Blog - The Rogue MFA

Bri CastelliniJune 25, 2026

How to Use Pinterest For World Building Before You Write a Single Word

It’s like tracing a drawing but with words

Last week, Kelly walked you through using Pinterest as a tool for designing and keeping track of characters. This week, I’m doing the same, but for world-building. Need we say more?

Exterior References

Half of my search terms for new projects are things like “parts of a house” or “kinds of shelf mushrooms” because I need the component vocabulary when describing my version of something. But even with those component parts labeled, a lot of times even finding a place to start can be totally overwhelming.

If you’ve got major location centerpieces with real-world equivalents, like a particular construction of house, a famous landmark or biome, or even a kind of clothing, that’s one of the first things I’d mine Pinterest for. Then, you can use it as a direct reference, first to literally capture what you see without having to invent a thing. From there, armed with your component parts diagrams, you can make adjustments to your own taste and the needs of your narrative.

Interior References

We talked about using set design to help describe the unique flourishes of spaces your characters occupy, but you do still need a sense of the layout of the room, and having to invent a fake house and decorations and a floor plan is a lot. My advice here is to organize a section (Pinterest’s version of a sub-folder within a larger board):

Per character and/or location, find a staged room or rooms with similar layouts
Dot the sections with additional important elements to each space

Now, the next time you need a character to reference the location of the couch, or to remember if this is the bedroom with the special lamp, you can easily go double check.

Iconic Objects

What are the objects with important narrative resonance in your story? What might pepper your characters’ homes, their offices, their midday walk? What tangible sigils will come up over and over as the story expands? Instagram grid-worthy latte art in colorful mugs, dusty tomes, a feisty black cat, art supplies, a particular flower… all of that fills out your main project board to define your primary imagery. Let them ground you and help make the world around your characters uniquely tactile.

Research

For my paranormal romance, a major part of the plot centered around dampening the symptoms of a curse, and I wanted to use as much apothecary and medicine as I could for my fake tinctures. Pinterest is naturally lousy with aesthetic infographics of medicinal/magical herbs and plants, and so I used that as my baseline and also pinned outside research alongside them when Pinterest’s own archives weren’t specific enough. I also used it to find and pin recipes for the characters to make.

It’s a more fun representation of research than a real bibliography, and I have a visual memory that makes it easier to recall things when there’s a clear image or color I can associate with information.

Color

Another thing I gleaned from my time as a filmmaker is the importance of light and color in setting the tone for your project. Is this a project defined by bright, bold, saturated colors, or muted jewel tones? Does it frequently take place at night, or in full sun? Like a crow, I collect shiny things for each of my project boards that follow a particular aesthetic or color palette aligned with the tone and imagery of the story. Then, when I need inspiration or just to get back into the world, I can feast my eyes on my visual collage and be transported.

Choosing colors early will also help with marketing & cover design; your designer will absolutely ask what you have in mind, and if you already have a curated color identity for your story, that process will be all the easier!

Join our Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel (which meets every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST), where we’ll be building routine and community with YOU. Subscribe to get notified, and if you’re even a little bit interested, please fill out our quick survey so we can expand these in the future with you in mind.

Kelly ChastainJune 18, 2026

Why I Make a Pinterest Board For Every Character I Write

If you don’t remember the Binders full of Women bullshit from the 2012 election, don’t tell me. I’ve been feeling like an antique lately so just nod and smile, k? K.

I tend to write sprawling and complicated historical fiction with both real historical figures as characters, and a full suite of fictional characters. Sometimes keeping them straight in my head can be a challenge.

So keeping my fictional characters consistent is a high priority. By that, I mean:

Consistent mannerisms
A particular gait or bearing
Patterns of speech
Tics and Tells

And on and on. I want the reader to know this character from the way they clear their throat or step out of a carriage. This is where I turn to Pinterest to start creating a board for a fictional character. I know this sounds a little bonkers considering they’re fictional and only live in my head, but I promise it works.

Find the “Type” Closest to Your Character

You’re going to think of all of the people in the public eye that come to mind. Athletes, Actors, Models, Musicians, Influencers, etc… A great question to ask is: If this novel were ever adapted to film who is my dream actor for this character?

Here’s the goal.

Find someone who looks similar enough to the character you’ve drawn in your head.
1. I typically go for build and stature first. Eye/hair color are irrelevant for this exercise, but it’s nice if it all matches.
Make sure they have a wide body of work.
1. I’ve found actors and models are better for this because you see them in a bajillion different poses, outfits, and situations. However, you could make this same argument for Travis Kelce, Kelly Clarkson, and P!nk.
Create a board (or even a folder on your computer)
Pin (or save) the following:
1. Pics of every facial expression you can find.
2. Pics of them sitting, standing, leaning against the hood of a car and looking smooth. Think Poses. Relaxed or composed.
3. Short video clips of them laughing, running, walking, interrupting, making out, walking across a field in the foggy dawn to propose one more time to that stubborn Bennet girl.

Use Your Celeb as a Reference for Your Character

This is going to help you better visualize your character and most importantly, how they move. If you have a massive character list, it will help you keep track of who touches their hair all the time and who can’t stop fidgeting. Why cries with a straight face and who bites their lips when they’re angry.

In a historical spy novel that I’ve been working on forever, and also shutting away in a drawer for years on end, I have a fictional character, Christoph, who’s the head of the secret police in Vienna in 1832. Yes, there was a secret police back then. Vienna was a police state. It was a whole thing. Anywayyyy…

Obviously this character was going to be an antagonist. More like Mr. Fisticuffs. If he had anything redeeming about him, it wouldn’t be found in his personality. Enter his gorgeous, auburn coppery hair.

Who did I use as the model for this character? Michael Fassbender. Not only are their statures very similar, but MF has played some terrible, TERRIBLE villains and very complicated characters. Plus he’s got that great red hair. I had no problem finding video and stills of him in every conceivable situation, and if you’ve seen all of MF’s work you know what I’m saying 👀

So when Christoph pops off, I watch a short clip of Michael Fassbender portraying an a terrible man. How does he move? What’s most menacing here? His face, his body language, the distance between him and the other person? And I simply describe what I see him doing. Then I adjust for my character and my scene.

I’ve done it enough times that I don’t need to reference MF any more. I know exactly how Christoph is going to move and behave, and I’ve woven in his particular quirks and mannerisms in too, because there are things about him that don’t perfectly align with MF. But using MF as a proxy helps to create instant consistency, and give me visual reminders as the writer.

I have a ton of boards for this book. The dastardly uncle? Rufus Sewell. The Abbess? Olivia Coleman. The Monk? Paul Giamatti. It has made my life So Much Easier and I hope it does for you too.

You can also:

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Bri CastelliniJune 11, 2026

How Filmmaking Made Me a Better Descriptive Writer

When I was in college, the most defining feedback on my work came from my advisor Kathlene, who told me:

You have really funny, distinct characters… but it’s like they’re talking in a dark room

Which was fair. I hated, and still certainly struggle with, describing things. It’s never my first priority, never what excites me most in the drafting phase. I’m a character writer, not a world-builder. Not sure if that’s been made clear yet.

So I took this advice all the way to a graduate degree in Writing and Producing for Television, a style of writing that actively discourages you from describing things too much on the page because then you’re stealing opportunities for the directors and cinematographers to put their stamp on the visuals. I only have to write dialog?! Sign me up!

Then a pandemic happened, and a romance novel hyperfixation, and suddenly, I found myself back in the prose trenches. However, *Wicked voice* I had been changed for good. Specifically, because of production design, though perhaps I’ll be back in a few months to tell you about some other ways filmmaking influenced and improved my writing (foreshadowing).

Production Design: What Your Space Says About You

My very first film collaboration was on my web series, Brains, a zombie series about Alison Sumner (played by me) as she vlogged her college experience after the apocalypse started to let up and the internet came back. We were very much influenced by the narrative vlogs of the time (the series ran from 2015-2017) like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Carmilla, so naturally much of our time was spent in the character Alison’s dorm room.

Prior to being a filmmaker myself, I didn’t really spend a lot of time viewing media consciously considering the spaces characters inhabited. That didn’t mean I wasn’t absorbing something, though.

My production designer Page Schumacher (who now stages window displays professionally and also did our zombie makeup) was given $12 and free range, and here’s what we created together:

Important details:

Torn posters. This was the post-apocalypse, many of Alison’s fellow students had fled campus or died, and Alison is a practical girl. We imagined that Alison, at some point, looted her classmates’ former dorm rooms, which led to an eclectic series of very basic-looking dorm room posters that were a little worse for the wear. World building: everything still exists, but in a state of disrepair, and likely much of her decor was looted. Also, the character prioritized science-y imagery, indicating she’s a STEM student
Anatomically corrected phrenology poster. The centerpiece of our torn and looted posters was a phrenology poster (a eugenics pseudoscience) that Page went through and corrected with the anatomically correct areas of the brain, as Alison was a neuropsychology major. Much of the show is about Alison and her friends’ study of the brain (zombie and human alike… get it?? Brains??) and Page reasoned that when Alison found this nonsense phrenology poster, she liked a colorful brain poster but disliked its pseudoscience. World building: the character’s voice and priorities, not to mention her course of study.
Skeleton endocrine system covering its balls. Made by my friend Chris in AP Psychology in high school and then gifted to me at the end of the semester, I was delighted this made it into Alison’s production design for three reasons- 1, an Easter Egg for my friend, 2, more skull/science imagery that felt on-brand, and 3, the articulated paper limbs allowed us to give the skeleton various poses in different episodes, aiding the tone of the show. This was a comedy series (or, as my director once called it, a horror series the protagonist thinks is a rom com), so this helped us add subtle levity to the frame so that no matter how dark things got for the characters, we knew there’s always a joke lurking as a counterbalance. World building: tone
Ruffled sheets & discarded clothes. Alison, despite being a Type-A Science Girlie, is also kind of a mess. Emotionally, but also literally. World building: externalizing a character’s inner turmoil
The color red. Early in the series, Alison states her thesis: she’s trying to seduce a cute boy in her class/survivor group, and while she ingratiates herself into his life, she’s also trying to subtly push him in the right direction (while also not-so-subtly flirting like a maniac). She’s doing this with color psychology- red stimulates your adrenal glands and primes your brain for sexy times (given that it’s present on someone you’re already theoretically hypothetically attracted to). As a result, there’s a clear bias in her looting towards items of decor and clothing with a prominent red accent. World building: the character’s hyperfocus, but also, a tone indicator- bold saturated colors implies a brighter and more comic-book-like tone, versus a gritty The Walking Dead-style project

And this relates to prose…how?

Before filmmaking, my reaction to feedback inquiring about character’s spaces was “I mentioned they’re in a living room. You’ve seen a living room before. Use your imagination.”

But spaces tell us about more than just the physical scenarios the characters find themselves in- they tell us about the tone of the piece in the language used, they tell us about the people who live there and their priorities, and they also tell us how the people who live in those spaces want to be perceived by others. It’s world building, yes, but it’s also character design, and the way a character reflects on their own space in describing it to readers, or a new character reacts upon being invited in, are extremely telling.

So now, when I get to a point in a novel draft where I’m entering a new place, I think… how would I dress this set?

What does YOUR space say?

Take a look around you right now, even if you aren’t at home (but especially if you are):

What are the primary colors of the space around you, and how do they make you feel?
What are unique items or elements within the space that mark it as this space and not another?
Is it cluttered, messy, neat, spare?
If you were to tell me about the person who designed this space based solely on how looks, what would you say?

A living room isn’t just a living room. An office isn’t just an office. Humans made the world and sell the trinkets and place the trinkets just so and all of that tells us something, or can. The curtains might just be blue… but if the writer chose to give them color, what can we learn just from that?

If it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have been written down, and if you, like me, sometimes struggle with things that in your mind don’t matter, consider making them matter. If I’m bored when I’m writing the description to a scene, then that’s not the scene’s fault. It’s a necessity to describe the rooms where my characters exist… but it doesn’t have to be a chore, and thanks to filmmaking, and zombies, and my friend Page, it’s not anymore.

Learn more about The Rogue MFA and our community here. When you’re ready to rock, join our Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel (which meets every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST), where we’ll be building routine and community with YOU. Subscribe to get notified, and if you’re even a little bit interested, please fill out our quick survey so we can expand these in the future with you in mind.