Sliding Scale Of Red Vs. Blue

[justsarah]

I wasnt sure whether to put this in character development or plot. But anyways, when you write you to figure out roughly what mood your going for.

In my writing, I outline what's supposed to be the negative mood, and then tie it to a color. For example, red represents passion, emotion, and other stuff. Blue represents wisdom, spirituality, and other positive aspects.

Now we need to figure out how many years your character will live. In my case, the characters live to roughly 1000 years. Now when you outline, you don't need to write every month or year of their life. For example I have the ages:

V1: 8, 16, 20
V2: 36, 45, 70
V3: 110, 130, 170
V4: 200, 230, 270
V5: 300, 308

Now take each month, and decide the mood each month will be per volume or book: Global Sad, Global Improving, Global Happy, Global Euphoria.

Lets Use The Ages As An Example:

Volume One: Global Sad
Volume Two: Global Improving
Volume Three: Global Happier
Volume Four: Global Cheerful
Volume Five: Global Euphoria & Depression

What I have done here, is decides that each volume or book, would have a certain level of mood. You don't have to do a major outline, simply let your characters flow organically.

For a more detailed outline, this is what I do.

Volume One

Happier Part: Red To Blue

Part One: Sad, Improving, Happier, Cheerful, Euphoria

Sadder Part: Blue To Red

Part Two: Euphoria, Cheerful, Happy, Digressing, Sad

In this way, you could designate a volume as being generally sad, but much happier or sadder than the previous book. One thing I would advise though, is to make sure there isn't to abrupt a change over a short period of time.

I hoped that helped.

[The Muse]

I think that this is an original way to plan the "feel" of a book. There are differnt ways to set a tone in a novel, I dont think I have seen anything like this before.

Very interesting!

[justsarah]

The main heroines hallucinations in my story is become more and more vivid. Her hallucinations is due to her past, and her general perception of the new race of people she lives with. She percieves them as being sadistic killer androids. Whether they are or not is a matter of speculation at this point.

[The Muse]

So how does the red and blue play into the actual story? Do you mention those colors a lot in the descriptions of the world in that section of the story where the colors apply?

[justsarah]

Well like, a moment ruled by passsion and emotion, and going to have a red tint in the white space, in varying shades. In wise or logical moments, it will be dominated by a blue scheme. Balance moments will have a purple color scheme.

[The Muse]

I thought perhaps that is what you had in mind. It would make a dramatic use of thematic color in the scenes, thats for sure. I had noticed something to that effect in an animated movie once...its a great tool!