Vermillion is this bright red color that looks like a fresh brick or how we’ve imagined the planet Mars for so long before a rover landed on it.
It’s a very specific red. It feels like it has teeth.
If you told me a character showed up in a shiny red car, my expectation would be a regular sports car–or just a new car. But if you told me he showed up in a shiny vermillion car, now I’m imagining something classic, something expensive, and the person stepping out of it might very well be hazardous to my health.
When reading, we pass over words we’ve seen a lot. They are unconsciously absorbed and exchanged for the next word. Words like ‘the’ ‘a’ ‘is’, they hardly register. And really you want those words to just serve their function, but when it comes to describing a scene or setting a mood, we need words that will trigger a response.
Basic colors like ‘white, brown, black, green, red, gray, blue, yellow, orange, purple’ will hold little sway in invoking the kind of imagery that wakes a reader’s mind and strikes them with that visual that transports them from written word to your scene.
Try using specific shades rather than sticking to the parts of the color wheel we all learned in kindergarten.
Of course, if you overuse those specific colors, they’re likely to lose their impact.
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