Writers, have you ever wanted to create a Pinterest board based on the aesthetics of your novel or Work In Progress, but you don’t know how to begin? Start here! Productivity isn’t always putting pen to the page; sometimes you need a little help getting your creative juices flowing, and a beautiful board of your novel aesthetics can be just the thing to get you in the mood to write!
First of all, because it’s been a while, I have to take a moment to say: HELLO, HAPPY WRITERS! Long time, no see!! I have been unfairly neglecting this blog for a while now, but with social media sites becoming precarious (I’m sure I wasn’t the only one traumatized by TikTok going dark for all of twelve hours), I’m realizing how important it is to have a stable, self-hosted space to communicate with the world. I’ll be posting on this blog more often, so expect to see posts about writing, reading, and everything in between.
If you’d like to find me on other platforms (while they still exist), be sure to check out my Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. I’m @chuffwrites on all of them!
Now, onto the Pinning!
Why Should A Writer Create A Pinterest Board?
Creating a Pinterest board for your novel’s aesthetics can be a really fun first-step as you explore a new story idea — or a great way to revive your passion for a project as you’re slogging through seemingly endless edits! I’ve seen lots of writers on social media scroll through their Pinterest boards at the start of every writing session, just to get into the right mindset to start working.
Obviously, the only thing that’s going to get your story written is to write it, but making Pinterest boards, curating playlists, drawing your own fan art or fantasy maps—they’re all ways to get those creative juices going. Any time you want to remind yourself why you’re writing this story, you have these extra outlets you can dip into to rekindle that initial excitement that made you want to write this book to begin with!
Creating Boards for Your Novel Aesthetics
To create a board that encompasses your overall novel, you have to ask yourself a few questions about how your novel feels: what are the main images you want readers to take away from your work? What is the mood of the piece? Can you see the types of architecture in your head, the faces of your characters, the vibe of the book?
- Search key terms that describe your novel’s overall mood. For instance, is this a moody vampire book, in a dark academia setting? When you close your eyes, do you see towers of dusty books and parchment scrolls, vials of blood worn on necklaces for quick sips, moonlight through arched windows, ivy crawling up castle walls? Search terms like vampire aesthetics or dark academia to build your novel’s board!
- Bring your novel’s setting to life. I go into this more later, but definitely look up pins that evoke your story’s setting—let’s say your vampire novel takes place in a university. You might look up boards on Oxford or Cambridge, search terms like “library aesthetic”, “rainy street” or “moonlight.”
- Consider your characters. I’ll give more detail in the next section, but definitely don’t forget to include your characters in your board! Look up terms like “character models” or “character inspo” to find boards with lots of models to choose from. Even a search that sounds silly like “moody man” pulls up some surprisingly aesthetic images!
- Start broad, then get specific! In our vampire novel example, you might start with searching vampire aesthetics, but don’t be afraid to get super specific. Gothic clothing, for example, parchment scrolls, vials of blood (I was actually surprised how many images that search turned up, though I probably shouldn’t have been!) Search even the most specific details from your book; you might be surprised how accurate of an image you might find!
- Search aesthetic boards for comparable titles. Fans love putting together aesthetic boards for their favorite novels, so definitely mine these for inspiration! For the vampire novel, maybe you’d search Buffy the Vampire Aesthetics or Camilla Aesthetic or Dracula-inspired boards. Scroll through the options and see if there’s anything that strikes true for your novel—and pin away!
- Don’t just collect visuals—look up quotes that reflect your story’s main themes. There might be book quotes or personal quotes that encapsulate the mood of your novel. For your vampire novel, you might look up vampire quotes, academia quotes, or even quotes themed around your characters or romances, like enemies to lovers quotes!
Personally, I’m working on a fantasy series, and for my novel aesthetics board, I looked up a lot of key terms that described my settings, like misty forests, campfires, journals and newspapers, and lots of aesthetics for my characters, which I’ll go into in more in detail next!
Creating Boards For Character Aesthetics
I actually prefer to make hyper-specific boards than just one overall board for a WIP—meaning, I’m making a board for every single character, baybeee. Pinterest is great for character aesthetics. With a few well-chosen search terms, you can find everything you need to create a robust board for each of your characters.
- Search “character inspo” and “character inspiration” boards. Tons of Pinners have already put together huge boards with models and aesthetics for just about any character you can think of. Start searching broad terms like this to begin with.
- Use your character traits as search terms. Like I said before, “moody man” actually generates a ton of aesthetic images—so be creative in your search! Search things like girly aesthetic, woman with glasses, brunette male model and see what comes up!
For my main character, Charley, I looked up pins that involved brunette men (I prefer images that don’t show faces, though, because you can use your imagination!), bandaged hands, breakfast foods, messes, a general sense of exhaustion. I also searched for the kinds of clothes he would wear, like sneakers, sweatshirts, and jeans.
- Consider your character’s clothes. Including certain kinds of dresses, shoes, jewelry, even makeup palettes will bring your board to life.
For my character Anna, I focused a lot on her hair and fashion—which is really helpful if you want to avoid face models and focus on the character’s aesthetic. I searched for women in dresses, brunette women with braids or curly hair, and other accessories like boots and daggers.
- Flesh out your character’s interests! Your board doesn’t have to be limited to models. Consider your character’s interests. Maybe they’re into books, or sports, or miniature dollhouses! Are there certain quotes that might speak to them, such as quotes on self-improvement, resilience, or revolution? Pin it all!
For Oliver, I leaned more into the types of things he was into, so I looked up journals and writing, mapmaking, camping and campfires, forests, those sorts of aesthetics! I also looked up a few anti-social and anti-government quotes that I know he’d appreciate. 😉
- Put yourself in their shoes. If your character was curating this board themselves, what would they include? Certain quotes, colors, aesthetics? This mindset will help you create a board that really feels like your character has come to life.
Finally, for Simon, I focused again on his interests, but especially on quotes that I thought reflected his kind, soft nature. I searched black-haired men with glasses, and lots of searches on art aesthetic, painting aesthetic, pride flags, things that he’d have definitely put into his own Pinterest board.
- Finally, use existing characters as inspiration. If there are comparable characters in literature or media, see if someone’s made an inspiration board for them! Is your character bookish? Find a Hermione Granger or Rory Gilmore aesthetics board and steal some pins for your own character!
Creating Pinterest Boards for Specific Settings
This one is actually my favorite to do, because it really helps me visualize my world-building—which is especially fun when you’re doing speculative work like fantasy or science fiction! Here are some tips for fleshing out boards based on your novel’s settings:
- Search real-world locations that mimic your novel’s setting. New York aesthetic might bring you skyscapers and taxi cabs for your novel’s city setting, while Amsterdam Aesthetic will give you tons of options of canal streets, bicycles, and tulips. Use these to piece together the vibes you imagine for your fictional city.
In my novel, the fictional city of Woodcrest is described as looking “like a sunset”, with lots of flowers, brick buildings and streets, with a cozy, quaint, picturesque vibe:
If Charley had expected another dark, dismal city like Drenchwood, Woodcrest came as a welcome surprise. Perched atop the steepest hill Charley and Ol had climbed all day, Woodcrest was a city of quaint brick buildings, in yellows, pinks, and dusky oranges, with ironwork balconies and crooked chimneystacks that pumped odd-colored smoke into the sky. Strings of golden flags crisscrossed the bronzy bricked streets, and flowering trees drizzled pale orange petals over the sidewalks. The entire town looked like a sunset.
For my Woodcrest board, I searched for city streets in Austria and France to get that vibe of narrow, cozy brick streets, as well as lots of images of flowers!
- If your world is inspired by any fantasy settings, see if other users have put together boards based on those settings, and use these as a jumping-off point! Maybe your fictional town draws inspiration from the snow-capped village of Hogsmeade or the starry, mountainous Night Court. If you look up terms like Night Court Aesthetic, you’ll find plenty of boards have already been created—pick through these for ideas!
In my novel, I have a city built up the side of a mountain, and the closest “real” location I could think to compare it to was Gondor in the Lord of the Rings. So, I pulled from a lot of Gondor-focused boards to flesh out this idea of a stony city climbing like a staircase up a mountain peak. Gondor has way more castle-vibes than what I have pictured in my head, but it’s a good starting point!
- If you don’t have a real or fictional location in mind, you can still build a board by pinpointing a few specific aesthetics you imagine for your setting. For instance, flower baskets on lampposts, rain on cobblestones, piers or fishing docks, or skyscrapers and neon lights! Think of as many little details as you can about your setting and let the inspiration spiral out from there.
When I was building this board for my novel’s treetop city of Acroden, the only search term I really had in mind was treehouses. Give me all the treehouses! So, I focused my search on treehouses, treehouse aesthetics, forests, rope bridges, hanging lights, lanterns in branches, anything that called to mind little details my characters might see in this location. All together, they paint a pretty great picture of this fictional city—even without any real-life counterparts to pull inspiration from!
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All in all, building these boards may seem like a “waste” of time (I’d argue anything that’s fun isn’t a waste of a single second!), but these actually serve an important purpose: you’re cultivating visuals that will help you ground yourself in your writing. By scrolling through your boards before a writing session, you’ll start to think of concrete details you want to include—the way your character’s hair curls just so, the smell of the rain hitting the pavement in the city your character’s just arrived in, the slant of moonlight through trees in the forest your scene is centered around. Concrete sensory details can make or break a piece of writing, and taking a few minutes to bathe in visuals of your fictional world will help bring those sights, smells, sounds, and textures to the surface!
Feel free to share your favorite novel aesthetics boards in the comments! And, as always—
Happy Writing 🙂
