Pick A Color, Any Color

A couple of months ago someone had asked in the comments to explain how I use color pens. Since I was taking a bunch of pictures for my upcoming school visit presentations, I snapped a few of my color pen graphs.

My primary use of colored pens is to help keep clear different characters or plot line.

This picture is a chart I made for Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus. I divided it up into days, then made a tiny list of what was happening with each character or plot thread on each of those days.


Also, when I'm trying to be sure that I've created enough steps/actions/lessons in any given characters arc, I'll list the major beats down on a piece of graph paper and use a different colored pen for each character. I'm not even sure I can explain how this helps me keep things compartmentalized--it must have something to do with how I absorb information visually--because the different colors really help me.


The the third most common way I use colored pens is when I am writing a hugely complex, mind boggling, confusing action scene that has to be orchestrated with lots of beats and characters. It's kind of like I sketch the scene out with little colored text blocks, like so:


Also, I forgot to mention the lovely PJ Hoover interviewed me over on The Enchanted Inkpot today.