The World is Not Black and White

Unless you’re a whale, walrus, or flat haired rat, your world is not black and white. And since none of these critters buy books, let’s talk about adding a splash of color for those who do. A good place to begin this discussion is with the magnet you hope will draw thousands of potential readers.

The Cover

While no color is exclusive to any genre, it’s crucial to be aware of current trends. When I searched Amazon for “bestselling romance novels,” up popped a row of pink book covers. Not the hot and steamy kind—not the ones featuring a shirtless hunk.

Drool

These pink books were of the Hallmark/Nora Roberts/Summer Reading flavor.

While cover designers point and click and the color changes, authors subtly use words to convey emotions, expectations, and associations. For example, writing a romance scene may call for spring colors that create a sense of love, hope, and joy, while an erotic romance plot seems more at home with shades of flesh set into a nighttime environment.

In a thriller or mystery, up your danger quotient by weaving red and black into the conflict. A historical or religious character may wear purple to signal royalty, wisdom, or power. Gold lights up all that is around it, an appealing trait at the fingertips of a fantasy author building a magical world of wonder in which a quest will unfold.

Contrasting colors, those positioned straight across the color wheel from each other, create tension, irony, or surprise. Experiment with a burst of a bright orange set in a midnight-blue scene to highlight an unexpected, perhaps shocking, disclosure.

Make sure your colors ring true!

The bank president isn’t credible when wearing a jewel-toned silk suit. On the other hand, would we even recognize Terry Crews if he donned the bank president’s navy-blue suit with its matching tie? Hmm … with all those muscles, we probably would. Okay, so that’s not the best example. Still, it’s up to you to select the hues that best enhance the physical appearance of your settings and characters, thereby conveying subliminal messages about their personality, mood, and emotions.

You are the color wizard.

But please, please, please do not write this: The brown-haired woman, dressed in a brown dress and matching shoes, leaned against the wall across the room from the man wearing a black pinstriped suit.

Yawn. Who cares?

Engage the reader by using color to tell the readers something important without “telling” them it’s important. Think about this:

Her mood was as brown as her dress. When not a single person looked her way, she leaned against the beige wall, unnoticed, exactly as she had hoped.

From these two sentences, we learn she is not happy. She feels down in the dumps. You, the author, have conveyed her as sad, depressed, and low-spirited. Yet you build suspense by not explaining why, even though other people are in the room, she prefers to remain unseen.

This leaves much to disclose as you design your protagonist’s arc. How will your reader’s perspective change as your character evolves and behaves as she does in the following scene?

Across the room, the woman pushed a glossy strand of mahogany hair back from her eyes and winked at the man. He removed his ebony suit jacket and flung it casually over his shoulder. When she raised her champagne glass and stepped toward him, the slit in her scarlet gown revealed a golden, sun-kissed thigh.

Oh, my. How color has tinted this relationship.

In my historical novel to be released in September, Golden Boxty in the Frypan, the protagonist, six-year-old Katie, has issues with her new brother. These are her thoughts:

 Purple veins crisscross his hairless head. Red eyelids, puffy as a frog’s, bulge from his blotchy face. Yellowish bubbles gather in the corners of his lips. Overwhelmed with grief, maybe anger, or perhaps a mix of both, I dash to my hiding place and remove Molly from my pocket. She has a tear in her eye, just like the one in mine. I prayed for the Holy Virgin Mother to send a girl, so we’ll have a friend. And what did we get? A boy as ugly as ground beef.

What do we learn from the colors Katie uses to describe her brother in the first minutes of his life? Purple, red, and blotchy show that this newborn had a rough arrival. Does the red also signal a fiery relationship for these siblings? Yellow is credited with the ability to cause anger and frustration, and we experience that through Katie’s internal thoughts. We may even feel sorry for her as she vents her irritation over not getting the sister she requested in her prayers.

Be bold … But cautious!

Don’t insult your reader. Overuse is tedious, redundant, and annoying.

Consider: The black crow sent a shiver down her spine.

Black crow?!? Please! What other color would the crow be?

Color should either add to the story or suffer the fate of the delete key. Don’t employ a rainbow of hues just to appear inspired or cutting edge. Because then it is not. Color only becomes creative and original when it informs the reader in a way no other words can.

You are the artist. Paint the world with your words.

Dr. Pat Spencer is the author of the international thriller, Story of a Stolen Girl. Her historical novel, Golden Boxty in the Frypan, will be released September 6, 2023, by Pen It Publications. Sticks in a Bundle, literary/historical fiction, is under a three-book contract with Scarsdale Publishing. Her writings appeared in The Press-Enterprise, Inland Empire Magazine, and literary and professional journals. A Healing Place won the short story category of Oceanside’s 2019 Literary Festival.