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#352 Better in Color

Now that spring’s here, I’m constantly surrounded by a cascade of color. From bright blue skies to flowers in full bloom, there’s always something that brings a smile to my face — and inspires me to write!

This week, let’s think about the role that color can play in our writing. Could the shade of a certain object mean more than your reader would ever expect? Could an abundance (or absence) of color make us rethink how we see the world and the people around us? Show us how color can go beyond just a simple description!

🥇 Winner

Black and White

Winner of Weekly Contest #352 🏆

CW: Police harassment They slouched in the flickering darkness, watching the final credits. For two hours, Mark Dirac had shared part of the universe with Blanche, breathing in her wild-rose scent, listening more to her small creaturely noises than to Marlene Dietrich’s sexy alto in the German movie, The Blue Angel. Two hours of bliss. Oh sure, he had worried a little about his body, about not mouth-breathing and not tongue-smacking, and not being overcome by the occasional ahem hardening that he had learned to disperse by thinking about sol...

55 likes 34 comments 34
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⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write a story with a color in the title.

– 89 stories

Set your story during — or just before — a sunrise or sunset.

– 36 stories

Start or end your story with someone looking out at the sky, the sea, or a forest.

– 60 stories

Write a story in which a character can taste, smell, hear, and/or feel color.

– 21 stories

Set your story in a place that has lost all color.

– 67 stories

Stories

Red and Tender

Weekly Contest #352

Taking the forest path instead of surface streets brought Silas to the house a little earlier than expected. Bad form, he knew. People who showed up early to things had it in mind that everybody built in a buffer, that the whole world was ready at 11:45 instead of kicking their slippers at midnight. Enough people had told Silas they just needed more time. Still, he was here, and there was nothing to do but knock.The door creaked open, spreading buttery yellow light across the porch. “Silas?”“Yes,” he said. “Scarlet?”Her profile said eighty-o...

9 likes 8 comments 8
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The Red We Share

Weekly Contest #352

It’s 7:59 a.m. when I go into Momma’s room. I’d woken up from a bad dream, but my sisters aren’t awake yet, Riley still snoring through the darkness and Anna talking in her sleep, so I crept out of my twin bed and I’m going to crawl in bed with Momma like I used to when I was little. I haven’t done it in a long time, not since I turned ten and my sisters told me that I’m too big to be sleeping in Momma’s bed after nightmares. Momma gets so mad at me when I wake her up, but I know to tell her I had a nightmare, so she’d wipe the tears from my...

9 likes 4 comments 4
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The Runaway

Weekly Contest #352

“It’ll be easier if we split up. Do not stop until you find her!” Kana could hear the commands echoing among the trees. She tightened her grip on the reins of her horse, snapping them down and commanding it to travel faster through the woods. The animal obliged, zipping through the forest and cleverly whizzing around trees. If she had any hope of surviving, they would have to get through the forest before sunrise. She wondered if the rebels had dogs that tracked her scent. She would have to find a river to wash it off, just to make sure. The...

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Reds

Weekly Contest #352

Back then, the soles of our feet were always pitch-black, and our skin still had enough elasticity to rebound after each sunburn. The heat was so intense that it nearly blurred our vision, warping the air like flames do. Our hands stayed sticky because of the watered-down popsicles we grabbed from Mr. Coolidge’s freezer. Until we grew out of popsicles and grew into our bodies, sitting on sweaty leather car seats in parking lots, missing each other’s lips in the dark. Those summers were sacred for many reasons. But summer of 1978 marked a shi...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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The Color of Grief

Weekly Contest #352

I crushed the cigarette in the ash tray on my desk as I reminisced on the world that once was full of light, hope, dreams, and color. My God there were so many colors. Now all that was left were shades and shadows. The smoke from the ashes looked like the last gasp of humanity trying to hold on to something. Everyone is going around trying to get on with their lives, trying to make sense of it all. Red was the first to go. I remember hearing a siren blaring only to see it come from a grey fire truck flying through the intersection respond...

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Color of truth

Weekly Contest #352

“Mind the shadow. What do you think that means, Anton?”“How should I know? I think this guy was paranoid. The outside team found this yesterday with the corpse. He wasn’t supposed to be outside.”“There are a few pictures on this phone.”“You figured out how to charge it?”“Yes. You hired me for that, remember. Let’s check them.”Anton opened the first picture. The photo appeared in full screen.“What is that?”“Liam, it’s not important, the file is probably damaged.”“The phone was in his pocket, along with the note: mind the shadow.”“Do you know ...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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The Taste Of Colour

Weekly Contest #352

Laura had always known that colours weren’t just something you saw—they were something you felt. Most people looked at a painting and talked about shades and tones. Laura talked about textures, Flavors, temperatures. She didn’t remember the first time she realized she was different; she only remembered the first time she realized other people weren’t like her. She was five, sitting in art class, when she dipped her brush into a pot of bright yellow paint. The moment the bristles touched the paper, she felt it: a warm fizzing on her tongue, l...

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The Meaning of Grey

Weekly Contest #352

The curtains that hung from the ceilings were a simple grey. Not the silver that sometimes comes from the moon’s light at the right angle. Nor was it the dark ash that comes after the fire has burnt too low in the hearth. A plain, simple, everyday grey. The sort of grey that suggested a life half-lived at best, a poor melancholy resignation to oneself. Dreary and drab, the curtains dimmed the already dark room. The isolation reflected in the grey of the—They were cheaper. Or maybe the author just needed to pick a color for the scene and felt...

9 likes 13 comments 13
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THE BLUE OCEAN

Weekly Contest #352

THE BLUE OCEANChapter One: The Color of Secrets Far beyond shipping lanes and the reach of ordinary maps, there existed a place sailors spoke of only in hushed tones-a place where the ocean turned an impossible shade of blue. Not the dull blue of distant horizons. Not the green- blue churn of costal waters. This was something deeper. Richer. Alive. The Blue Ocean. Those who stumbled upon it described a strange stillness, as if the sea itself were holding its breath. The air felt heavier there, charged with something ancient. At night, the wa...

9 likes 5 comments 5
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My Magnolia

Weekly Contest #352

Magnolia was at her favorite place. The familiar grains of sand sank between her toes like the touch of a friend almost forgotten. Her wish had been to return to the beach where she could feel at home if only for a period of time - she only had so long. So long before he realized she was not there. The sun was beginning to sink beneath the ocean creating an explosion of oranges, reds and faint yellow. It was like no time at all had passed since she’d last been here. The wind blew through her hair gently kissing her cheeks with its cool lips....

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The Gray Between Us

Weekly Contest #352

For Elena, the world didn’t end with a bang; it ended when the Officer called her Mrs. Miller—when the green drained from the forest, and from their home.She could hear it—the cold drip of water from the leaves onto the forest floor, the gentle rhythmic lapping of the forest lake below. The faint rustle of the autumn breeze through the trees and in the distant, if she listened long enough, she could hear the bustling city life. This was their spot—their getaway, their refuge and her asylum. Where they’d come to when the world felt too overwh...

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That Boring Beige

Weekly Contest #352

Dear Bella,I remembered that day, exactly eight years after your death. The day I was standing at the edge of the bridge after my suicide attempt, cutting my wrist in the apartment, failed. The afternoon I spent staring back and forth between the dark water under me, then onto the blue sky above, while finding the courage to end my life.The same moment when a young woman about the same age as me, clothed in that boring beige trench coat, passed by me. The next second I took note of her eyes and remembered the person you mentioned before you ...

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The Gray Ghost Legend Is Born

Weekly Contest #352

The bullet took my hat off before I heard the shot. I'd been riding the western tree line at a canter when the crack split the air, and the wind of it passed close enough to raise the hair on my scalp. I turned my horse hard, driving him down into a dried creek bed. I lay flat against his neck while two more shots snapped through the branches above us. Union cavalry. Three of them, maybe four, breaking from the opposite tree line at a gallop. I didn't panic. My father, Malcolm MacLean, had taught me that fear was like the weather; real, unav...

8 likes 6 comments 6
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The Blue Book To Bird Heaven

Weekly Contest #352

December 18th, 2006 The birds are mocking me. They race overhead in an unorthodox pattern, squawking in a language they know im too feeble to understand. Incomprehensible heckles. It doesn’t irritate me the same way that chewing loudly on food or gulping water does. Those things are pure annoyance. The birds peeve me in a similar way as getting clearly made fun of in a different language does. You can never prove it, because you are not familiar with the vernacular, but you can hear it. The tone. The speed. The stares. They always stare....

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The Sword of Saint Absolutely-Not

Weekly Contest #352

Osmond Young stood at the edge of the forest and wished, very sincerely, that he were somewhere else. The Whispering Wood stretched out before him in a dense wall of green and shadow, the trees packed so tightly together that it looked less like a place you could enter and more like something that might close ranks behind you once you tried. The air near the treeline was cooler, damp in a way that suggested moss, secrets, and a general lack of welcoming intentions. Osmond adjusted his grip on his satchel. “This is manageable,” he said quietl...

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