Yes, you heard me. Character hunting. I know that sounds extremely strange, but some of my best inspiration comes from Tumblr. Why? Sometimes I’ll be mindlessly scrolling through my dashboard full of pictures, when suddenly, I see a picture of a random person and I think “Oh my god! That looks just like [insert character name here]!” and then I just have to reblog it. This has happened so many times, in fact, that I now have an entire page dedicated to my characters (and other inspirational images) via Tumblr to make it easier for myself. Here are examples for the main characters, Charlie and Olivia:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I also really like scrolling through that page and just looking at everything I have that reminds me of people, places, objects, etc., in my book. It’s kind of like my own little secret world is actually coming to life before my eyes. I say secret because with the manuscript unpublished, I’m the only one that really knows what it looks like. But you can get a feel for how the book is going to be, and what the characters are like by scrolling through it. A few of my close friends have read part of the manuscript so far, and then I’ve directed them to the page on Tumblr afterwards, and they say that it really is neat to see after they’ve read it because they get to see what might be to come, etc. I think it’s very good for description, so that I remember to be descriptive enough so that people don’t have to look through my pictures, but they can if they’d like to.
Everyone tried to get me to jump on the whole Pintrest train, but my Tumblr is already set up sort of that way, and I just feel like it would be redundant to do both.
I’ve noticed that when “tagging” photos of my characters, I tend to tag pictures that not only remind me of them physically, but of their personality as well. While organizing them today I also had a realization that with Paul, I tagged two photos at completely different times, and then looked at them today, and the guys in the photos could actually be the same person. He might be a model, and I have no idea who he is, so it very well may actually be the same person, I have no idea. It could just be two people who look very much alike:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
But that is quite funny and reassuring for me to see that in my head, the characters are so steadfast that this happened.
Now, I should probably stop procrastinating and actually start writing.
In other news, I purchased my domain name! Yay! In the process of buying it I also discovered that my name with two “L”‘s, aka Lilly Paradis, is a French lingerie company, so let’s hope my readers don’t get me confused with them… definitely not the same industry.
In other, other news, yesterday I realized that my manuscript that I started three years ago has the same name as the new James Bond film, so that may sadly have to be changed, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Daniel Craig is definitely not in my book. Although he might make an interesting Peter! (But you’ll have to read to find out who that is…)
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
