Oftentimes, when we try to describe our books, it’s more than just describing a genre or a plotline, but also more of describing the feeling that our books have or the way a book looks and sounds. The idea of the aesthetic of a book is something that can be really helpful in finding people who have a similar liking to that aesthetic and connecting them to your story. So, for today’s post, I’ll be talking about how you can find your the aesthetic of your next book!
What Is a Book’s Aesthetic?
The aesthetic of your book is basically the visual, emotional, and thematic atmosphere that pretty much defines the look and the feel of your book. The aesthetic pretty much represents the overall mood for your book and it helps to assert things like the tone, the themes, and the designs of your story.
The idea of an aesthetic can genuinely help a book because it helps to make your book recognizable and memorable and can also help the readers connect to the story and its characters because it matches a certain vibe or feel that they are looking for. Additionally, it helps you set the tone for marketing your book and it sets the tone for things like cover designs, social media posts, and book trailers.
Why Your Book’s Aesthetic Matters
The aesthetic of your book is something that’s good to know and identify because the way your story feels to a reader is also just as important as the way a story is written. When I read a book that has an eerie, sort of dark fantasy feel to it, I’m expecting that kind of vibe for the story itself. It helps to orient my mind to know what to expect in the overall story and the plot.
1. It Shapes Reader Expectations
One of the biggest parts of knowing your book’s aesthetic is that it helps to shape the expectations of your readers towards the story and allows them to figure out what they can expect from the story. A dark and moody aesthetic lets readers expect that they will see some action and intense moments in your story while a light and hopeful one means that they can expect that the story will have a sort of happy ending.
2. It Amplifies the Themes
The aesthetic is great for a story because it can actually help magnify the themes of your book. If you have a story with a dystopian setting, having harsh, cold and desolate imagery allows for the reader to visualize the concept of being dystopian more than just knowing that the society is dystopian.
3. It Helps Your Creativity
As a writer, one thing I felt is that having a set aesthetic in mind for my story lets me understand my story more and allows me to maintain a set idea of the setting, characters, the dialogue, and the way the plot will progress. This is because if your story’s aesthetic is clear, you will be more likely to stick to the style and make it consistent for your readers.
How to Find Your Book’s Aesthetic
Finding your book’s aesthetic isn’t always a straightforward process, especially if you have multiple ideas or inspirations swirling around in your head. However, there’s some things that you can do to help you figure out what your book’s unique aesthetic is.
1. Reflect on the Themes
One thing that can really help you determine the visual feel of your story is definitely the theme or the themes of your story. The themes are essentially the messages that you are delivering in your story, and if you want to learn how to find your themes, you can check out this post for more help.
You want to identify your core themes and think about what sort of emotion best represents those themes. For instance, if your book’s main theme is about bravery, then maybe you want to go for a story where hope rises out of adversity. From there, you want to find the colors and the sorts of imagery that would work with your story. Maybe you want colors that are more cold and imagery of knights or other heroes.
2. Dive Into Visual Inspiration
One of the best ways to develop your book’s aesthetic is to find visual inspiration and one of the best platforms for that has to be–without a doubt–Pinterest. On Pinterest, I have plenty of boards where I find images that fit the aesthetic of my story. It helps me get a boost of inspiration whenever I feel like I don’t have any for a certain scene. If you want to learn how to use Pinterest better, check out this post.
Creating a mood board is probably the best way to also find your book’s aesthetic because mood boards organize images and colors into one thing to create a “look” and “vibe” for whatever you are trying to visually represent.
If you want to learn how to create mood boards, you can check out this post!
You can also play video games or watch movies and TV to get ideas and visually inspire yourself through these things. You can check out this list for video games to get inspiration!
3. Define Your Setting’s Mood and Tone
I would say that a big role in defining the aesthetic of a book has to go to the setting of your story. The setting is essentially the world where your story takes place and influences many things, including the way the story progresses and how the characters are and what sort of life they have in this world. The setting also needs to work alongside the mood and the tone of your story and feel like it fits well in the overall book’s plot.
Defining the setting’s mood and tone allows you to subsequently find the aesthetic. For instance, if your world is a gritty and dark dystopian cyberpunk city, then you’d obviously expect that the aesthetic is going to be a bit more edgy and colorful but hardcore. If your story is something like an epic fantasy, you may have a more grandiose and epic tone so your aesthetic will likely fit this as well and you might include colors of gold and similar vibes.
You can think about things like the lighting, the colors, the textures, the sounds, and similar things. These sorts of little details will allow you to tailor your aesthetic better and give you a broader and more overarching sense of what your story feels like.
In my series, The Fallen Age Saga, for example, the setting covers things like modern/semi-futuristic war zones, alien planets, and more and it’s a very dark and gritty story, so the aesthetic fits this with colors of reds and blacks and imagery of war and a dark tone overall.
4. Character Design
Your characters are obviously a big part of your story, and the way the characters are designed is something that is also important. You want it to reflect their personalities, the world they live in, and the type of environment that surrounds them.
The clothing, hairstyles, and things of that nature are all impacted by the world around the character and thus influence the aesthetic. In The Fallen Age Saga, most of the main characters are soldiers and the story only takes place about ten years or so from today, so the way they are dressed will not be all that different compared to today but they mostly are seen in uniforms for war. This will impact the aesthetic because the main clothing style would be military uniforms.
5. Use Music to Enhance Your Vision
I personally love to listen to music when I’m writing my books and I feel like there are songs out there that just fit a certain scene when you’re listening to them. You can listen to music to inspire you or fuel a certain scene or just to have fun, but I feel like creating a playlist for writing your books is honestly a great way to capture the aesthetic of your book too.
When you create a playlist, I recommend trying to reflect the overall mood, the emotions, and the themes of your story through the music. The playlist doesn’t need to be included in your book and can literally just exist in your Spotify account, but the idea is that the playlist should reflect the aesthetic of your story.
You can check out my writing playlist over on Spotify if you want some inspo!
Conclusion
Finding the aesthetic of your book is a creative process that requires some thinking but is a great way to connect more with your story and helps shape the identity of your book. Additionally, it can help you with marketing and reaching audiences that are also looking for stories similar to yours and your aesthetic.
A solid understanding of your aesthetic doesn’t mean that you can’t branch out beyond that particular aesthetic, but it means that you at least have a direction in case you’re not sure what sort of vibe you want to strike with your story.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on all my latest posts, WIPs, book releases and more!