Concept art often carries with it the connotation of being related to something like a video game or a movie set, but in my opinion, concept art is one of the best ways for authors to also create powerful visualizations of their stories, scenes, worlds, characters and more. For a few years now, I’ve been playing around with concept art and creating set pieces and representations of my world’s characters and I think that it’s honestly something valuable that all writers should take on as well. So, for today’s post, I’ll explain why you should create concept art for your books and how you can do it as well.
(affiliate disclaimer: some of the links in this post are affiliate links which means that I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you)
Why Concept Art Helps with Writing Books
1. It Helps You Get to Know Your World on a Deeper Level
You might think you know your story world. You’ve written pages and pages of notes, figured out the geography, the culture, the clothes, the buildings. But when you try to visualize it, you feel like something’s missing from the full image. You can’t really figure out what it would look like if the book were a movie instead.
The act of turning abstract ideas into visual images forces you to get specific. Concept art asks you to make design choices and those choices will actually feed back into your writing, making your world more vivid, consistent, and immersive. Even if the artwork is loose or stylized, the process of visualizing will give you a clearer picture of the story you’re trying to tell. Sometimes, it helps to use animation-styles or even painting-styles because that’s just how your brain visualizes your story.
You may even end up realizing that your world’s look affects more than just scenery. Maybe the heavy stone architecture of your city explains why people are always indoors. Maybe the clothes your characters wear hint at the weather patterns or social hierarchy. Concept art roots your world in logic, texture, and form.
2. It Sparks Inspiration When You Feel Stuck
Sometimes, staring at a blank page feels impossible and the words just don’t want to come; that’s where concept art can be a game-changer. Whether you’re creating a mood board with visual aesthetics or you’re actually drawing your character in a sketchbook, visuals can basically kickstart your imagination in unexpected ways.
If you want to learn about how to create mood boards, I recommend you check out this post!
Writers are often told to “write what you see,” and having art in front of you literally gives you something to see. That visual anchor becomes a springboard into sensory description, emotional tone, and narrative momentum.
And sometimes, one image can inspire an entire subplot. You might find yourself really inspired by the way a piece looks and so you end up creating a whole new setting, country, etc… I’ve done this a lot!
3. It Deepens Character Development
There’s a difference between writing “she wore armor” and looking at a detailed illustration of the armor your character wears. Seeing your character visually makes them feel more real. You start thinking about the weight of their clothing, the scars on their face, the way they carry themselves.
Maybe you draw or commission your protagonist, and suddenly you realize the dark circles under their eyes suggest they haven’t slept in days. That detail alone might spark a deeper backstory beat or emotional layer you hadn’t explored.
Character concept art gives you something tangible to work from, not just in physical description, but in emotional storytelling too.
It also helps you notice visual consistency. Maybe your character always wears a locket, but it’s never actually shown in any art. Why is that? Do you need to emphasize it more in your writing? Does it matter symbolically? Concept art invites reflection.
4. It Keeps You Consistent
You might’ve faced a scenario like this in the past: You’re halfway through your manuscript and suddenly can’t remember if your magic users wore cloaks, robes, or jackets. Or maybe you said your city had white stone walls early on, but now you’re describing black basalt towers.
Creating concept art, even if they’re just rough sketches or mood boards, helps lock in the key visuals of your world. It becomes a reference point that you can come back to again and again.
This is especially helpful in longer projects or multi-book series where consistency matters. Your readers will notice if a character’s hair color changes from book to book. Having visuals can help prevent that.
It’s also a lifesaver when it comes time to revise. Instead of rereading chapters just to double-check how a room looked, you can glance at your concept art collection and get back to writing.
5. It Strengthens Your Author Branding
Whether you’re self-publishing or aiming for traditional publishing, your book exists in a visual world. Covers, websites, social media, ads and more all rely on strong imagery.
Having concept art gives you ready-made assets to work with. You can:
- Post character art to get readers excited
- Share world building mood boards on Pinterest
- Use visuals in newsletters, blogs, or behind-the-scenes content
- Create teaser graphics or trailers
- Develop reader freebies like downloadable wallpapers or printable art
It adds polish to your brand, makes your book more memorable, and gives readers a sense of your world before they even open the first page.
Readers love visual content. When they see your characters or world in full color, it increases emotional investment. It’s definitely something worth taking time to create.
6. It Makes Collaboration Easier
If you ever work with cover designers, illustrators, game devs, or even audiobook narrators, concept art becomes an amazing communication tool.
Instead of trying to describe your vision with vague phrases (“It’s kind of like a gothic city but also futuristic?”), you can share genuine visuals. Artists and designers are visual people so giving them pre-made concept art helps bridge the gap between imagination and execution and lets them actually stay consistent with your imagery.
How to Create Concept Art for Books
Creating concept art can be super easy if you know how to find the right places to get concept art. If you’re not an artist, you might be wondering how you can do this, but there are plenty of tools and things out there that you can use to create art and give yourself a more visual representation of your world even if you’re not an artist.
Use Photobashing
One of the techniques that game artists use is called photobashing which is a technique in Adobe Photoshop or a similar program where you take stock photos and bring them together and then enhance the photoshopped elements with your own artistic style. However, this is a bit of an advanced technique that if you want to invest time in, is really cool to get used to.
There’s plenty of tutorials on YouTube that you can watch to see if you think this is doable, but it’s really cool to try and take visuals and create something new from them.
Create Moodboards
One way you can create a visual without picking up a pencil or stylus is to collect images, textures, colors, outfits, and more on Pinterest, stock photo sites and more and then put them together into moodboards. I really like to create moodboards, but you can also just create boards on Pinterest and then keep all the images stored there and scroll through for visual inspiration if you ever need it.
Hire an Artist for Commission Work
You can go on sites like Fiverr, DeviantArt and more to find artists who can work within your budget and commission those artists to create art for your story. If you really like a certain artist’s style and work, you can definitely try to commission them to create art for your world that will have an air of professionalism and make sure you get permission from the artist if you want to sell this work, as the artist may have specific agreements and requirements for this.
Use AI Tools
Prompting AI-image generators like Sora, Midjourney, ChatGPT, etc… are also great ways to get fast concept art while you’re writing. If you learn how to prompt properly, you can communicate in standard language and get something really cool out of the AI. This isn’t always easy though and you may need to trial and error a lot before you really get the style you want down with the generator.
Sketch Them By Yourself
At the end of the day, the concept art doesn’t have to be shown to anyone else. It can just be something for your eyes to help you see your story and communicate the image in your brain to a piece of paper. I sometimes will keep world notes in regular journals like the ones I mentioned in this post here and sketch out images of things in my world as well.
Conclusion
Creating concept art isn’t about being perfect. It’s not about turning your novel into a comic book or game (unless you want to). It’s about deepening your connection with your story.
It helps you develop your world, strengthen your characters, and stay consistent. It gives you fresh energy, practical references, and a toolkit of visuals you can use for both writing and marketing. And most importantly, it reminds you that the world you’re building is worth seeing.
It doesn’t matter what you use to create the art, what matters is that the art fits what you think your story should look like and what sort of imagery your story is trying to convey.
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 stay up to date with all the latest posts and content!