What Color Is Your Character’s Aura?
By Gwendolyn Womack | August 31, 2024 |
This playful post is inspired by a character I just finished writing for my next book. She has the ability to see auras, and I had a lot of fun assigning different colors to people seen through her eyes. It was like having a secret window into a character’s psyche, allowing us to know who the character really was and not just how they portrayed themselves to the outside world. In that way, color became a kind of subtext. And people’s auras kept surprising her—and in turn, will surprise the reader.
As the actual writer dreaming all this up, I also found aura colors to be shorthand for myself to help develop the character’s personality and mindset in a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase way. It was so helpful, fascinating, and refreshing to do.
So try taking a look at your characters and imagine what their aura would be if you could see it.
But what are auras, you might ask?
Auras are said to be the electromagnetic fields we emanate, and the colors of our auras are supposedly like the palette of our personality. It’s very similar to giving off a vibe. A person generally favors one or two colors, and sometimes that can fluctuate with their mood or health.
All the colors have meanings. There are different interpretations for them. You can find countless books, online articles, and videos about auras… How to see them. How to interpret them. How to find out what your colors are. But for the sake of this post, listed here is a very simple color summary I’ve been working from. Take a look and think about who in your story favors what color. It might help you to define them more.
Red: You are an adventurer with high energy, intensely passionate, strong willed, competitive, and ambitious. (Murky dark red – denotes being angry and confrontational)
Orange: Creativity abounds for you. You enjoy artistic pursuits and tackle challenges with a positive outlook. (Burnt orange – shows a lack of energy or being burned out)
Yellow: You have a sunny disposition and are charismatic, inquisitive, inventive, and at times eccentric. (Off yellow – being overly critical or scatterbrained)
Pink: With a loving nature, you are generous, caring, tender, and compassionate with others.(Murky pink – overly sensitive or insecure)
Blue: You are intuitive, a strong communicator, inspiring to others, imaginative, and value clear intentions. (Murky blue – feeling stifled, anxious, or judgmental)
Green: A nature lover, you are compassionate, giving, and hardworking. You are also determined and full of life. (Off green – feeling jealous, mean spirited, or overly stubborn)
Purple: You are highly empathetic, intuitive, introverted, a deep thinker, and love to ask the big questions about life. (Darker purple – excessively worrying or feeling insecure)
Gold: Wise and strong, you are seen as a leader and enlightened. (Off gold – being too proud or obsessive)
Pearl (rarest aura color): You have a pure heart and are spiritually inclined with the intention to help others. (Dark or murky pearl tones: feeling unbalanced)
Streaks or holes in an aura: You may be confused, depressed, or dealing with emotional trauma.
Deep Shadows: Could indicate you are ill or struggling with negative thoughts or emotions.
Please share with us in the comments below if you have any specific “personality” tricks to help you when you are creating characters. I’d love to know!
Good journey at the keyboard. From my desk to yours.
~Gwendolyn
Gwendolyn Womack is the award-winning LA Times & USA Today bestselling author of The Fortune Teller, The Memory Painter, and The Time Collector. Her books have been described as cross-genre metaphysical thrillers, and her YA debut, The Premonitions Club, is coming out in 2025.
Gwen was a screenwriter for years before becoming a novelist and has an MFA in Directing Theatre & Film from CalArts. Her main hobby is photographing kaleidoscopes, and she often posts pictures of them on social media. She has taught writing workshops at conferences and for writing groups, both in person and online, and offers one-on-one consulting as well as editorial feedback.
What a cool post! :D Also loving that book cover.
Thank you, Kathryn! :)
My Colorado PI Russ Morgan is psychic, and he, too, sees auras, but in a different way. For him, auras shift according to the emotional state of the person he’s watching. Oddly (LOL), that’s closer to the way I perceive auras — non-visually.
I suspect there are many ways of sensing/seeing auras, and my guess is a lot more people are sensitive to auras than admit. As you say, the sensitivity gives insight to a character, either on page or in real life. Because the awareness doesn’t come only when invited, it’s not always an easy gift to carry.
Wishing you all success with your new book!
Thank you, Lloyd. Your character sounds fascinating. I agree on all those aspects as well. Best success with your book too.
What, no black? What about villains? And no blank or colorless? That would be frightening.
I have a manuscript on the shelf in which a girl has premonitions of the future. It’s a gift she doesn’t want. I decided two things: 1) The gift would not be cute or a paranormal trope, but realistic, more a curse than a superpower, and 2) the plot would turn on the gift, putting the girl in danger, uniquely, so that it couldn’t be any interchangeable superpower but one that would make the reader both understand it’s pain, be glad not to have it, and also be cheering the girl and rooting for her survival.
Another goal was to build in the effect of the curse on others. Good post.
Hi Benjamin, a blank aura would be frightening, especially since colors are nothing more than vibrations. So now we’re veering into dark matter, which could be a lot of fun to bring into the mix. And the villain could be nothing but dark shadows.
Your character and story sounds fantastic. Cheers,
That’s so cool, Gwendolyn. I know some people like to use Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram to develop their characters’ personality. I find stories in which the character has an unusual gift compelling, esp. if it brings about any sort of conflict. One of my favorite books set during medieval times is The Physician by Noah Gordon, which follows an orphan boy, who through touch, can know if a person will die if left untreated.
Hi Vijaya, That’s a fun idea to take a personality test on behalf of your character. I’ll have to try it.
The Physician sounds fantastic. I just read the story summary and put it on my tbr list. Thanks for the recommendation.
I early picked red, blue, and yellow as colors for my three main characters, wove them into a logo which is like a ying yang symbol, except tri-rotational instead of bi-, and use the colors to identify the pov character in each scene.
But the yellow was for ‘coward’ and ‘deceitful’, for the villain. Not auras – just a way to remember who’s who. The red works out very well for the very active and limber actor main character, blue for the serene third main character, even as auras. There is something to be said for these identifications – when I pour myself into channeling a scene’s pov character, the colors are a strong reminder (literally) of who I am.
Hi Alicia,
That sounds like a fascinating system to tap into your characters’ psyches. Thanks for sharing!
I sometimes use homeopathic constitutions – which come complete with character traits, flaws, physical description, health troubles tastes… I find it especially handy for secondary characters: I can pick a few items in a particular constitution and have a reasonably rounded starting point.