Jim Colors Chapter 1

I read Ramona’s post from July 23rd with interest. Being a visual thinker and a math guy (see my last post), Ramona’s First Chapter Coloring Project fit both parts of my personality.

After buying my tools, I made my first discovery: yellow and green from this set look too similar to be useful, so I substituted orange for green and followed Ramona’s rules:

Blue for Action
Orange for Dialogue
Yellow for Description
Pink for Background

I’m sure I miscolored some lines, but in my first chapter of 2,145 words and 143 lines, I found

58 Action lines
40 Dialogue lines
30 Description lines
11 Backstory lines
4 Backstory lines contained in dialogue

Oh good, I thought. It’s a nice mix and having only 10% backstory (some of which was nicely hidden in dialogue) is surely acceptable. The longest continuous backstory lasts only four lines. I was golden.

Then I looked at that four line chunk and asked questions.

Was it important information? Yes. Crucial for the reader to understand at the point I added it? Errrr, not exactly. Instead of eliciting this four line history dump with a question from a minor character, I can have my protagonist get defensive and provide this same information in a later scene when a cop questions him, upping the tension of that scene.

Then I looked at the 4 lines of backstory concealed as dialogue. Same questions; same answers.

Of fifteen lines of backstory, all are important for my readers to understand. For seven, the best place (I think) is right where I have them. Two take up one line, one takes up two lines and the third uses three lines.

I’m about to transfer the other eight lines and start coloring chapter 2.

~ Jim