I’m not going to lie. Revising is haaaaard. And although there is no escaping the many revisions of your manuscript I have come across a little trick that helps reduce continuity issues and that is ‘pack before you go’.

Or to put it more precisely, dress your characters and pack their bags before you start writing so you know what they’re wearing, you know what colours and materials their clothes are made out of and you know what items they have brought with them on their adventures.

Of course, you may need to add, remove or change things as your novel twists and turns and takes on a life of its own. But knowing exactly what your characters are wearing and carrying with them BEFORE you start writing will reduce the number of continuity edits you will have to make.

And this will give you more revision time to focus on things like crippling plots holes and derivative one-dimensional characters….. :p

I hunt down clothes and items for each of my characters and save the photos in their character file on my PC. I then dump these pictures in a Word document and print them out and stick them on the wall by my writing desk. I am a very visual person, so I love being able to look up and have an at-a-glance reference as to what each character is wearing and carrying.

Here’s an example of what a character from my current WIP carries with her:

Here’s an example of what some other characters wear (this is an approximation only):

I have also just recently (I’m late to the party I know) started building Pinterest boards for my places, characters and novels. Anytime I see a picture that captures the look, tone or feel of a place or character I pin it, hoarding it like a squirrel staring down the barrel of winter.

I often do this pinning when I am too brain dead to write or revise but I still want to be working on my writing in some format. This way I can ‘watch’ TV and world-build at the same time.

And it’s FUN! Trawling the internet for hairstyles, clothing, body-types, faces and places that bring to life the world you see so vividly in your mind is an enjoyable past time.

Here’s a link to my Pinterest boards (about half of them are ‘secret’ at this stage).

Do you use Pinterest to world build? If so drop a link to your boards in the comments below – I’d love to check them out.