I’ve long wanted to try to make a visual graph for the plot of my novel, but something else always seems to take priority. Now that the book is out, maybe it’s finally time! I’m surely not the first person to try this (as a few seconds on google confirms), but I think it’ll be more fun to figure the methodology out for myself.

I won’t argue that this is an essential—or even all that valuable—way of writing a book. Despite my computer science background, I’m not convinced that quantitative methods are always best. When it comes to a story, trust your gut over Excel. That said, I’m the kind of boring person who finds graphs entertaining, so here we are, you and I.

We’re going to divide the plot into small arcs, parabolas whose sum should be a larger arc that spreads across the whole book. These might be something short-lived like “Harry Potter is mistreated by the Dursleys,” or longer-term like “Gollum wants to recover the ring.” Each of these arcs will be introduced, rise to its own climax, and then fall as the conflict is resolved.

At a given page, we can pick a number to represent the intensity of that arc. If you’re arcs are constructed “perfectly” (whatever that means), I imagine the graph would look something like this:

Because each arc starts before the previous one is finished, they overlap. Each plotline compounds, drawing you further into the story. You can see this in the sum line (blue), which builds until it hits the overall climax of the book and then falls.

Let’s try it out for The Downcast Wolves (mild spoilers ahead).

I put each arc, 22 in total, into a column and indicated the intensity value (between 0 and 1) of that plotline at the specified page. Wherever there were gaps, I filled in with a constant value (the numbers in italics).

Graphed out, it looks something like this:

Or as stacked bars:

Not bad! We’ve got a general upwards build, with a strong peak at the climax where a large number of plotlines converge. If you’ve read the book, this is when Erich and Johanna try to take Heinrich through the doorway.

But on the negative side, the graph has a trough in the middle. This lull comes as the plot is transitioning out of the first year and into the interlude with Erich in the Wehrbären. After that it picks up again, moving more briskly into the winter ball and Frau Murr’s accidental assassination attempt. Perhaps that could have been a candidate for some cuts.

If you’d like to try this on your own book, or look more at the data, you can find both the sample graph and the graph for Downcast on Google Sheets. Give it a shot and leave a comment if you do!

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