• Make A Pinterest Board For Your Novel Writing Advice
    Blog,  For Writers

    How to Create a Pinterest Board for Your Novel – 3 Tips With Examples!

    January 31, 2025

    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!

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  • For Writers

    How to Add Layers to Your Dialogue

    November 5, 2018

    How do you flesh out dialogue??

    When I’m freewriting, I tend to write way more dialogue than action. My first drafts often read like screenplays. Sometimes, I won’t even put tags that explain who is talking, and I’ll have to scroll back through the scene weeks later desperately trying to remember who was who. 

    Take this chunk of dialogue:

    “I said no one was supposed to go in there.”

    “I thought you meant, you know, other people. I didn’t think you meant me.”

    “I always mean you. I don’t care what other people do. I care—”

    “About me?”

    “Just — don’t do it again, okay? It’s dangerous.”

    “Duly noted.”

    It’s not bad, is it? But we have no idea who is speaking, where they are, or what’s going on. So let’s see if we can beef it up a little bit…

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  • For Writers

    Trouble Writing a Scene? Bring it Back to Character

    October 29, 2018

    A quick post for you this Monday, Happy Writers! NaNoWriMo is imminent, and I’m about to launch into an all-day flurry of schoolwork to try to get everything done so I have some nice, lengthy, juicy writing days later in the week. (If you would like to follow my noveling progress, follow me on NaNoWriMo.org!)

    Today, I want to talk about scenework. Novels are broken up into distinct chunks — among these, acts, chapters, scenes, paragraphs, and sentences.  Scenes are some of the most important elements of a novel — if your individual scenes aren’t engaging, a reader is never going to appreciate the bigger picture. You want scenes that reveal your characters and move the story forward — scenes that build like bricks to construct the big, beautiful mansion (or townhouse, or skyscraper, or complicated subway system) your book will eventually be. 

    So, what do you do when you can tell a scene isn’t working? 

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  • For Writers

    Lay It Flat, Then Iron It

    October 15, 2018

    You don’t throw a shirt down on the ironing board all wadded up and just press your hot iron overtop it.

    I mean, maybe you do, if your intention is to make some kind of shirt sandwich and pressing the wrinkles deeper into the fabric locks in the flavor or whatever.

    But usually, you lay the shirt flat. You make sure the collar isn’t folded up, and you smooth down the sleeves. Then you get to ironing. Giving yourself that minute to prepare the canvas, so to speak, makes the work easier and promises you a better outcome.

    It’s the same with writing.

    No, really.

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  • For Writers

    The Zero Draft: How to Take Your Jumbled Scraps of Bookish Ideas and Make Them Story-Shaped

    October 8, 2018

    Hello, hello, Happy Writers! Today, we’re talking about Zero Drafts. Now, we’ve all heard of First Drafts: the very first incarnations of the stories we tell. They’re messy, they’re earnest, and they very, very often go unfinished, as they’re very often abandoned. Now, why is that? Sometimes, admittedly, stories just don’t work, and the writer loses their motivation to keep clacking away at the keyboard. But, oftentimes, the writer is simply overwhelmed — lost and frustrated and not sure what the story is that they’re telling.

    Often, this is because the writer needed a Zero Draft. A Zero Draft is the percolation stage. It’s the answer to the question: how do I get all of the ideas in my head into something story-shaped? A Zero Draft is and should be the first step to writing a novel. 

    So, this post basically answers two questions: What is a Zero Draft? which, in turn, answers the question:

    I have a story for a novel in my head and I’m not sure how to write it down. What do I do??

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  • For Writers

    Break Your Writing Into Bite-Sized Chunks | How I Got In the Habit of Writing Everyday

    October 1, 2018

    Since I started keeping tabs of my daily #amwriting in Scrivener, I’m pleased to say I’ve written 20,000 words in the last two weeks! Making yourself sit down for a few minutes every day and write SOMETHING has its benefits! ✨— Christina ✍? (@chuffwrites) September 26, 2018

    So, I’ve been having a time writing this year. Or, these past two years. There’s something about waking up in the morning, rolling over, opening Twitter, and seeing with every subsequent scroll of your thumb the Raging Dumpster Fire your country has become that kills your creative drive. Also, I’m in a weird position where I’m drowning in edits for Book 1 of my fantasy series, but I also have all of these fun, attractive, distracting ideas for stand-alone novels bouncing about my brain that I often get hit with a kind of creative paralysis. 

    What is Creative Paralysis?

    creative paralysis: a sister to writer’s block, when you just have so much you want to write, you somehow manage to end up … not writing anything at all. 

    Basically, I was pin-balling between so many projects, I just could never seem to sit down to work that substantially on any. And I never felt like I was making any kind of substantial progress in anything.

    So. A new system has been implemented!

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  • scene versus summary
    For Writers

    Scene vs. Summary

    September 24, 2018

    One of the oldest writing adages (and the most frustrating) is show don’t tell. This advice is applied universally, spread widely, repeated so often the words tend to lose their nuance and meaning. Aren’t there times when a scene doesn’t need to be shown? Can’t you share information with your reader without having it play out stroke-by-stroke? You are telling a story, after all! 

    The thing about “show don’t tell” is that it’s actually talking about writing scenes versus summaries. One is showing, the other is telling. They’re both vital building blocks for any kind of writing.

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  • Write What You Know
    For Writers

    Write What You Know: Creating Authenticity in Your Fiction

    March 26, 2018

    mimesis – (noun), imitation of the real world in literature, art, etc. Art imitates life.

    We want our writing to be mimetic, to draw readers in as though they’re looking through a window — or into a mirror — that shows them a world that feels as real as their own. This is what a reader is looking for when they say they want to relate to a character; they want to feel like that character, and their story, is real to them. The most immersive creative works play out almost like a documentary — not in style, but in experience. You leave the film or the book feeling as though you watched the real life of a real person. When that suspension of disbelief breaks, the immersion shatters; when you’re aware that what you’re watching or reading is fake, it’s harder and harder to keep yourself in the right headspace to enjoy the story. That’s why good writers want to achieve a level of mimesis — you want your art to feel real.

    But how to create that level of authenticity? How do we bring our fictional worlds to life?

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  • For Writers

    Trouble with Transition Scenes | #Writing Advice

    February 19, 2018

    When you think of your story, you think of the Big Scenes, right? The important plot points, the vital Moments that challenge your characters and move your book along. But what about the transition scenes, connecting all those story events together? Transitional scenes can be incredibly difficult to get right. They’re a spot in your novel that’s rife for info-dumping, and a poorly written transition scene can drag like dead weight. But sometimes cutting it off entirely can mess up your story’s pacing!

    A good transition scene is seamless. You don’t notice it’s a transition, because you’re engaged in what you’re reading and the information you’re being given is naturally setting up for the next Story Event. The transition gives you something — a funny moment, a beautiful description, a thrilling bit of mystery, an enlightening character detail, a hint at the conflict or tension to come — that makes it move along smoothly.

    To start things off, what is a transition scene?

    A transition scene is the thread connecting disparate parts of your novel. Take some of these examples from Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince

    It might be a scene of time passing, such as snow falling over the Hogwarts grounds as the seasons change:

    Snow was swirling against the icy windows once more; Christmas was approaching fast. Hagrid had already single-handedly delivered the usual twelve Christmas trees for the Great Hall; garlands of holly and tinsel had been twisted around the banisters of the stairs; everlasting candles glowed from inside the helmets of suits of armor and great bunches of mistletoe had been hung at intervals along the corridors. Large groups of girls tended to converge underneath the mistletoe bunches every time Harry went past, which caused blockages in the corridors; fortunately, however, Harry’s frequent nighttime wanderings had given him an unusually good knowledge of the castle’s secret passageways, so that he was able, without too much difficulty, to navigate mistletoe-free routes between classes.

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