, being consistent with how we perceive and describe details is important.

What we found we needed then were visuals, so we’ve been using Pinterest to set up inspiration boards for everything from plants that can be found in our wilderness settings to the different architectural styles of our characters’ homes to the ornamental sculptures and gates found in our garden setting. Our book is about shifters, so we also have boards with images of our characters as both humans and as animals.

These images are ones we’ve shared with each other and agreed upon. They incorporate both of our ideas and help us align what our world and characters look like. When writing, these visuals are both a source of inspiration and a shared point of reference.

While all our boards aren’t fixed or public yet, if you’re interested in seeing some of our initial visuals, we invite you to visit our Pinterest page. We’ve had a lot of fun putting these boards together and find them incredibly helpful to our collaborative writing process.