Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine a color—one that pulls at your chest, makes your heart skip, or wraps you in a quiet, comforting hug. Maybe it’s the molten orange of a sunset, the soft green of a new spring leaf, or the deep indigo of twilight. Notice how it makes you feel. That feeling? That’s your emotional language, whispering through color.
Colors as Feeling, Not Just Sight
Colors aren’t just visual—they are emotional doorways. A red can hum with excitement or pulse with tension. Yellow can dance with joy or tremble with uncertainty. Blue can soothe like a lullaby or stretch into quiet longing. When you tune into the colors that call to you, you’re tuning into your own emotional compass. And when you bring those colors into your writing, your scenes breathe.
Drench Your Scenes in the Colors You Love
Here’s the fun part: take your favorite colors and pour them onto the page. Don’t just describe a tree as green—let it sing with the green that makes your soul ache or soar. Maybe it’s the emerald of spring rain sliding down a windowpane, or the mossy green of a forest floor hiding secrets. Let your colors carry the emotional weight, the longing, the comfort, the tension.
For example:
The café was bathed in amber light, warm and sticky, like honey dripping over the edges of a quiet afternoon. Shadows pooled in corners, inviting secrets to settle softly between the tables.
The colors don’t just paint the scene—they whisper the feeling.
Exercises to Play with Your Emotional Palette
- Color Meditation: Sit with a single color for five minutes. Close your eyes and notice the emotions it stirs. Then, write a short paragraph letting that color shape the scene.
- Scene Transformation: Take a dull or neutral scene you’ve written and flood it with the colors you love. Notice how it shifts—maybe the tension sharpens, maybe the joy blooms.
- Character Chromatics: Imagine your character’s emotional aura as a set of colors. Let these colors sneak into their clothing, their surroundings, their gestures. Watch how it deepens their presence on the page.
Why This Matters
We often write what we think, but the most magnetic writing emerges from what we feel. Colors are shorthand for feeling—they are the secret language between your heart and your words. When you let your favorite colors dictate the mood, your scenes don’t just describe reality—they live, breathe, and pulse with emotion.
So, pick a color. Any color. Let it spill onto the page. Let it guide your characters, your world, your story. And notice—writing this way is less about “showing” and more about feeling.
The colors you love are more than shades—they are your emotional voice. Let them sing.
with heart and pen 