Writing with colour

There are some people who only look at life in black and white. Many more can see countless shades of grey in between. And of course there are those who look at life through rose tinted glasses. If you?re writing you have to consider the impact it?ll have on those reading it. Which usually means offering all the colours of the rainbow in how you go about it.

Consider the monochrome approach. Writing fiction within such confines is liable to make for dull reading. That?s because it has to be made up of different layers in order to entertain readers. It not only has to keep them guessing, but paint pictures in their minds.

To make them keep reading you have to open up possibilities that lead them first one way and then the next. If it?s obvious how your story will end there?s no point in them going on with it.

And of course no one?s life is actually lived in black and white. Life isn?t that simple and straightforward, no matter how they look at it. To say nothing of the people themselves.

Even they?ve got more to them than that. Your characters should reflect the many layers that make up human beings. Flaws and all. If not they?ll likely come across as no more than cardboard cut outs. And who?d care what happens to them then?

Readers need to be able to empathise and relate to those whose story they?re following. The situation might be new to them but the feelings probably won?t be. Whether its love, fear, hatred, indifference or any other emotion, most people will have experienced them at one time or another.

When it comes to situations your characters find themselves in don?t forget that won?t be cut and dried either. They?ll be events that lead up to it, however distant in the past. People don?t suddenly land in the middle of something as if they?ve just dropped out of the sky.

And they themselves will have myriad reasons for behaving the way they do. If they?re good or bad, something will make them behave in the way they do. Writing means you have to let it all come to life. In all it?s colourful glory.