In this third Hallmarked Man ring composition post for paid subscribers and the last one before we actually begin charting Strike 8 (with Nick Jeffery as skeptical and curious Everyman observer and student!), I share a case study in Ring Reading, namely, my structural breakdown of Career of Evil. I did it as a Workshop in 2017’s ‘Wizard Reading Formula’ (WRF), and, looking back at it, I think there are at least three very practical lessons to be taken from it.
(1) Rowling’s Making It a Lot Easier to See her Parts Division Today
There were no Parts in Career so figuring out how the book was organized was a little tricky. Fortunately, Rowling-Galbraith’s hat-tip to Ian Rankin’s John Rebus novel, Black and Blue, the chapters with a psychopathic killer’s narration and epigraphs from a rock group, also served as markers for how she’d put Strike 3 together.
In the second workshop lecture I explain the ring structures of the first two Strike novels, of which The Silkworm was the trickiest. Believe it or not, the give-away to the structure is in the table setting beneath Quine’s corpse.
(2) My Technique and Approach in Ring Charting Has Changed Through the Years
In the WRF videos I explain how to chart a book using a straight line first before drawing it as a ring. This was the technique I first saw in Sanford Schwartz’ book on Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy and used in my charting of the Harry Potter individivual novels and series. Now I start with circles for the book’s Parts and then use a supersized oval to chart the book as a whole. Nick, as you’ll see in our Hallmarked Man charting, prefers the linear charting. De gustibus…
(3) Premises Matter in Ring Writing with Respect to Results (‘You See What You Expect to See’ for Better or Worse)
The obvious point here is that you won’t find chiastic structure unless you’re looking for it deliberately, even exhaustively. You won’t find what you’re looking for if it really isn’t there, but it’s invisible to anyone, however powerful its subliminal effects, who isn’t aware of the ‘tells’ of a ring.
When I charted Career of Evil, I was looking for the fifteen point Story Formula that I’d seen in Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm. No matter how I squinted and strained to see it, though, it just wasn’t there. That was disappointing, on the one hand, because knowing Harry Potter’s story formula made predictions on the sequence of new books pretty straight forward (if still pointless). It was a relief, on the other hand, because it would have really tied the author down.
My premises going into charting Hallmarked Man, in contrast, are my experiences and consequent expectations after (1) charting Running Grave in great detail on my first read through and (2) our Kanreki posts this last July, a collaboration of love with Nick Jeffery. I became even more committed to charting Parts’ chapter sets rather than just the book as a whole after Running Grave’s analysis rewarded that effort and I realized doing it alone encouraged exactly no one to join me in the Ring Reading game.
So.
Below the paid subscriber jump, you will find: an introductory talk telling you what you’ll need to have on hand to chart a Strike novel successfully, a second talk in which I discuss the structures of the first Strike novels and the third, a ComoransArmy.com post that details the structure of Career, and a list of the fifteen Formula Points in Calling and Silkworm with explanations of which ones do and do not appear in Career.
And with that and the theory videos we’ve already posted about Ring Composition — ‘The Heart’ and ‘The Mechanics and the Mystery’ — Nick and I will begin our Hallmarked Man Ring Writing Workshop next week. See you there!
