The Color Red (From the Archives)

The Color Red 7/30/2020 0 Comments

I recently received edits for my first few chapters, and over the weekend I sat down to hardcore revise them. For me, this means printing the pages out on dual-sided 8 1/2" x 11" sheets, and then writing down everything I think or want to change--in pink and purple ink! Sometimes, new prose will just flow and I let it--oftentimes I go back to the computer for that, when a huge scene change is pending. In this case, I realized my first paragraph was weak. Man meets woman, but . . . it didn't last long enough. Hell, we never learn what she looks like! And she has such bright red hair. How could I not comment on that? It is certainly noticeable, and surely my MMC would internally remark upon it. And so it started that I wanted to describe her red hair. I had no idea there were SO. MANY. SHADES. of red. There may be 50 shades of gray, but there are 500 shades of red. Easily. Thanks to Google, I was soon knee deep in articles discussing hex codes, names, and descriptions of red. Coradyn has dark red hair: not red, not orange, but a deep red with violet undertones. Surely one of the hundred shades would perfectly describe it. Per Wikipedia, I had 27 choices. I narrowed down the types to blood, carmine, cornell, garnet, redwood and ruby. I also checked under images, where I found lots of examples of shades. I added carmine, merlot, wine and currant to my list. I liked the sound of the words vermilion and crimson, so I kept those in mind, too. The problem, then, was finding references that would work for my world. Upon further research, I realized merlot, cornell, and carmine were out. They were tied too closely to place-names in our world, and carmine was just . . . gross. Currants also come in a black variation, and I didn't want any confusion, so I nixed that.

Wine was generic enough, so I kept that. And blood was so recognizable for my warrior; it elicited a response in him, so I went with it.

His eyes lingered on her dark red hair, a vibrant shade that reminded him of spilled blood. He grimaced—he had been on the road too long. Wine. Her hair reminded him of red wine, and of garnets and rubies. He wondered if sunlight would illuminate crimson and flame in those strands.

In the end, I chose wine as my main comparison, as it's universally recognizable, and generic enough to exist in a fantasy land. I also liked the images of garnet and rubies, implying she may be valuable. For fun, I kept crimson, and I wanted my readers to associate her with flame, even indirectly. She's a dangerous sort of beautiful.