Word Painting: Conveying a Mood with Your Writing Style
“The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.”
~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Have you ever considered how writers make the world a little more beautiful with words the same way a room sparkles with a fresh coat of paint?
Writing in Color
For example, the color yellow can cheer you up almost instantly. So how can we do the same with what we write? Enthusiasm! There is nothing so contagious as someone with a happy heart and a good attitude. If you walk around full of thankfulness and the sheer joy of being alive, you can’t help but influence other people to brighten up. We can also accomplish this by painting with our words. Think of describing something by adding details of what your character feels, hears, sees, smells, or tastes. When that happens the reader feels like they’re right there, with the character in the story. Here’s a prime example:
“It’s certain I’ll never be angelically good. Mrs. Spencer says – oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr.Cuthbert!!!” That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child tumbled out of the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They had simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the “Avenue.”
The “Avenue,” so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.–(Excerpt from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery)
Words to Capture Attention
Think of some words that immediately catch your attention or instantly visualize something or make your mouth water. Take “scrumpdillyicious” for instance. It was the description that the Dairy Queen® ice cream chain used for a marketing campaign in the seventies! I can taste it right now! Sometimes just by the way a word sounds, summons up a vivid picture in our minds. Advertisers capitalize on this.
We all respond to color, to the freshness of the new paint smell (after it has mellowed a day or two.) If you need something fresh to write about, try painting something first. You never know when a heart-stopping idea might hit you, right after you put away your paint brush.
Additional Resources
Which leads me to another realization . . . why do we always travel to “get away from it all” or to “get a fresh perspective?” There’s something about challenging your brain to take in new information and absorb new insights, new contexts, that wakes it up to new ideas. It will start you thinking a little differently. Study several types of information, digest them and voila! – you’ll come up with a new combination that may be twice as interesting as the separate elements you observed. Before you “paint,” with your computer keyboard, check out some resources like these to help choose your pallet:
What Do You Think?
Feel free to leave us a comment on this article with your feedback, as well as your experiences with this topic.
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