#synesthetes

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.