Colors in Fantasy, Part 2: Opposites

In last week's post, I discussed the surprising lessons on writing that I've learned from Photoshop. I went into detail on Photoshop's tools of hue, value, and saturation, and shared their applications to fantasy. This week, I'd like to look at another facet of colors and writing: color opposites.

First up is warm versus cool. Warm colors are basically colors that make you feel warm: yellows and reds and oranges. Cool colors, then, are colors that feel cold: blues and greens and purples. The contrast between warm and cool can be used in your writing, not just in colors.

A lot of stories will assign the "bad guys" to either warm or cool colors, and then make the "good guys" have an opposite color scheme. For example, the White Witch's castle in Narnia was made of ice, which has cool blue tones. In contrast, Aslan's camp featured bright reds and oranges, and Aslan himself was a tawny gold. Writers often use the opposite pattern, too, and give the villains red colors (like in Star Wars, the Sith have red lightsabers) and give the good guys cold colors (again in Star Wars, the Jedi have blue and green and purple lightsabers). Experiment with the contrasts that work best in your story, and remember to have the color scheme flow from your characters. The White Witch's personality was icy and so her color scheme was cool; Aslan's character was roaring like a fire and so his color scheme was warm.

Next, we have the contrast between light and dark. We've discussed it a bit in last week's section on "value," but let me add a couple more thoughts here. The obvious way for writers to use light and darkness is to add mystery and danger to the setting. Dark scenes seem more evil or more ominous.

However, that's not how it has to be! What if you led your character down a brightly-lit white corridor rather than a dark, spooky one? You'd need to be more subtle about the sense of approaching danger, but it's quite possible to have a sense of looming evil in light just as much as darkness. One such setting I remember from a childhood classic was in Charlie and the Chocolate factory, when Charlie entered the pure-white Television Chocolate Room. While it didn't feel evil by any means, there were hints of "darkness" and danger even in the spotless room. So play with your use of light and darkness, and, as I said last week, never fear to invert.

The last area of contrast we'll look at today is analogous, complementary, and tertiary colors. For all of you who have never taken an art class, let me explain those daunting terms. Look at the circle of color (also called "color wheel") on the right. The colors right next to each other--orange and yellow, for example--are analogous. The colors directly opposite each other--red and green or purple and yellow--are complementary. Tertiary colors are the colors that intersect at each third of the wheel--so we have red, blue, and yellow on the one hand or purple, orange, and green on the other. (Do note that Photoshop uses a somewhat different color wheel that I thought would be a bit too confusing to explain here. If you're interested, here's a link to a great explanation.)

Surprisingly, these color divisions can be quite helpful in crafting your story. As with the other contrasting areas, a major way to use these colors is to show the difference between your good and evil characters. Many writers use complementary (directly opposite) colors to differentiate good and evil. For example, in the movie versions of Harry Potter, the villain's magic was green and the hero's was red (red and green are complementary/opposites). You'll notice that these colors also contrast by being warm and cold. The other color divisions are mostly helpful when you're short on ideas of details you can use to make your characters memorable. Instead of saying X character wore a purple sweater, say she wore a lavender one (analogous colors). These colors are also good to explore what colors work well in overall scenery (say, in the king's court): you can have his standard composed of blue and red elements on a background of green (tertiary colors).

I'll now venture into the most controversial area of color in fantasy: racial diversity. The color of each character's skin in a fantasy story is more important--and more overlooked--than one might think. For example, did you realize that all characters in Tolkien's Middle Earth are white (aside from orcs, who may or may not be underneath all that grime)? In Christopher Paolini's Eragon, only a few characters were black and none had features that I recognized as Asian/otherwise-non-white. I'd like to appeal to all aspiring fantasy writers, then, to add a bit more diversity to your tales. Skin tones are areas where we as fantasy writers have such incredible room for imagination. Don't feel confined to white characters simply because you've never read of blue-skinned elves! Use the color of your character's skin as another medium to communicate the deep themes of your story or the imagination of your world.

Overall, using opposite color elements (whether in warm v. cool, light v. dark, or complementary/analogous/tertiary) is a great way to add contrast to your writing. And, too, adding details of color makes the story more memorable to your readers. Use color as an opportunity to explore and expand your fantasy world!

All the best in your writing this week!

It's All in the Details

The details you use in your story could be the most important part of your writing, because they are what brings your story alive to the reader. Without physical details, we wouldn’t know that Harry wears round spectacles or that Mr. Tumnus carries an umbrella.

To illustrate my point, let me show you a few examples. Which of the following makes the scene come to life in your mind’s eye?

A girl and a man walked down the street.

Or:

Two people walked down the sidewalk along Main Street: a little girl with serious brown bangs over her eyes and a middle-aged man, his charcoal suit hanging on him lopsidedly.

Or:

A 5-year-old girl wearing a floaty pink dress, her blue eyes wide, held her father’s hand as he led her down the cobblestone street of Paris, past Nicholas Flamel’s house.

In both of these latter versions, we can see the people and the place much more clearly. It would be even more clear if we could add another sentence describing the sensations of taste or sound or touch or smell that the two were feeling. In other words, the subtle placement of physical details in all five senses is the key to bringing your writing to life.

Easier said than done, right? Wrong! Here are some obvious places to inject more details into your writing:

1. In Names

We’ve been talking a lot about names the past few weeks (here, here, and here). Well, that’s because they’re so important—in real life, when we meet someone new, we typically learn their name. It should be the same in writing. Names are the one universal part of human experience. So use them!

2. In Character Descriptions

Introduce new characters by giving us more than just hair color/eye color. Sure, their physical appearance is important, but as someone once told me, “You don’t choose to be pretty. You’re born that way. It’s what you do with your looks that counts.”

So, in the same way, go beyond a character’s looks and focus on a key detail like a favorite concert t-shirt or the Beats headphones and pink iPod a character incessantly uses. Doing so makes that character come to life as a multidimensional person. For fantasy, use the wooden carved necklace a hunter never takes off or the moon-white earring of an assassin or the curved scars on a princess’ cheek. All of these little details can cut to the core of the personality of your character in seconds.

3. In Setting

Introduce each new setting using a minimum of two senses (usually sight would be essential). That means every time you have a new scene or your characters go to a new place or even enter a car, you should take a few seconds to describe the white leather lining of the seats, the peeling aqua paint, the smell of Chinese takeout lingering in the baby’s car seat. Let the place become real in your mind’s eye, then describe it so your readers can be engulfed by your story.

4. In Dialogue

Pepper your dialogue with gestures and descriptions. Make your characters interact with the setting: have your cleanliness-obsessed astronomer fiddle with her bottle of sanitation gel. Let your Rangers move around, checking that the horses are saddled properly, that the sentries are distracted.

Also, give your characters habitual gestures and hand motions to illustrate their speech—make your evil villain’s sidekick have a nervous habit of nodding, or maybe have your drama queen fiddle with her eyebrows when she’s nervous.

Whatever you do, add detail. Go back to each page of your writing and make sure you’ve added the necessary physical details so that, to your readers, your writing happens in a real place with real people. I guarantee you that you’ll learn a lot more about your story and your characters than you expect.

Can you think of any details you’ve read in stories lately that really stood out to you? Or what about in your own writing—written any cool details you’d like to share?

All photos courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.