Recently, I made my The Book Book Pinterest board temporarily public (seriously, go check it out! over 500 pins on this story-board) and I realized I never did a blog post talking about my most important Pinterest board for writing and story-board-ing:

Something Else

This board has become a staple of my process, now containing over 1,500 pins. I use this board in a variety of ways, but I will first talk about what I pin here. The board description says,

Inspiration/Emotion/Narrative Visuals. Images to use for building novel/story boards, to express the emotional or mental state of characters, to explore relationships, to establish tone, to visualize moments, and to inspire themes.

To break it down, I pin any image that…

• Evokes of a smell or a sound or a feeling (texture)
• Captures the feeling of abstract emotions, such as Joy, Sadness, Loneliness, Freedom, etc.
• Visualizes a moment, such as a hug between friends, running from danger, a first kiss, etc.
• Expresses character, often times these are more abstract images, animals, or artistic images that could represent personalities
• Represents a tone, such as dark and gritty, light and ethereal, adventurous and inspiring
• Is just generally inspiring

When working on a story board, such as The Book Book board, these pins are the backbone of it. Sure, I will pin world-building elements that give a very specific look to things, but those are usually only material images. Images from the Something Else board really help me to develop and understand my characters and story better.

Rosi Kallard, the FMC of the Book Book, for instance, has a variety of images to describe her:

You can see that these aren’t just pictures of a person she looks like. (I’m not particularly keen on having an overly specific picture of a character, liking there to be room for the reader to use their imagination). Instead, these images evoke feelings about her character, and in pinning, I have really discovered that Rosi’s spirit animal is absolutely a butterfly.

This image in particular I find very inspiring for her character:

I also love to use the Something Else pins to establish relationships. To simply say “these two people like each other” is bland, and I love to have color and see the differences between people and what makes their relationship unique. So images like these


Are great for visualizing the differences between Milo and Rosi, and give me a reminder for what their interactions should be like, because it reminds me of who they are individually, but also when put into the same context.

The last, and most ambiguous, way I use these pins, is with the mysterious tag “PLOT”, images like these:

These are certainly the most vague of all my pins, but there is just something about them that really captures the over-arching story I’m creating. As vague as they are, they speak really specific things to me about the themes and goals in my story, and remind me of the driving idea behind it all.

So that is yet another post on my and my dependency upon Pinterest for writing! I hope you found it inspiring and useful, and I love heading about how other writers use Pinterest to fuel their ideas, so below sure to share those with me in the comments, along with your boards!