Prelude to Revision: Survey Read and Circular Mapping

In between getting to grips with the top-level structural challenges of Three Katherines, I've been doing a 'survey read' of the freshly-written Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland part, almost entirely for the purpose of mapping its structure and what happens where within it. This I've just finished. I now have a ready overview of the work, which is going to come in for a lot of use over the next week or two while I let the actual text cool down.

The tool I find far and away best for getting this sort of overview is brownnicky's famous Circle Diagram, which represents the telling not as an extended line but as a finite circle or clock-face. It's a simple and excellent device for getting a handle on narrative rhythm and top-level form. I don't use it the same way as Nicky herself does - but I find myself using it more and more over the past few years, and this time it certainly hasn't disappointed me.

Things leaping out from this survey:

- The narrative arcs I used in construction aren't quite the same as the ones observed in the achievement. There are quite clearly four :

1) The Last Quest - moderate length, stern of pace, single of line, full of 'Descent into the Underworld' thematic resonances;
2) The Fairfields Wassail - a touch longer, more pastoral, meandering and ramifying: healing, haven, humankindness, and their complications;
3) The Rising - the crucible of the tale, longest and boldest and dominant: rising repeatedly into clash and shatter, martial in mood even in the quietly ferocious struggles between the willers of peace and of war; fog, wildfires, heroism and victory of a kind;
4) The Home Fires - about the length of the Last Quest; a bewildered start furiously accelerating to a climax, multiple plotlines all burning like fuses; resonances of the royal sacrifice that breaks the winter's heart and redeems the spring.

When I say resonances, I really mean resonances: I'm not here describing literal plot elements here. The numinous elements of this tale are more elusive, less clearly patterned in tradition, and (I hope) not drained of power by too frequent and careless invocation. To me they are enchanting and disturbing, and I don't wholly understand them: they can't, I think, be directly pressed into service as parts of something so unrelievedly concrete and explicit as a plot.

- One thing the circle diagram has shown me very clearly, and which points out its own limits, is the very different density of important events in different sections. The Last Quest is sparse and deliberate; the Home Fires, which balances it on the diagram and in length of text, is practically exploding with plot pressure and density by comparison, to the point where it's seriously inconvenient to mark off the chief content of the two arcs upon the same circle.

- I'm quite pleased with the overall shape and rhythm this reveals, and hope I can preserve a form pretty much like this in the edit. My next largish support project, suggested by the main annoyance encountered in this one, is to set up a handy tree diagram for following all the proliferating plotlines. Pruning is just going to be too difficult and dangerous without one!

Whilst constructing this, I shall be returning to my regularly scheduled top-level ruminations.