What is a Book Aesthetic?
A book aesthetic is a group of pictures/photos that relate to a story or even possibly tell the story. Basically, this collage of pictures represents the aesthetic of the story you are trying to tell. But it doesn’t have to be about the entire story. You could do a collection of aesthetics, each representing a character in your story. Or maybe a scene in your book. Aesthetics are a great way to add visuals to your novel and bring aspects of your book to life, not only to yourself but also to your readers.
Ideas for Book Aesthetics
Once you begin thinking about different types of aesthetics you could create for your book, the list can be endless. Here are a few ideas.
- Create one for each character in your book
- A city/town where the story takes place
- A business/dwelling/building
- vehicles used in the book
- Hairstyles & clothes worn by the characters
- An action scene
- The mood of the book
- Tell the whole story in pictures (This is a fun one)
Character Aesthetic for “Reckless Beginnings”
Here is the aesthetic for my main character Tammy Mellows. I had a lot of fun with this one and I plan on posting other character aesthetics in the upcoming months, prior to launch day.
This one shows Tammy at the young innocent age of fourteen when the reader first meets her. With a strong desire to move to America, she takes on a waitress job to try and save for what she called the America Fund. Over time life becomes a roller coaster of ups and downs but one thing keeps her grounded. I tried to capture each of these emotions in the Aesthetic. I also included a quote that expresses Tammy’s life at some point in the book.
When making an aesthetic, you not only want to capture images of possible look-a-likes but also the moods. Look for facial expressions, quotes that set the mood. Even colors will set a mood.
The fun thing about these is that you can keep adding to them. When I come across images or other quotes that describe Tammy, I will add them to the collage of pictures.
How to Make a Book Aesthetic
The first thing you’ll want to do is gather pictures that reflect your story. You could use your own or use stock photos off the internet. All of the photos I use are stock photos. There are three sites I use solely for this purpose. All of them are free to use and have a great selection of photos to choose from.
Once you have your pictures saved on your computer, you’re going to want to organize them into a collage. For this I use Canva. The site is easy to use. and you can upload all your pictures on to their site. Pick the template “Picture Collage” and have fun, arranging your photos on the blank template provided. The best part is. It’s free!
When it comes to adding a quote or adding more pictures to the board, I use Pinterest. This site is a wealth of information and there are some wonderful ideas that are great for this project. Oh, and the best part is, I can link each image that I save to my Pinterest board to this site. How great is that?
So there you have it. If you are an author, I highly recommend creating some of these for your books. Give your readers visuals of your story and characters. Use Aesthetics to promote your book. People tend to remember images rather words.
Over the next month, I plan on making more aesthetics for the other characters in my book. I hope you will check back to see what I came up with.
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