Revising by Color
Posted: November 07, 2010
Revisions! I knew these were coming, and I’ve actually been really psyched to get into them. Luckily, I’m house/pet sitting as my actual job this month, which means I’ve got plenty of time to procrastinate and then panic about not getting any work done. Yay!
Friday morning I got revision notes from my agent (still fun to say!) and a couple of her readers. I’m not even gonna lie, you guys, I was REALLY SCARED to read these. I had Sara McClung on high alert, standing by ready to take my blubbering phone call.
But surprisingly, the notes didn’t reduce me to a quivering mass of weeping insecurity the way I was expecting. Either they were much nicer to me than I was expecting, or else I’m getting kind of good at this whole approaching-writing-rationally thing. (Ha!)
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be talking about these revisions for a long time to come because, oh my God, I’ve only been working with these notes for two days and have already learned SO MUCH, but there’s one technique here that I think is super easy and useful and wanted to share with you guys.
COLOR CODING FOR CONTENT
If you know me at all, you know how much I love color-coding things. It’s basically why I became a stage manager. Here’s this great technique for color-coding your manuscript (probably one of many, but I’m digging this one) to help you figure out quickly where you have problems and how to make the most of what you already have.
On-screen action and dialogue from your POV character becomes red.
On-screen action and dialogue from your non-POV character becomes pink.
Description and sensory details become green.
Internal narration becomes blue.
So far, so easy, right?
Here are the first two pages of my manuscript as they were before I started revising:
As you can instantly see, I have problems. Like the total dearth of action. Like the BIG FREAKING CHUNKS OF COLOR everywhere. In five seconds, the objectiveness of these colors let me see problems in these two pages that I didn’t manage to notice in months of reading the words.
Now the pages look like this:
Much better. One of the reasons I had so damn much blue in the first version is because I started the book with the roller-coaster flying down the big drop, so I had to go back and explain how it had gotten there. Instead, I went back and started with the last few clicks before the drop. That’s why my beginning is almost all red and pink now – all on-screen action and dialogue – and I have much less need for blue.
That’s the big change. Almost everything else is just about redistributing colors into a more interesting, diverse pattern instead of big freaking boring chunks.
THE COLOR ALSO REVEALS PACE
This may even be the most useful part. Red and pink speeds up the pace; blue and green slow it down. So if I want to make a part more page-turny? I know I need to make it redder/ pinker. If I want to suspend time and build suspense, I need to add more blue/green.
I mean, come on. How easy is that??
Everyone should try it! It’s going to make you work, like, instantly better. I’m going to do it to my whole manuscript.
Categories: Revising, Writing | Tags: breakout second novel, color coding, craft, cristin terrill, Revising, tips and tricks, Writing | 34 comments
Haha! I’m game for INSTANTLY BETTER! I might just have to try that…I get caught up with internal monologue all the time.
Congrats on getting your revisions back! That is such a big step. Can’t wait to hear more about how it goes. :)
I love it. And yeah, those big stretches of internal monologue will LEAP out at you and DEMAND to be fixed.
Thanks RJ!
This is a great technique. You can really see, instantly, where the problems lie. I’m going to try it!
.-= Amy @ Never-True Tales´s last blog: No- I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo- so stop asking =-.
I love the objectiveness of it, you know? Pretty much the entire writing process is so subjective that it can drive you (or me, at least) nuts sometimes, so it’s nice to see something black and white (or red and blue, whatever). Anyway, yeah, you should definitely give it a try!
Oooh, great tip! I’m just now starting a new round of revision, so this tip will be SUPER helpful! Thanks!
.-= Jessica Love´s last blog: A General WIP Update =-.
BTW, I’m a new follower (found my way here through Sara McClung) and I LOVE the title of your blog. :-) Graceland is one of my all-time favorite albums.
.-= Jessica Love´s last blog: A General WIP Update =-.
Hi, Jessica! Welcome. Basically anytime I need a clever little piece of text, I steal it from Graceland! :) That album is so relentlessly quotable.
Do give the color-coding thing a try, I’m finding it SUPER useful and easy.
Looking forward to chatting with you!
Love it! And I hope I’m not missing this, but HOW do you color code? Do you go in and do it by hand? Or do you know of some cool part of Scrivener that I haven’t figured out yet??
.-= Sara McClung´s last blog: Pop the champagne!! =-.
Oh, I’m doing this in Word, so I’m just using the text color thing in the formatting menu and doing it all manually. (God, WISH Scrivener would just do it for me, that’d be awesome!) I thought about moving the mss back from Word into Scrivener to do these revisions but ended up not bothering!
This is kind of genius. And by “kind of” I mean you should patent it! Though it must take so much to color code all that stuff….still, totally worth it, I think.
.-= Heather Trese´s last blog: Writing and Revising the Hard Scenes =-.
It is genius, but unfortunately it’s not mine to take credit for! This came from one of my agent’s brilliant readers.
It DOES take a long time to color everything (especially because it’s not always clear what color something should be, or because you may have two or three colors in a sentence) but I think it’s worth it. And it gives you another reason to read through your manuscript and really examine it.
Love it!
Only problem is, no matter how I try to enlarge or sharpen the photo of your pages, I can’t read them. AND I WANT TO READ THEM! *cries into her coffee*
I know reading the scene wasn’t the point. But still. *sniff sniff*
Haha, well yeah, that was kind of intentional! (If you really DO want to read it, though, I could use a fresh set of eyes now I’m revising. I pay in gratitude and cookies.)
Super technique, Cristin! Must take a lot of time to go through like that, but dang, it really helps you see the pacing and to clearly see narration versus dialogue, etc. Very cool. Such a great idea!
.-= Carolina Valdez Miller´s last blog: SHIP BREAKER =-.
It’s good, right? I’m finding it really helpful. But I think I may change the pink to purple or something darker like that. :)
Wow, this is pretty cool! I will try this for my next round of revisions.
.-= Elizabeth Briggs´s last blog: NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 10- Survival Tips =-.
Hi Elizabeth. I’m finding it insanely useful, I hope you do too!
Pingback: Getting to Know You Giveaway | Incidents and Accidents
New follower. Love this. Might try it. I like the idea of looking at it at a glance and seeing what a particular section needs.
Hi! I’m dropping in from Summer’s blog. Nice to meet you *waves*! Really enjoyed your blog. Thanks for the tips. I’m your newest follower.
Man, you really made that Deep Edits class worth your money! :)
I haven’t even had time to read all the materials yet, but I do want to get into the color coding…ONE day…
Sophia the Writer´s Last Post: Ella Enchants Me- Interview with a Craftsman
Hey Sophia! As a matter of fact, I completely failed that Deep Edits class. My life kind of exploded right after it started and I barely looked at it. I saved all the emails, thinking I would do it on my own eventually, but eventually hasn’t QUITE rolled around yet. Glad I’m not the only one!
This color-coding technique is AWESOME, though, I love it. It made a big difference in my revisions.
So glad you joined Twitter!
lol I know – Shoshanna and I were your editing partners :D
Same here – I printed out all the lectures (although I’m missing the first one for some reason – you don’t have it do you?) and actually stuck them into a binder.
Alright you convinced me, I’m going to color code.
Sophia the Writer´s Last Post: Ella Enchants Me- Interview with a Craftsman
Pingback: Tell, Don’t Show | Incidents and Accidents
I LOVE this bit of brilliance. :) I don’t know if I’d have the patience to highlight/color every single sentence in my entire manuscript(s). But I am heading into my final round of polishing on a MS right now, and will use this on my first 50, and randomly throughout in areas where needed.
So, I can’t really see your pages, but let’s say one sentence has a couple colors, do you just color part of the sentence in one color and the rest in another color? Or do you keep the entire sentence one color, choosing the color it ‘mostly’ fits?
Fabulous post, BTW. Thanks for sharing.
Hugs,
Lola
Lola Sharp´s Last Post: With a Heavy Heart
Thanks, Cristin, I love this idea!
I’m a little afraid of the time it will take, but sounds like it’s worth it.
Cam´s Last Post: The Icing
Hi Cam! Just noticed that I posted this reply to you in the wrong place, so I’m posting it again just in case.
Yeah, it is pretty time-consuming to do after-the-fact (I’m going to try to do it as I go with my new WIP). There were times when I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head, but it was really worth it for me! I would recommend changing the pink for other’s actions/words to purple, though, much easier on the eyes!
Hi Cam! Yeah, it is pretty time-consuming to do after-the-fact (I’m going to try to do it as I go with my new WIP). There were times when I thought my eyes were going to fall out of my head, but it was really worth it for me! I would recommend changing the pink for other’s actions/words to purple, though, much easier on the eyes!
I am going to try this for a major rewrite I’ve got coming up. Great idea to color code before editing!
Sylvia van Bruggen´s Last Post: History
Hi Sylvia! I found it really helpful, although it is quite time consuming to do. The one thing I would recommend that’s different from the above is to change the pink to purple, much easier on the eyes! I hope it’s useful to you if you decide to try it.
Hey, this is a great idea. It makes me anxious to finish something so I can see it in action, too :) Very cool.
Thanks for the tip, it really works!
Celia´s Last Post: Some good news please?
What a wonderful way at looking at one’s writing. Massive chunks of my manuscript would be blue, which isn’t quite a horrible thing—I write more about someday with an extremely odd worldview, so seeing her thoughts are as important as her movements. However, your system will help me diagnose when I go too far in that direction.
Thank you for sharing this.
London Crockett´s Last Post: Flash fiction Wednesdays | A Good Day for Driving
Hi London! I hope the system works for you; I definitely found it really helpful. It’s just nice to be able to see something completely objective for once.