Bridget Pilloud, over at Intuitive Bridge, is hosting “Pick Your Color of the Year – 2012!” for the New Year.
Rosy pink. My color for 2012.
Pantone does it for the designing crowd. Why not those who look forward to designing their lives for the year? And those who revel in the design of a story?
Have you ever thought of it that way? The stories you tell are designed. Like, every story. Describing your day or talking about your passion for helping people. The way your audience receives the account is key to getting the response you’re going for.
Colorful character
My dad lives to tell a good story. The man plans the punctuation in the telling of a tuna melt he had for lunch, “like nothing you’ve had in your life, BELIEVE me.” He drives home that taste with such description, you’re suddenly feeling a little full, yourself.
Bridget’s “Pick Your Color of the Year — 2012!” catches my attention because, like a picture paints 1,000 words, a color expresses a feeling or a condition without using words at all. It expresses a character and a mood.
Your story, whatever it is, has all of those. How will you describe it?
The hue of a mood
Try starting with a color…Let your color be a way into the description. How does your color make you feel? What colors do the characters inspire? In what color would you describe the mood of the whole story?
Pick your story’s color, then add to it. In the same way you’d add to your color in a room, with accents, open windows, and accessories, build on your story’s mood with details: character traits, settings, suspense.
A story flows. A story stops. It starts up again. If you’re stuck behind the telling, pick its color. Let its mood and character tell you where it wants to go.
Know the color of your story’s mood? Tell us about it. Share it in the comments (and come back to tell us where we can read it when it’s done…)
P.S. Thanks to Bridget for the inspiration. Pick your color for 2012 at her very cool blog.
