CREATIVE WRITING
Try This Quick, Fun, and Colorful Writing Exercise
An imagery-based freewrite for poems and prose
Maybe you’re having one of those days where you just don’t know what you want to write about. Or maybe you want to practice using more specific details and concrete images in your poetry or prose writing. Either way, I think you’ll enjoy this freewriting prompt.
There’s only one guideline to follow for this exercise…
Write about a specific color WITHOUT using the name of that color.
Sometimes I like to start by brainstorming a list of different colors and then choosing one from my list. This exercise works just as well with general color names like “green” or more specific colors like “robin’s egg blue.”
It can also be a fun way to explore one of those precisely defined shades like we find on paint chips. I mean, who doesn’t want to try to capture the color of “Woodland Juniper”?
Once you choose your color, take some time to freewrite everything about it that comes to mind. You can…
- create a long list of various things that are that color;
- consider making a themed list of related items of the same color, or try a list where the only thing the items seem to have in common is the shared color;
- describe one thing of the color in great detail (for example, describe a tropical sea so vividly that we can see the blue of it without you saying “blue”);
- write about how the color makes you feel;
- or list any other associations with the color that come to mind, like what it symbolizes or suggests to you.
The last two items above are more abstract, so if you work with those, I suggest you also try to include concrete details to help the reader picture the color. For example, I could write about “orange” by saying it makes me feel brave as a tiger, yet cautious as a detour sign.
If you decide to expand upon your freewriting to create a poem or prose piece to share with others, keep your readers in mind, and artfully help them guess the color. You don’t have to create a difficult riddle, and you also don’t have to give the color away from the first line; it’s up to you how quickly or gradually you want to inspire the reader to see the color you’ve pictured during your writing process.
This exercise asks you to give close attention to a specific aspect of something (or many things) and see what you can come up with through that act of focus. I hope you have fun with seeing how fully you can capture the image(s) and idea(s) of a color without actually using the exact word that names it.
