#synesthetes

[sunnyguitargirl]

I am obsessed with the way the light on the guitar amp glows

What does red sound like?

[many-gay-magpies]

complimenting people when you have synesthesia is weird because yes technically you do fit the definition of beautiful but on the other hand beautiful is is round and sweeping and rich and you are NOT round you are very very sharp, and pretty is sharp but you are not pink enough to be pretty in this situation .

[0sbrain]

ID [handshake meme with one white hand with the text "colorblind people" and a black hand with the text "synesthetes" embracing in the middle saying "what color do you see this?" end of ID]

[writing-with-olive]

How to write characters with synesthesia

I have synesthesia and it’s cool and I don’t see it a lot in books, so I thought I’d make a how-to and maybe inspire you to include a synesthete (person with synesthesia) in your story.

1) What is synesthesia

Synesthesia is when your brain correlates two sense that wouldn’t normally go together together, such as touch and smell, or hearing and color, or various other combinations. The connections that are made might seem random, but they don’t change. For example, if someone associates the sound of a violin with the smell of bacon, they will always associate the sound of a violin with the smell of bacon. It won’t just suddenly change.

 What I have - and what’s pretty common, as far as I’ve heard - has to do with color and words (and occasionally other sounds). Because that’s what I know, that’s what I’m going to be describing.

2) Hold on. When you see or hear a word, you can see a random color?

Sort of, but probably not in the way you’re thinking. While I experience color when I’m interacting with things that don’t normally involve color, it’s not like bands of it float across my vision.

To conseptualize what this would be like, don’t close your eyes, and I want you to think of the color blue. Not attached to anything, but just the color itself. You can probably imagine it, and the way it looks, or the shade of it. However, it’s not like you’re getting a stream of it floating across your vision. You can still see normally.

Having synesthesia where you experience color is kind of like that. It’s just that seemingly random things will also call forward that mental image of color.

(more on how to make your characters have synesthesia under the break)

3) So how would this affect my character?

MEMORY

Sometimes details about what color sounds or words were (my perception, not how they were actually colored on the page) can help me remember certain concepts. It certainly helped me do really well in classes such as bio, chem, and english. It also helps me  remember things such as my times tables, because different numbers have different colors, which makes mental math easier because I can visually hold several numbers in my head at a time. Same goes with your character. They’re probably going to associate things and remember them better based on color.

Color can also really mess up memory. When I was learning how to spell, I quickly found out that the letters F and T were the exact same color. That made spelling harder to learn because I’d constantly get these two mixed up, thouroughly confusing everyone around me when I tried to explain how similar they were (I didn’t know at that point that not everyone associated things the way I did). Same with the sound of the word shrimp  and  mushroom. I still get teased about that. Basically, if your character could be prone to mixing up two things that would normally never be thought of to be mix-up-able, which could lead to some interesting conflict.

LABELS

When your character is choosing labels for themselves that relate parts of their identity, they will likely take into account the color of the word. For example, when I decided that I liked the pronouns e/em as one of the ones I would go by, that decision was heavily based on the fact that e/em pronouns are light blue for me, which matched the color of the concept slightly masculine. So I went with it.

SOCIAL INTERACTION

Sometimes the sound of people’s voices have color to them. While the person may be nice and a great human being, if their voice isn’t a pleasant color, I’m not going to enjoy being around them as much. Same could apply to your character.

Another thing that color helps with is associating the color of someone’s name to their face. It’s a memory tactic, so I could have put it under memory, but I think it has more relevance here. This could mean your character is really good with names, or it could mean that your character gets two very unalike characters mixed up because their names provoke the same color.

[mckitterick]

that ADHD feel

...when you need to minimize visual distractions like media player in order to hear song lyrics

[bowleggedbeautyoverdose]

There’s nothing more entertaining than the facial expressions of people to whom I am trying to explain my synesthesia xD

[erinsbee]

-idle town inspired page- synesthete interpretation of this song. it totally calms me to journal and listen to music. 👓