Color Psychic

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. I'm staying mostly unplugged, although I did notice Pantone's pick for their 2018 color of the year:



I would have picked violet -- it was my favorite color to work with in 2017:



I'm such a trendsetter (not. at. all.) For fun, I'm going to predict the color of the year for 2019: this blue.

Stop back in twelve months to find out if I'm color psychic.

Paint Chip Books

All the visits we've been making to the home improvement and big box stores for post-Irma stuff has allowed me to collect some paint chips to use for story palettes. Okay, I admit, I just like looking at the paint chips. There's something mesmerizing about all those colors and pamphlets and decorator photos that makes me want to redo every room in the house (even my office, which is already painted with my favorite shade of sea glass.) I also pay close attention to the color names, as they often use unusual nouns and adjectives for them -- something I can always use when writing Yet Another Blue-eyed Character.

Sure, I know what you're thinking: how hard can it be to describe blue eyes? On average I have at least two blue-eyed characters in every novel I write. Since I like blue eyes, often more than two. Times 67 novels. Try describing blue eyes differently at least one hundred and thirty-four times, then come sneer at my paint chips.

On my last visit to Lowe's I noticed that Olympic and Valspar had put out some chip cards I hadn't before seen. Olympic now pairs some photos with the paint chips on their cards (top middle of the pic here), while Valspar has trio sets of colors with little windows in them (top right.) Wal-Mart also had large sheet-style paint chips that were self-adhesive to stick on the wall and preview what the paint would look like (bottom middle.)

I collected samples of everything I liked (and I am planning to redo the guest bathroom, so I chose colors I'd like to try in that room) and brought them home to have some fun. Since I made some notepads out of paint chips earlier this month I thought I might see what I could make out of this batch. Olympic's photo paint chip cards have lots of lovely, serene images on them so I started with them.



These would be great for easy-to-make bookmarks if you cut off the paint chips and glued the strip of images to scrapbook or heavier-weight craft paper, but I was a bit more ambitious. First I trimmed the cards to separate the images from the paint chips, and then glue-sticked the image strips in four rows on a sheet of old card stock from the paper recycling bin.

Stacking them together in harmonious colors created a collage effect that I liked a lot:



For the first collage page I unearthed an ancient pack of computer stationery and a torn book board from my recycle bin and trimmed them down, punched holes in them and fastened them together with two binder rings. Now I have a bigger notebook for my desk, which I actually needed, with paper that is nice enough to use for correspondence. With the support of the book board backing I can also use it while I'm walking around the house and muttering to myself as I work out a scene.

For the second collage page I cut in half some 140lb. coldpress watercolor paper left over from the kids' school days, and used the same hole punch/binder ring approach to making myself a nice-sized watercolor journal.



For the windowed paint chip cards I settled on making some smash books to store swatches of fabric from my quilt projects. I took the paint squares I trimmed from the Photo cards and glued them over the windows from the back, then cut some old 12 X 12 scrapbook paper into six 4" X 5-1/2" pages. After holepunching everything I used a knotted piece of scrap ribbon as the binding:

While all the materials I used to make these are all recycled the end result turned out like something you'd purchase from that fussy journal section in big book stores. These two pain chip books were also easy and simple enough for kids to make, although I'd recommend adult supervision if they use a paper trimmer, scissors or any other sharp-edged objects.

If you're interested in doing something else with your paint chips, BrokeandHealthy.com has 50 projects here. I like ChicaandJo.com's paint chip mosaic greeting cards -- you could easily do these in holiday colors.

Have you done anything interesting with paint chips? Let us know in comments.

Color Week #5: Color Collection Notebook

Creating, collecting and keeping handy all your color-related stuff for stories is a lot easier if you have a notebook in which you can work and store your reference materials.

For this you'll need:

a good size, sturdy three-ring binder
a three-hole punch
a package of top-loading sheet protectors
ruled notebook paper or a spiral-bound notebook with binder holes
dividers in the basic color spectrum (optional)
ziplock bags (optional)

How you set up your notebook should be what works best for you, but I generally go with dividing sections into the color spectrum first, then keep particular color combinations in a palette section, and put my notebook paper in the very back of the binder (I also use a spiral-bound notebook that I can remove from the binder and take with me for trips to the home improvement store or wherever when I'm hunting new color ideas.)

If you collect or make color charts, store them in your sheet protectors so you can reference them without having to remove them from the notebook:



For smaller items like paint chips, swatches and other bits can go inside your sheet protectors, too. Since they're cheaper than sheet protectors I like to use ziplock bags to hold the little stuff, and punch holes in the bottom of mine like so:



My ideas, word list charts, particular story placements and all the other writing-related work I do go in my spiral-bound notebook:



If you like to be super organized you can also use color dividers (the kind with pockets can also hold your little bits, too):



Your color notebook is also a great self-teaching tool. Once a week take it out and go color hunting, as I do, to find new words, shades and descriptors to add to one particular color section. Make a habit of this, and in no time you'll have a wonderful collection of colors to use whenever you're writing.

Color Week #4: Color Words

Bearded Iris. Ectoplasm. Zephyr. These are three of the lovely words Chandi at Expression Fiber Arts uses to describe the colors of her beautiful yarns. I found her site when I started watching tutorials on how spin art yarn (and she has an adorable video here on that.) I've also been rather awed by the wide range and inventive creativity of the words she uses to name her products.

For writers, describing color is both an everyday task and a perpetual challenge. Basically everything we create ends up being black (print) on white (page), so the words we choose to communicate the colors of anything contained in a story are particularly vital. We need to invoke imagery in a reader's mind as they read, and we can't do that if we never share with them what we see in ours as we write.

Employing the basic words for every color -- red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black, white, brown, purple -- are the easiest way to communicate what you want someone to see in a story. Sometimes that may be all you need, too: A red roof. A green door. A purple crayon. But if you use only basic color words, you'll end up with a story that reads like a pile of LEGO blocks looks.

The other end of the color word writing spectrum is using color words that are so elaborate or obscure that they colorblind the reader. I was reading a story last week in which the author described a color using only the word hopniss. I had no idea what that was, so I not only had to look up what the word meant, I then had to go search for an image of it before I saw the color. I don't mind doing this once, as there is no way in the world I can know what every plant on the planet looks like. If I have to do it ten times before I read the end of the first chapter, however, I'm probably not going to read the rest of the book.

So how do you avoid using color words that are too simple or too obscure to keep the reader engaged? One way is to exercise and beef up your own color vocabulary by creating charts and word lists. Haul out your basic color words, and begin collecting paint chips, fabric swatches and other visual samples for one of the words. Pay attention to how others name them as inspiration, and then begin a list with your own descriptors. Keep in mind terms that are universal enough for others to imagine. While not everyone knows what hopniss is, I'll bet nearly every reader you reach will recognize something you describe as the color of elephant hide, a fresh bruise, or a sunset cloud.

Tomorrow we'll wrap up color week by putting together a color notebook in which you can keep your charts, word lists and color ideas for future reference. In the meantime, what's the most interesting color description you've ever encountered? Let us know in comments.

Images credit: oksixx

Color Week #3: Character Color Tags

You may not know this about me, but I'm a green. As a kid I was a blue, then went all Goth-black during my high school poetry days, and then faded back to a blue again. I had a couple years when I bounced between being an orange and a plum, and a couple other duos, but about ten years ago I finally settled on being a green. A dark green -- pine, hunter, shadowed emerald, that end of the scale -- but definitely green.

Why? Well, it's not because I'm green with envy, or greedy for the cash variety of green, or even ready-to-puke green. Green has always been a color symbol of creation to me. As colors go it's fresh, cool, and soothing. It's always growing. That's what I want to be -- and to remind myself to be -- so I embraced being a green.

I assign color tags to characters in the same way. Most of the time I use character palettes, but I've assigned single color tags to many of my characters, too. Cherijo from the StarDoc books was always a silver from the minute she popped up on the page. For me character colors can change, too -- Alexandra from the Darkyn novels began as angry scarlet and changed to lavender when she became an immortal and got tangled up with Michael, who I'd tagged as a lovely sky blue (which was also the reason I chose that scent for her.) Some character colors are so strong in my head I doubt they will ever change (for reasons that will ruin some books I haven't yet written, Dredmore from the Disenchanted & Co. series will forever be a gray to me. Since that color is now associated with all things naughty it also annoys me immensely, but I can't change it.)

Using color association with your characters is another of those creative things you can do to enhance them. You don't have to use a single color, or resort to a huge palette, either. Make a list of your character names, and beside them write the first color(s) you think of when they're in your thoughts. This can be something you draw from their physical description (Cherijo being a silver came from the sheen of her hair) or something you associate with them (Jessa Bellamy from the Kindred novels was a sapphire blue thanks to the original paint on the house she grew up in.) If you have nothing you associate with the character that gives you a color tag for them, pick a random color.

Once you have your color tag list, you have some visual mojo to work with in developing your character. Let's say your female protagonist is a pink: a bright, bubblegum shade of pink. Okay, not my favorite color, but I'm working on rehabbing my negative attitude toward pink. Meanwhile, you're already forming your own opinions about this gal based on that color tag, right? Is she girly, childish, pretty, naive, shy? Or is she hot, sexy, daring, electric? Pink is the symbolic color of hope for the victims of breast cancer, so it has a more thoughtful/wishful association, too. Pink can be a power color as well -- if you're wondering how a pink-tagged protagonist can be kick-ass, you should read Karen Marie Moning's MacKayla Lane novels. That chick is ferociously pink.

If the first tag you choose for your character doesn't inspire you, trash it and pick another color based on why the first color didn't work. Let's say your protagonist doesn't feel like a pink because she's dark-mooded and has a mean streak. So what is the color of dark/moody/mean? For me it's the purple-red of a fresh bruise, but your association will probably be different.

Choosing color tags for your characters won't solve all your development issues, but it can help you think in different directions as you build your story people. Too often writers construct their characterizations based solely on appearance, which while convenient is really lazy writing. Try tagging your crew, and see what assigning colors can do to inspire how you bring them to life on the page.

Image credit: Audrey_Kuzmin

Color Week #2: Color Mood

Sorry I'm late posting this morning; I misplaced my camera, and I wanted to take some pics to go with this post, starting with this one:



I put the final hand stitch in my tropical-themed quilt last night, and once I bind it it'll be ready to use. Working on this quilt reminded me of so many things that surrounded me as a kid in the tropics: the red hibiscus growing outside our house, all the birds who come to south Florida for the winter, the beauty of the ocean, the year-round green everywhere. A few times I could almost smell sun tan lotion and hear the endless rush-crash of the waves on the beach.

These are the colors of my childhood, and if you asked me to name them based on those memories then I'd call them jungle green, mango orange, hibiscus scarlet, and sunlit Atlantic blue.

For contrast, here are two sides of a crazy quilt tote I made, which was the first thing I sewed after my eye surgery last year:



Not quite as joyful as the quilt, right? That's because at the time I was coming out of a long and dark period of absolute dread. These colors, these blues and purples and grays, all reflect how I felt during my recovery. Relief, peace, some lingering fear over the healing process. Darker feelings about what was for me the indescribable experience of being conscious (and helpless) while my surgeon cut into my eye with a scalpel. A different kind of joy at being able to see clearly again. Definitely somber, but not depressed -- recovering. For me these are the colors of hope and dreams.

Although psychologists would have it otherwise, I don't think the moods colors bring out in us are all universal. Our personal associations influence how we feel when we see a color, or a combination of colors, and the same should be true of our characters. If you haven't given this a lot of thought, consider your favorite color, and ask yourself some questions about it: why is it your favorite? What do you think of the moment you see it? How do you work it into your life? Is it on your walls, in your wardrobe? Once you've analyzed your favorite, do the same with a color you hate. All of these things you discover about your color moods can be then worked into your characters, your story elements, your settings -- and they don't have to reflect your own feelings (in fact, it's better for your writing range if they don't.)

You don't have to mention color moods in your story directly, either. Just as colors affect you, working them into a story will do the same for the work and the reader. A character who dresses in dull colors or paints her bedroom gray isn't a happy kid from the tropics, obviously. A guy who wears a loud yellow tie -- what I think of as a wardrobe exclamation point -- obviously wants attention. The adult antagonist who sleeps in a candy-pink room filled with toys (that he keeps locked at all times) has some serious, creepy issues.

Now it's your turn: What's your favorite color, and what is the first thing you think of whenever you see it?

Color Week #1: Collections

I was at the home improvement store last week when I spotted these new paint sample folders from Sherwin Williams, who teamed up with HGTV to put together some neat color collections. I especially fell for the individual color paint chips, which are shaped like fat bookmarks and have a punch in one corner which you might use with a binder ring to keep a stack together.

Collecting colors in some fashion can help you improve your own descriptions when you're writing. Paint manufacturers invent some terrific names for their products that invoke a sensory connection to the shade, i.e. Brookside, Mint Sprig, Cabin Plank. You can almost hear the rushing water, taste the cool sharpness, feel the weathered wood of those colors -- not something that may happen when you default to the standard blue, green or brown. I find that when I study colors with inventive names I become more creative with describing them myself, too.

I think exploring color wakes up more of your storytelling side. I've talked about creating palettes for characters and stories, but I also use them for working out and enhancing my settings, and even creating a particular mood in a scene or a chapter. Learning more about color psychology can help you understand how assigning a particular color or palette to a story element can affect the element, but I think once you start working with color and storytelling this tends to evolve naturally as well.

This week I'll be showing you various ways to think about color, use it to inspire your creativity, and incorporate more of it in your writing. I'm also putting together a color collection notebook to help anyone create, find and save color combinations for future reference, so stop in when you have a chance.

Blast from the Past #3

From Focus to Palette

After reading my Story Palettes post last month, some of you asked if I would give some working examples of how I create a character palette.

Simone, who is a female protagonist in an upcoming novel of mine, has been gradually developing over the course of the last six months while I've put together her backstory, built her personality and figured out who she is, what she wants and, of course, what is the worst thing I can do to her. Simone is a woman of contradictions; everything about her is new and old, yesterday and tomorrow, fire and ice. The problem with all those lovely contrasts is that they make her very hard to nail down. Despite all the character development I'd done, I still had trouble seeing her in my head.

Recently at an art festival I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with watercolor artist Peggy Engsberg Furlin, who painted this little gem (click on any image to see a larger version):



As soon as I saw it I knew it was the focus piece I needed for Simone's character. I can't tell you why; most of the time there isn't a why, it just clicks and I know. So I bought the painting and brought it home, at which point I began building the character palette. First, I took a photo of the painting and cropped it so that no other colors showed:



I then ran the image through DeGraeve's Color Palette Generator to get a working palette, and set up the page for my novel notebook. From there I cut and pasted the DeGraeve palette, and began adding images from my digital collection that I felt suited Simone and worked inside the framework of the palette, until I had this page of visuals:



Colors are an important part of my process. They're symbolic and evocative, and so are the real world elements that I associate with them. They also create new ideas when I combine them. All of these images and colors echo different aspects of Simone's character and what she has to face in the story; defiance, temptation, risk, silence, loneliness, endurance, realization, fruition. They relate to each other, too: Old death, new life; the transition from winter to spring; flowers blooming in snow, what ends to begin/what begins to end, etc etc.

I could go on for pages because now that I have Simone's colors, I know her better. I feel as if I can make her come to life on the page now. Because while I can imagine all the character elements I want, if I don't make the connections between them I can't feel the character or get inside her head. Having a character palette often helps me navigate my way through a lot of uncertainty.

As for inspiration, you should always be ready for it to come at you from any direction or source. Take these gorgeous lampwork beads, which I purchased last week from Pond Art Glass Studio:



I have been revising and updating Korvel, a character who has appeared in the Darkyn series, to serve as one of the protagonists in the new trilogy (there, you have some insider info no one else but my editor has, too.) I never created a character palette for Korvel, and I needed one, but I kept dithering around with old visuals I had from the original series notebooks, none of which were really tailored to his character.

It wasn't until the lampwork beads arrived and I was photographing them for an appeciation shot that I saw Korvel's colors gleaming at me from the intricate swirls in the glass. Twenty minutes later I had put together this palette for him:



For most character palettes I usually narrow it down to three colors, but Korvel and I have a lot of history together, so that's probably why he got a wider range. Readers know a lot about him as a secondary character; now they need to rediscover him as a protagonist, which requires a different approach than presenting a brand-new character. This palette will definitely guide my choices and help me shed some light on the Korvel no one but me yet knows.

I think the key to creating palettes that help you with writing is not to cheat on the focus factor. Inspiration is not something you can artificially generate by throwing together all your favorite colors. You'll be creating a pretty palette that looks nice, but you'll find it does nothing to help you explore your character. Instead, look for something (and not just art, it can be anything at all) that inspires you to think of your character in ways you haven't before you saw it. That's when you know you've got the beginnings of a great character palette.

(Originally posted on PBW on 2/9/11)

Charting Your Colors

Writer Ingrid Sundberg has an interesting post here on some visual thesaurus charts she created to help people who have problems coming up with interesting color words.

Here's a screenshot of one of her charts:



I do something similar with my color reference notebook, although mine is less chart-worthy and more like a diary crossed with a backlist bible. I think color and how creative people describe it does tend to be very personal, so if you have your own ideas about how to create a color reference chart or book, definitely go for it. Or borrow Ingrid's and make up charts with your own descriptive word preferences.

(Article link swiped from Gerard at The Presurfer)

Online Color Thesaurus

HP has an online color thesaurus which does a couple of neat things when you search the name of a color, like blue:



Aside from the helpfulness of providing those color codes, it shows you a swatch of the color, four close matches, and four that are opposing.

This color searcher could be particularly useful when you need to see the color that goes with the word, like chestnut:



Or celadon:



You can also find out if what you think the color looks like is correct; I've always assumed citron meant strong/citrusy-yellow with a slight greenish tinge, when HP tells me it's actually strong citrusy-green with a slight yellow tinge:

ACEing Your Story Colors

I tagged along with my guy when he took a trip to ACE Hardware recently, and found some excellent (and free!) color charts in their paint department:



The charts are for ACE's Colors for Your Life interior paint, but what's interesting is how they put together the palettes. Each folder is named with a theme word, and I picked up the charts for Charming, Classic, Cozy, Historic, Organic, Playful, Progressive, Romantic, Serene, Sophisticated, Tranquil and Worldly. Inside the tri-fold pages are 48 different colors to represent the theme word, but they're further subdivided into different moods:



This chart, themed as Charming offered combinations of nine different shades with sub headers of Cheerful, Alluring, Fresh and Blissful. There were also other combinations on the right side foldout page to give you some alternative colors and grouping ideas for your Charming palette.

I really liked the Tranquil chart, which offered Relaxing, Spiritual, Dreamy and Peaceful shades of the sort of sea and sand colors I like best:



The Progressive chart had an interesting mix of bold and soft colors subheaded by Complex, Edgy, Confident and Trendy:



Some of the individual shade names were quite inventive, too. I responded immediately to Crystal Lake, Peace River, Moongrass, Prince's Robe and Mysterious Monique, which along with their particular shades almost begged to be written into a story.

I've talked about how to use color palettes to inspire characters and story elements, and you can find paint charts at any home improvement store. I think ACE Paint charts could be especially helpful to writers who want to try working with color palettes for their stories but aren't quite sure how to put them together. While I don't agree with all of ACE Paint's ideas on color themes -- the Romantic chart, for example, relied heavily on pink, a color which immediately invokes for me Barbie, breast cancer, cover art disasters and/or indigestion -- most of the groupings do fit the theme. Some may even surprise you.

For those of you who want to refine the visual aspects of your settings, each of the ACE paint color charts also show at least two room shots with examples of how an individual shade or a group palette works in an actual setting to invoke the theme mood.
The next time you're at ACE Hardware, stop by their paint department and pick up some charts, and see how they inspire you to create some new color palettes for your stories.

Story Improvement

I get some of my best story ideas at the local home improvement store, where I always make a point to stop by the paint department. Paint manufacturers have some of the most creative marketing people of any industry, and they're always finding new ways to not only name colors but also combine them into palettes that reflect a certain trend or mood.

On this trip I was simply looking for color inspiration for a character who so far has been resisting my efforts to properly visualize her. Sometimes putting together a personality-type palette helps me make that jump from knowing the character to actually seeing the character in my head. We didn't have a lot of time for me to stand and stare paint chips, though, so I collect some of the idea folders and brought them home to brood over.

Olympic paint has recently done some marvelous things with their color line: they've created little color palettes with removable, stick-on chips you can transfer from the idea folder to something else. I've always cut out the chips and clipped, stapled or glue-sticked them into my novel notebooks, so this was super convenient for me. It also allowed me to mix colors from several different collections into my own custom palette. Valspar's latest idea cards show a four-color palette next to a room where they've been used, which can be very helpful when you're trying to create a setting. If you're not crazy about recombining colors, these cards can give you some ready-made palettes to use for characters, too.

Olympic also has folders with design and decorating ideas to reflect a certain lifestyle (creative, easy, global, serene and techno are some examples.) These folders contain eight-color palettes (with more of the removable, sticky-backed paint chips), rooms in which the palettes were used, as well as textures and ideas that make them work. These are worth picking up just to see some of the amazing rooms they put together.

I also found a new resource on this trip that is going to be extremely helpful to me personally; a folder of paint chips showing Olympic's line of semi-transparent wood stains. For some reason describing variations on the color brown are especially challenging for me, and after writing fifty books I feel sometimes that I've used up every creative word that means brown. In this one folder there are 48 chips for different shades of brown, and while some of the shade names are not new to me (russet, mushroom, black oak), others (weathered barnboard, clove, driftwood) are. Seeing all of them together gave me the push I needed to think about the color brown differently.

Anyway, back to my image-resistant character. Once I was home and could play with the paint chips, I built a palette for the character that simply felt right -- two shades of blue, two shades of warm whites, a vibrant rose, a dark violet and a cool brown. I then kept that palette in my head and went through my character idea folder with all the body- and face-model images I've been collecting as possibilities for this character, and there she was -- an image I almost didn't put in the folder because it's almost the exact opposite of what I assumed the character would look like.

This character is dark, troubled and very conflicted inside, but building the palette helped me see her from the outside, where it doesn't show. I already knew everything about her is kept hidden and silent, but I didn't think about how that could be expressed (and camouflaged) by her appearance. She looks like a creature of light and mystery; delicate, vulnerable and even a little helpless -- which she certainly is not on the inside. This character's palette doesn't reflect who she is, but rather who she wants to be. That was something I needed to learn before I could see her properly.

Using color palettes to build characters forces you to rely on your writer instincts, and allows things that may be lingering in your subconscious emerge. That's the most valuable aspect of playing with colors; they connect to us on different levels and inspire us to take new directions. They can also help us discover things we know but we haven't yet put together into a cohesive construct. So the next time you have to pick up something for home improvement, stop by the paint department and see what stirs your imagination for story improvement.

Tuesday Ten

Ten Things About Color Palettes and Palette Generators

Freeware Caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Big Huge Labs' Color Palette Generator will generate a color palette (complete with inventive names and HTML codes) based on any of your photos.

The 30 day free trial of Color Wheel Pro software allows you to create innumerable color palettes of your own.

According to the designer, ColorBlender.com is "ia web-based tool for creating color palettes (here referred to as "blends") for web design and other types of digital design. The main feature of the tool is to have a complete "blend" of 6 matching colors created when choosing only one "base" color. This makes it very quick and easy to create a color scheme for e.g. a website, as you can instantly use the colors for text, backgrounds, links, border etc."

ColorRotate allows you to work with virtual colors in 3D (I didn't want to register so I couldn't past the front/splash page, but I was able to rotate the cone thing and the site is frequently recommended as legit and very helpful.)

CSS Drive's Image to Colors Palette Generator also generates palettes based on any of your photos but gives you a range of palettes from light to dark as well as a complete color palette.

Tiny Eye Labs' Multicolr Search Engine allows you to pull up a selection of Flickr photos that match the color (or combination of colors) you select for the search.

ColRD's Palette Creator page changes according to the colors you pick, and also allows you to export your custom palette designs.

Pictaculous generates multiple palette suggestions based on your uploaded image and works from your phone, too.

Silk allows you to create online with virtual silk (this lovely link was stolen directly from The Word Nerds.)

59times.com's Web Color Generator generates some neat random color palettes.

Finally, I thought this ColorMatters.com article on color branding and trademarking was a fascinating read.

Color Pick Your Career

AOL Jobs has an interesting article here on how to determine your career path based on your favorite colors (with a free test you can take on CareerPath.com here).

It's a little late for me to make a drastic career move, but I thought I'd try the test and see if I've taken the right path. Here are my results:

Best Occupational Category
You're a RESEARCHER
Keywords: Independent, Self-Motivated, Reserved, Introspective, Analytical, and Curious

These investigative types gather information, analyze and interpret data, and inquire to uncover new facts. They have a strong scientific orientation, enjoy academic or research environments and prefer self-reliant jobs. Dislikes are group projects, selling, and repetitive activities.

RESEARCHER OCCUPATIONS

Suggested careers are College Professor, Physician, Psychologist, Pharmacist, Chemist, Marketing Research, Inventor, Sales Forecasting, Project Engineer, Dentist, Identifying Consumer Demand, Chiropractor, Dentist, Medical Technician, Optometrist, Research & Development Manager, Respiratory Therapist, Real Estate Appraiser, Chiropractor, Veterinarian, Geologist, Physicist, Science Teacher, Medical Technologist, and Author of Technical Books.

RESEARCHER WORKPLACES
Task-oriented careers where you can become absorbed in the job, be original and creative, and not conform to rigid company rules will work best for you. Unstructured organizations, for example, that allow you to sail your own ship are vital.

Suggested Researcher workplaces are universities and colleges, home office positions, medical facilities, computer-related industries, scientific foundations and think tanks, research firms, and design laboratories.

2nd Best Occupational Category
You're a CREATOR

Keywords: Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

These original types place a high value on self-expression. They enjoy working independently, being creative, using their imagination, and constantly learning something new. Areas of interest are far beyond the expected fields of art, drama, music, and writing. There are many occupations that allow creators to express, assemble, or implement ideas and maximize resources.

So it seems I've made the right choice after all.

If you're not inclined to color your own career, this might be a fun test to try for your characters, to consider personality quirks and possibly occupations on the color palettes you've put together for them.

Signature Colors for Characters

While I was reading the April/May 2012 issue of Quilting Arts magazine I was tempted by their reader challenge to create a "signature color" piece. Making an interesting monochromatic quilt takes some imagination, especially if your signature color is dark like mine (violet), but it wouldn't be a challenge if it were easy.

I like building color palettes for my characters, and color also plays a major role in my storytelling, so I wondered if any of my characters have a signature color. Jayr from Evermore came immediately to mind; I used bronze and violet and tangerine in her color palette, and when it came time to suggest a color theme for her novel's cover art I went with violet because it was my favorite of the three. Violet is definitely Jayr's color. Green played an integral part in building Gabriel's character in Night Lost, as did scarlet when I put together Lucan's world in Dark Need. I never consciously picked out one color for signature purposes but I often gravitated toward one in the process of telling the story. Certain shades of the same color can be used for very different characters who share the same connection, which is probably why royal blue will always remind me of Valentin Jaus while ice blue makes me think of Thierry Durand.

You don't have to pick out a signature color for your characters, of course, but if the idea intrigues you then you can almost let the character make the choice for you. A happy-go-lucky soul is probably not going to have black as their signature color, just as a dark and brooding type would likely not surround themselves in sunshine yellow (maybe if they were being tortured.) Colors have associations for all of us, so let the character's personality and preferences guide you. Also keep in mind that colors can be like armor, and the colors we show the world are not necessarily the colors we use in private. A goth who always wears black and projects a tough image might have a home bedecked in pink velvet and poufy white lace, as I discovered when I was writing Nightbred and got to know Christian Lang.

Color doesn't have to be the character's signature, either. I've used signature scents for all my Darkyn characters, for example, and signature tattoos for all my Kyndred people. Signature = symbol, so the possibilities are really endless.

Color Reference Notebook

Over the years I've collected or put together so many color-related swatches, charts, pamphlets, palettes and word lists that I decided to consolidate them in one reference notebook. That way the next time I need to describe a particular shade of white I can have all the whites I've saved in one place.

Color referencing in fiction can be tricky, as I think the writer's first tendency is to grab a cliche or relate something to food. Who hasn't read at least one story in which a frightened character went white as a sheet, or possessed flawless creamy-white skin? But we know this is really lazy writing, and we owe the reader a bit more originality and effort.

I started my notebook with white, which happens to be my color reference nemesis. I discovered how difficult it is to describe white when I made the eyes of my Jorenian characters in the StarDoc series that color -- and subsequently cursed myself for doing so for the next thirteen years. All my color references to white were contemporary, and here I was writing in a far future where 99% of them didn't exist. Anyway, most of the time I fell back on a blind-person analogy or the white-within-white thing. It was lame, and it's probably the reason I started collecting color references in the first place, to broaden my understanding of color as well as beef up my descriptive powers.



We all see and respond to color differently, so this kind of notebook is a great exercise in originality. You can put anything that inspires you in a color reference notebook; what you want is something that naturally stimulates your powers of description. I find combining paint charts and photos with word lists related to the color usually primes the well for me, but I also plan to use cover art, scanned images from my favorite magazines (Artful Blogging has tons of ladies who do the all-white decorating thing) as well as poems I associate with particular colors or palettes. Here's a page with Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, definitely my #1 white poem:



A color reference notebook is also a good storage encyclopedia for references you've already used in stories past. This can help prevent you from becoming that a descriptive repeater who in every book has a character with chocolate brown eyes or flaming red hair. Doesn't seem like it would be a problem, but wait until you've written twenty or thirty novels and suddenly you notice that every other guy character you write has laser-beam blue eyes.

What would you put in a color reference notebook to help jog your descriptive powers? Let us know in comments.

Related posts: Palettes with Color Names ~ Story Palettes ~ Character Palettes

Palettes with Color Names

Flickr toy box Big Huge Labs has a very neat color palette generator that not only gives you swatches and codes based on any image you upload, it provides names for most of the colors it swatches (click on image to see larger version):



The generator also allows you to download the swatches " in Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) format for Photoshop or compatible applications":



Finally it also provides sample CSS coding, which looks like stuff you would need if you were using the colors for an online project:



I don't know where BHL is getting these names for the color swatches, but some are quite inventive and make you think in different directions, which can be very useful when you're trying to write description.

Related links:

My posts on how I create Story Palettes and Character Palettes

Color Idea Cards

Tonight I went to Wal-Mart with my guy to pick up some light bulbs (to reduce our energy consumption, we've decided to switch over to those low-watt twisty ones that seem to last forever.) While he was looking at the different brands and figuring out which was the better buy, I drifted over to the paint aisle to pick up some chips for a setting palette I'm trying to rework.

Wal-Mart sells Glidden paint and keeps a nice, simple display of single-color cards showing the different shades you can buy or have mixed up. Scattered among these were also some very cool color idea cards. These cards, which are illustrated with gorgeous photographs of landscapes, flowers, fruits and even this adorable kitten here, have example pics of finished rooms and decor items along with info printed on the reverse side. They cover everything from how to use a color, how to combine it with other shades, the effect it has on people, what it means if you really like it, etc. etc.

On the back of the solid color paint chip cards (which Glidden made the same size as their color idea cards) the manufacturer put a photo of an attractive room painted in the same color with two accent colors, and listed all three with a small square swatch of the color, the shade name and stock number:



This is one of those little brilliant ideas someone thought up for people who want to use more than one color but aren't sure what to pick, how to coordinate them, or what they'll look like together.

I love cards of all types, so I picked up a bunch of the idea cards along with the specific color cards I wanted (here's a pic of the full spread.) Glidden's cards are small enough to tuck in the pocket of a binder but large enough to give you a decent feel for the color or color theme. I also like them being loose so I can shuffle them around and put them in different combinations to design my own palettes. Someone mentioned photo brag books in comments to another post, and I thought those would also make a perfect holder for these cards.

Here are two more of Glidden's color idea cards:



Glidden has also inspired me to start making some of my own color idea cards, too. I can use photographs I've taken or interesting color-themed images I find in magazines, catalogs or online, and customize them with notes on the back of how I want to use them, different synonyms and metaphors for a particular color or theme and so forth. I know it can't hurt, especially when I'm wrestling with imagery or description in the story.

From Focus to Palette

After reading my Story Palettes post last month, some of you asked if I would give some working examples of how I create a character palette.

Simone, who is a female protagonist in an upcoming novel of mine, has been gradually developing over the course of the last six months while I've put together her backstory, built her personality and figured out who she is, what she wants and, of course, what is the worst thing I can do to her. Simone is a woman of contradictions; everything about her is new and old, yesterday and tomorrow, fire and ice. The problem with all those lovely contrasts is that they make her very hard to nail down. Despite all the character development I'd done, I still had trouble seeing her in my head.

Recently at an art festival I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with watercolor artist Peggy Engsberg Furlin, who painted this little gem (click on any image to see a larger version):



As soon as I saw it I knew it was the focus piece I needed for Simone's character. I can't tell you why; most of the time there isn't a why, it just clicks and I know. So I bought the painting and brought it home, at which point I began building the character palette. First, I took a photo of the painting and cropped it so that no other colors showed:



I then ran the image through DeGraeve's Color Palette Generator to get a working palette, and set up the page for my novel notebook. From there I cut and pasted the DeGraeve palette, and began adding images from my digital collection that I felt suited Simone and worked inside the framework of the palette, until I had this page of visuals:



Colors are an important part of my process. They're symbolic and evocative, and so are the real world elements that I associate with them. They also create new ideas when I combine them. All of these images and colors echo different aspects of Simone's character and what she has to face in the story; defiance, temptation, risk, silence, loneliness, endurance, realization, fruition. They relate to each other, too: Old death, new life; the transition from winter to spring; flowers blooming in snow, what ends to begin/what begins to end, etc etc.

I could go on for pages because now that I have Simone's colors, I know her better. I feel as if I can make her come to life on the page now. Because while I can imagine all the character elements I want, if I don't make the connections between them I can't feel the character or get inside her head. Having a character palette often helps me navigate my way through a lot of uncertainty.

As for inspiration, you should always be ready for it to come at you from any direction or source. Take these gorgeous lampwork beads, which I purchased last week from Pond Art Glass Studio:



I have been revising and updating Korvel, a character who has appeared in the Darkyn series, to serve as one of the protagonists in the new trilogy (there, you have some insider info no one else but my editor has, too.) I never created a character palette for Korvel, and I needed one, but I kept dithering around with old visuals I had from the original series notebooks, none of which were really tailored to his character.

It wasn't until the lampwork beads arrived and I was photographing them for an appeciation shot that I saw Korvel's colors gleaming at me from the intricate swirls in the glass. Twenty minutes later I had put together this palette for him:



For most character palettes I usually narrow it down to three colors, but Korvel and I have a lot of history together, so that's probably why he got a wider range. Readers know a lot about him as a secondary character; now they need to rediscover him as a protagonist, which requires a different approach than presenting a brand-new character. This palette will definitely guide my choices and help me shed some light on the Korvel no one but me yet knows.

I think the key to creating palettes that help you with writing is not to cheat on the focus factor. Inspiration is not something you can artificially generate by throwing together all your favorite colors. You'll be creating a pretty palette that looks nice, but you'll find it does nothing to help you explore your character. Instead, look for something (and not just art, it can be anything at all) that inspires you to think of your character in ways you haven't before you saw it. That's when you know you've got the beginnings of a great character palette.