Fiction Writing: Three Ways to Use the Colors of the Seasons to Describe Setting

When writing a story, description is always important. Authors sitting down to a first draft often find themselves approaching a number of problematic elements past the plot and the cast of characters. One of these elements is setting. Setting is more than a location; it's also the time, including the time of the year. Seasons are important to readers and can help any writer pace the mood of their written piece. Halloween, Christmas, The Fourth of July-all of these holidays are distinctive because they are associated with a season and cause an emotional response in readers. However, it's not enough to simply state the holiday and expect a full response. Description of images related to the season is crucial, and one simply way to describe is to use colors associated with the season or surrounding holidays.

Color serves a very important part in fictional stories, often times lending dramatically to the mood of a scene. Readers may not even notice a color mentioned in the story, or the color's effect on their perception of the overall piece, but an emotional reaction is, undoubtedly, there. It's for this reason that authors usually set a story with a tense emotional conflict around a fixed color scheme. In Charlotte Perkin's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," for example, the color is mentioned in the title. The color yellow, combined with the context of the story, creates a fantastic effect, lending to the mental frailty of the main character. A story called "The Red Wallpaper" in the same context would cause a completely different perception, leading readers' minds to places of lust, rage, gore, love, passion, violence.

Why does color play such an important part? Why do readers enjoy knowing that one character's hair is silver gray and another character's is white with age? Color's importance comes from its visual value. The majority of readers do not suffer from a visual impairment, so a descriptive color is the easiest way to communicate a clear visual to a wide audience.

Another great thing about color is its ability to be described in a variety of ways while still keeping that visual quality. There are three great ways to use color to your advantage when setting a scene.

When setting a scene, remember the holidays!

Holiday colors, when described in a scene, lend to the overall setting. For example, if a scene mentions "black table clothes ornamented with crinkled orange streamers," readers automatically relate the description to a Halloween setting. But the holiday colors don't necessarily have to be described quite so bluntly. If you describe an "orange tinted wall" and then talk about the black of night outside the window, the colors are still serving their purpose. The intent is not direct, but the combination is still enough to warrant an association between the description and the time setting.

When setting a scene, remember the leaves!

Aside from the actual holiday, there's the physical world out there, changing with the season, to describe. What colors or hues are associated with the state of the outside world? Is the world in bright primaries like a fair summer day colored in kids' crayons? Are autumn leaves falling in golden browns, yellows, reds, and oranges? Is the front yard a white wonderland with a vivid blue or gray sky and dark green pine? If you know the season of your setting, think back, use the colors from images of the outside world and incorporate them into the scenes. If the season isn't important to your story, then use the current season. That way you'll have a clean, current visual to work into the story.

When setting a scene, remember the garden!

Pea green, candy apple red, squash yellow: all of these colors are specific and very visual. They also include food. Think about what foods are produced during the time of the year in which your story is set. Use the color of these different foods to describe your setting. Subconsciously, readers will associate the food colors with the season.

Using color for description is necessary, but color isn't just a way to describe what characters are wearing or their hair. Use color to subtly describe your setting and put your readers in the right frame of mind.