Color Coding with My Precious

Title:	Color Coding with My Precious
Topics:	color coding, darcy pattison, markers, mg novels, ok go, workshops
Date:	2010-01-30 @ 08:52
Security:	public
Location:	Kitchen
Music:	"This Too Shall Pass" OK Go & Notre Dame band
Mood:	busy

I'm supposed to be outputting brilliant prose, when I get distracted by awesome stuff like the OK Go/Notre Dame Marching Band video.

http://www.nd.edu/~ndband/news.html

After watching ten or so times, I MUST do something writerly. The new story is coming along, but I feel like I have to make big VISUAL progress. So I play with markers:

Color coding a single spaced 8pt draft by setting and character is hard work, people! All that capping and uncapping.

But it means I get to spend quality time with My Precious.

Yes, my markers.

Much thanks and luuuuurve to the awesomeness that is Darcy Pattison and her novel revision workshop! I mark sections by scene with the color I've assigned to that setting. I've made a separate spreadsheet to track characters and themes through the entire book. You can see that section at the bottom.

Each character has a color assigned. The ones I don't like get orange or brown. I block out where they do (and don't!) appear and then put circles over their sections in the shrunked draft.

NEXT: Why I'm most productive under tons of garbage. THIS WEEK'S COUNT: 5,500 words.

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Title:	Untitled
Author:	tim-jim.blogspot.com
Date:	2010-01-30 15:52 (UTC)
Status:

I more or less did that to my after returning home from seeing "Inglourious Basterds". Except, what I did was more or less just re-outlining my novel. I wrote bullet points of each scene down on color coded post-it notes. There is a name for this, but I don't remember it. It helped me a lot to see what was truly happening. The color really does help with figuring out who is where and what they were doing.

I would like to try this color coding method. Can you share some closeups of how you mark up the pages and did the spread sheet. Or do you know of a good website with such information?

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Title:	Untitled
Author:	marykpleiss
Date:	2010-01-30 20:48 (UTC)
Status:

Soooo...I'm debating doing a shrunken MS kind of thing before my polish draft, mostly just to use my pretty pretty highlighters. You may have just pushed me over the edge. (I'm already over the edge on wanting to read this book!)

I was about to say that the shrunken MS was the single best thing that came from that weekend--but that would be wrong. Because the REAL best thing that came from that weekend was meeting my BFF MJ!

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Title:	Untitled
Author:	tracyworld
Date:	2010-01-31 00:59 (UTC)
Status:

"All that capping and uncapping."
HA! Love it.

I have Darcy's book, too, but haven't yet used it on a project. Thanks for sharing so I can watch your journey.

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