Help avoiding the obvious.
Part 2
“What are we going to do today, Julie?”
“The same thing we do every day, writer. Try to take over the writing world.”
Hello Writers! Welcome to another installment of “Write This, Not That.”
Today we will sink our brains into a realm of reality that is often ignored . . . a place so silent, so cavernous that many writers even fear it – the sensation of color.
It’s rather sad, but visual neglect is all too common in writing. And the truth is . . . color is not a trivial subject. Yet the majority of people tend to overlook what a brilliant mystery color is.
My favorite way to experience color is through the intensity and frequency of electromagnetic radiation waves that are between 390 nm to 750 nm in length. I suspect that’s your favorite way to enjoy color as well, since that’s the definition of visible light. Letting yourself feel the limitations inside the grey hues cast on the wall of a cave or soaking your attention in the undertones of your lover’s eyes . . . either way, seeing it for ourselves is how the adventure of color was intended to be.
Unfortunately, unless you’re writing a picture book, readers have no hope of perceiving the intensity of spectral color that exists within the 390 to 750 nm range. They can only see what you allow them to see. In order to allow your readers the ultimate 390 to 750 experience, here are some tips:
- Become familiar with the color table. The names of colors are often luscious themselves. Just beyond red, blue and green are crimson, cobalt and olive.
- Avoid obvious color words such as rainbow, shade, dark, light, bright, shadow, blah . . . blah . . . go for the unexpected instead. The next time your protagonist leaves behind a dark coffee stain, clean up his mess and rewrite the scene until he leaves behind an onyx splotch embedded in the tabletop.
- Color can’t happen without light, so use it to your advantage. Light is life. It scatters, dances, and refracts. Objects transmit light, reflect light and absorb light. When you tie together the movement of the light with the ambient depth of the color spectrum, you may get something like this: When I spotted her, the shine of her blushing smile scrambled across the room.
Hurry, before the world remains visually lost forever, I challenge you to seek out unique ways to dialogue the world of chroma and pigment with your readers.
“Are you pondering what I’m pondering, writer?”
“I think so, Julie, but I’m not sure why the shampoo bottle is always empty before the conditioner.”
If you missed, Write This, Not That (Part 1), click here.
