When an author is writing a book, or at least in this author’s case, you have a pretty good idea of how your character looks.
For me, it’s usually some hunk I’m obsessing over.
Take, for example, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
We’ve watched the entire Game of Thrones series twice. And by far, my favorite story arc is Jamie Lannister’s transformation from the arrogant douche that boinks his sis and pushes a kid out the window to the one-handed hero who fights on the side of good. And, well, he’s Danish…and HOT.
I’ve always been a visual person, so when I’m writing a story, it plays in my head like a movie. As I started writing Tame My Racing Heart, Jamie/Nikolaj was the essence of who I had in mind for my hero, Grayson Finch — just without all the incestuous and abhorrent behaviors.
Enter the Pinterest board.
Pinterest started as a place where I had saved hairstyle pics, recipes, and tattoo designs. When I started the Tame My Racing Heart board it was like painting images on a canvas. I uploaded all of the pictures I had collected, from the characters and the houses they lived in and to the cars they drove. It’s something I turn to every time I start a new story and it helps me get my landscape, human and otherwise, in order.
I now have boards for other stories I’ve been working on over the years, and pulling them up drops me right back into the feel of the novel. There’s Beyond Belief, where the heroine accidentally sleeps with the enemy - the man who ruined her father’s career. Okay, so if you just looked at it, yes, Nikolaj appears as the hero in this one too, but I’ve realized I need to find someone else to play the part. The Girl Who Didn’t Go is about a forensic investigator who returns home for her mother’s wedding and is teamed up with the local sheriff to solve a murder. In The Ring is about an award-winning filmmaker who ends up falling for her subject matter. Keys To My Heart follows a burned-out musician who is hiding out in an apartment above a bar. And my most current work-in-progress, Waiting For The Night (the title will probably change), tells the story of a gal in the music industry who’s hired to manage a reclusive rock star’s return to the spotlight.
My new novel, Tame My Racing Heart takes place in the world of racing, and back in 2018, I had the opportunity to tour the Charlotte Motor Speedway - definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Much of what I learned that day in Charlotte made it into my book. Here’s the highlight reel. Enjoy!
All of these Pinterest boards are filled with pictures that help me tell the story I’m writing and act as a research tool while I’m plotting scenes. More recently, I’ve started putting together videos. The first is the highlight reel from my trip to Charlotte in 2018 when I got to tour the Charlotte Motor Speedway. What a blast to have been able to get a behind-the-scenes look at part of my novel’s setting. The story of Tame My Racing Heart really revved up after that trip. Get it? Revved…LOL.
Research has definitely become key and it inspires me to just keep writing.
XO, Kelly
