Just added an index. Tell me if you find any linking problems.
Just added an index. Tell me if you find any linking problems.
Updates:
1) Just fixed (most of?) the April Fool's Day text. Ugh.
2) Eventually, after I finish this, I'll probably take some of the ideas from the Fanfic/Crossover Ideas Threads and show how you'd adapt them. Basically just to demonstrate the system in action. (I'd also take requests, much like an underpaid carnival worker who crafts balloon animals).
Quick notes on chapter length
Dan Brown's average is ~1300 words per chapter. The chapters range from ~200 words to ~3500. Only the post-climax lecture/epilogue goes above ~2800, though, and only the foreword dips below 200.
So when divvying up those word counts in each section, your numerical limitations do about half the work for you.
For instance:
In Part II, 15 chapters can be at most 20,000 words. You can't make them all 2600 word chapters even if you wanted to. If you want a long chapter at one point, you have to shorten the next one. You either keep all 15 chapters around 1300 words, or start alternating between long and short. The structure forces the pace.
Everything stays in balance, and your fifteen cliffhangers get more or less evenly distributed.
Average chapter of 1300 words?
Wow, that's actually shorter than my average. I am genuinely shocked.
Considering the size of the books, that's a lot of chapters.
This is an interesting breakdown. And way more thought than I ever put into these things.
Ragnarok, come day of wrath
That fallen souls might bear our plea.
To hasten the Divine's return.
O piteous Wanderer.
Yeah, Brown's pacing is breakneck despite the infodumps. Something like 108 chapters for 140k words, depending on how you divvy everything up.Originally Posted by Siriel
It even makes ye olde timey pulpeteers like Moorcock, Dent, and Gardner look like slowpokes with their ~2000k chapters.
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Thanks.
Of course, the end goal is to create a formula so people don't have to put (as much) thought into plotting, and can focus on all those glorious character interactions and fun ideas instead.
Jesus. And I feel bad if my chapters are less than 10k :/
There's probably a reason my stories never ended up getting finished.
Keeping in mind, of course, that plenty of good books have been written with monster chapters and even without chapters. Very short chapters is a specific genre-aesthetic.
^ This.
I think Márquez once write a novel without separate paragraphs.
Piece by Piece Dissection, Part III
Tallied Word Counts Chart
I debated exactly how to draw out these "clues" for a long time. They tend to blend into one another. Ultimately, I decided to keep the ~20k word structure for this one, since Sauniere's second Fetch Quest seems to tie its remaining loose ends up at that point. It's not perfect (you could argue that the Con of Man and the key are separate puzzles rather than two halves of the same quest), but I'm going with it anyway.
Like the others, this section begins with a code -- "SO DARK THE CON OF MAN" -- that will eventually lead to further Sunday morning puzzles, lectures about Da Vinci, and the like. It's an anagram like the last one. (I will note in passing that Jacques Sauniere was a remarkable puzzle-designer while expiring.)
The characters run around a lot more in this one than the previous one. You still get the impromptu history lecture, but Sophie and Langdon care more about jogging through the Louvre to finish their fetch-quest. They also deal with a recalcitrant security guard. I've considered him part of the Pursuers faction for table-drawing purposes.
@ ~32,000 words: PUZZLE #2 begins -- "So dark, etc. etc." won't appear until later. Initially, Sophie and Langdon only know WHERE it is, and race to collect it. Once again, Brown sets up a multi-part puzzle. They first repeat the Mona Lisa anagram solution on another anagram, and then they get a key with "Priory" symbolism. Ultimately, they figure out that this belongs to a Zurich bank. But that's later.
@ ~37,000 words and ~39,000 words: The Obligatory Canonical Lecture -- This one deals with "goddess" worship and the like. It reveals parts of Brown's "Big Idea".
@ ~50,000 words: The Priory Lecture -- Like freaking clockwork. Another 10k words in, and once again the lecture aims at unraveling a particular clue: the designs on the key from behind a painting. It's a Priory symbol. (This information doesn't help that much, since the cross is actually a symbol of Switzerland. But Brown makes us THINK it's relevant, so we keep reading). The 50k lecture also deals with the "Big Idea".
@ ~53,000 words: PUZZLE SOLVED. It washis sleda bank key. And as soon as we find out it's a key to a bank box, we have another question: how to get access to whatever Sauniere put there. Another PUZZLE.
Section Summary - Part III (notice that this is getting a little faster to graph now).
Words: 21452 (~20,000)
POVs: Evil Conspiracy, Protagonists, Stepping Stones, Pursuers
Word counts for longer chapters where each faction is the primary (but not necessarily exclusive) POV:
(1) Protagonists - 16138 words
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 2730 words
(3) Pursuers - 1205 words
(4) Stepping Stones - 431 words [also splits an 824 word POV chapter with the Evil Conspiracy]
(* As before, this doesn't count chapters with two main POVs. This is actually a lot less of a challenge than you'd think. The only tricky part comes from two scenes: First, a 1738 word scene that the Protagonists share with the Pursuers. I would lean toward either splitting the difference -- 900 POV words to each -- or giving it all to the Pursuers. You need to keep the tension high, and adding the Pursuers would do that. By the same logic, you could either give 400 words each to the Evil Conspiracy and the Stepping Stones, or give all ~800 to one of them. It really depends on your story's specific needs.)
(** Speaking of which, back in Part Deux, you can do the same thing with a 1101 word POV chapter that the Protagonists and Pursuers share. Give it to either depending on how you want your story to develop.)
Chapters / Cliffhangers in section: 19
# of "Small" Appearances (short chapters and secondary POVs):
(1) Protagonists - 1
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 1
(3) Pursuers - 2
(4) Stepping Stones - 1
Developments
(1) The chase continues! The Evil Conspiracy and the Protagonists haven't bumped into each other yet, but they're closing in. I think that this is intentional -- Brown wants us to focus on the duel between the Pursuers and the Protagonists right now rather than diluting it.
(2) The Protagonists take a larger part in this section than the last. They've got over 75% of the word count.
(3) Two "canon" lectures connected to the puzzle.
(4) Once again, Brown doesn't allow the characters to rest on their laurels. No sooner have they arrived at Sauniere's bank than they have to figure out how to get what's inside.
(5) Really pay attention to the POV chapters with two "Main" POVs that I mentioned in the word count section. These will give you some flexibility when telling your story. Use them wisely.
(6) Silas, the Evil Conspiracy's henchman, killed a Stepping Stone POV character here. Remember that these are factions rather than individuals. If you want to go GRR Martin on your characters, you can. (Within limits. Kill too many well-developed characters and you'll kill the reader's emotional investment as well.)
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Applying this to the Fifth War
--> Shirou hears more about the Grail War, and especially Kiritsugu's part in it. He thinks back to little snippets of information he heard before from the old man. Not that he'd paid any attention at the time, but now they're a lot more interesting. Maybe he rummages through his house for anything Kiritsugu left behind.
Shirou might ask Rin a couple pointed questions about why things ended horribly last time around. For instance:
"So why did things end horribly last time around?"
"How should I know? AskTeabingKirei. He's an even more shameless infodumper than I am, and he's better at leaving out crucial information to further the plot."
"Rin, I'm a creature of linear plotlines. A simple shounen protagonist, if you will. Stop being meta."
Rin, for her part, asks Shirou questions about what Kiritsugu told him. And his answers are...thought provoking.
Bear in mind that we have several unanswered questions right now that help build up to the final revelations of the Fifth War. They include:
-- What's up with the Grail?
-- Why did Kiritsugu reject it?
-- What was/is Kirei's role in this whole thing? (He killed Rin's father so that he could destroy the world. That gives everybody a bigger emotional stake, but ALSO hints at the Grail's corruption and Kirei's schemes.)
-- What else was going on that might give us insight into the last days of the War?
-- What's up with the Einzbern homunculi?
You can use one or more of these. And we don't just need to talk about history here, either. Rin might consult / infodump her magical lore about some of this stuff too.
Also note: The infodump lectures in this part of Dan Brown's novel connected the Big Idea with the Evil Conspiracy. Since we're probably using the Matous for the Evil Conspiracy, at least one of Rin's lectures should explain the Matou role in the War, the tragedy with Kariya, etc. Maybe they even mention Sakura, although that's kinda unlikely.
Basically, Rin's lectures unravel the plot of Grail War #4, told a bit at a time.
--> Ilya is chasing them. And she JUST FOUND THEM.
--> (My preference) Ilya totals their house(s), because (1) Rin's house is a big target that everybody knows about, and (2) Shirou's house is easily discoverable by anybody with a phone book.
They go on the lam, racing to stay one step ahead of Ilya, chased from one unusual spot in Fuyuki to the next.
--> Before or during battle, Ilya might deliver a monologue about her past and the way Kiritsugu abandoned her. (Less as a play for sympathy than as a logical prelude to KILL THEM, BERSERKER!). This could even serve as a "lecture", since it helps solve a couple of the unanswered questions / puzzles mentioned above.
Viewpoints continue as before. Medea's schemes have probably ripened by now. Depending on how much wordcount bandwidth you want to take from the dual-use chapters, you could narrate a lot of her POV. Alternatively, you could focus on the Matous' progress in the War.
Ilya ironically got more consideration in this version than she gets in most other fanfiction. We saw several chapters from her POV in the last section. Here, she only gets (roughly) a single chapter's worth. But that's still better than nothing. If you want, you can also fiddle with the dual-POV scene I mentioned above, and give her up to ~3000 words' worth. Depends how much you want to flesh her out and/or scare the audience that she's COMING FOR SHIROU.
Last edited by Zalgo Jenkins; April 4th, 2014 at 12:22 AM.
Also, as I look over this monstrosity, I'm realizing that I should probably use something like YWriter (which tracks POV and location) as the story-software-of-choice, rather than what I use right now.
Pfft.
Real men use spreadsheets.
Real men use monstrous handwritten charts.
I fucking knew it. There's no way Heller could've handled a timeline that screwed up without one of those bastards.
...Okay, there's no way I can top this.Pfft.
Real men use spreadsheets.
The ONLY time I came close to this level of craziness was when I first learned how to write fiction by grabbing a book of writing exercises and weaving them into a 150k word crossover fanfic "freehand".
Since then, of course, my writing muscles have grown soft and flabby by relying on outlining software. But it was not always thus. Let no man judge me too harshly.
Last edited by Zalgo Jenkins; April 4th, 2014 at 03:00 AM.
Oh yeah, my writing style is just not at all suitable for the Dan Brown style of writing. That's all my comments were alluding to.
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Oh yeah, my writing style is just not at all suitable for the Dan Brown style of writing. That's all my comments were alluding to.
Piece by Piece Dissection, Part IV
Tallied Word Counts
I'm not happy with this section. It breaks the previous pattern to some degree, but not enough to make me abandon the ~20k blobs thus far.
There's clearly a beginning and endpoint to this phase of the journey, although the puzzles don't quite work in the same rhythm. It begins with Langdon and Sophie entering the bank, and ends with them (treasure now in hand) racing to Teabing. Nice and neat.
Here's the problem: While the puzzles before were multi-part codes and scavenger hunts, the only TRUE puzzle here terminates pretty quickly at the 59,000-word mark. Barely 6k words in. After that, Langdon and Sophie get a Da Vinci cryptex. The scene looks something like this:
Langdon: Behold the Priory's greatest secret!
*bank vault opens*
*they remove a series of stone rotors linked to a central axis, with liquid inside*
Langdon: WTF?!
...And another enterprising Stepping Stone tries to bump them off / steal it after that.
On the other hand, Brown gives us a non-canonical mini lecture shortly thereafter about cryptexes, early cryptography, and Da Vinci. (Speaking of which...Noncanon Lecture @~65,000 words - The Priory and the "keystone".)
Bear in mind that this is my own interpretation, but I think that the "puzzle" in the second half of this section was the cryptex itself. What it is, what it does, and how to get something out of it. (Turns out that it's a Priory "keystone" -- Brown's own invention. Mystery solved.) As evidence, I cite (1) Brown pairing a lecture with the cryptex, (2) Brown writing Langdon as completely baffled by it, and (3) Brown's choice to end both puzzle-hunts with a physical object (a key, a cryptex).
So I think we have a two-part puzzle here after all, just like the preceding section. Part #1 was the vault's combination and the Fibonacci sequence. Part #2 was figuring out what on earth the cryptex was, and how it connected with the Priory.
But the bigger puzzle -- the cryptex's contents -- will have to wait. Because Brown now launches his characters toward the book's midpoint climax at Teabing's house...and toward the book's largest sustained infodump.
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Section Summary - Part IV
Words: 16992 (~17,000) [NOTE: Depends where you put the cutoff between this section and Teabing's. Could be as low as 15k or as high as 20k].
POVs: Evil Conspiracy, Protagonists, Stepping Stones, Pursuers
Word counts for longer chapters where each faction is the primary (but not necessarily exclusive) POV:
(1) Protagonists - 12885 words
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 1846 words
(3) Pursuers - 0 words
(4) Stepping Stones - 1496 words
(* So a few surprises this time. Brown didn'tgive the Pursuers any full chapters to themselves in this section, but gave the Stepping Stones a lot more than usual. I think that's because he's heated up the conflict between the Stepping Stones and the Protagonists, since the former more or less disappear as an independent force after this section. Also, the Evil Conspiracy is inching closer to a confrontation with the Protagonists as well.)
Chapters / Cliffhangers in section: 13
# of "Small" Appearances (short chapters and secondary POVs):
(1) Protagonists - 0
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 0
(3) Pursuers - 1
(4) Stepping Stones - 3
Developments
(1) The Evil Conspiracy is hurtling toward the Protagonists like a tonsured freight train. We'll see everybody collide eventually. In the meantime, the Evil Conspiracy doesn't get any "reminder" chapters because they've already got a couple longer ones to themselves.
(2) The Stepping Stones get several "reminder" chapters and a couple larger ones. They'll mostly disappear after this section, but they go out with a bang. That's significant, BTW. Brown doesn't leave his plot threads going forever, since they'd end up bumping into each other until they clogged the story. Like GRR Martin viewpoint characters, some must die so that others can flourish.
(3) Only one major lecture in this one, and it's not canon. (@~65,000 words).
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Adapting it to the Fifth War
First off, just for fun -- how would Dan Brown have written Kirei?
DanBrown!Kirei
As far as the main plotline goes:
--> Medea probably goes down fighting against Shirou and Rin at this point. A lot of the conflict in these chapters will focus on that.
--> Shirou's answered some more of his questions about War #4, but still has issues that need resolving.
--> They've escaped Ilya for now, but she'll get around to them eventually.
--> Shinji and House Matou are about to cross paths with Shirou and Rin. Perhaps they've noticed that the Witch of Betrayal is gone, and think that Shirou & Rin have been weakened.
Last edited by Zalgo Jenkins; April 4th, 2014 at 06:12 PM.
Piece by Piece Dissection, Part V
And the infodumps have arrived.
Once again, a ~20,000 word blob works pretty well here. It doesn't include ANY puzzles, except insofar as the entire book thus far has been a puzzle. Teabing gives us chapter and verse about the Priory, the Templars, "goddess" worship, all manner of conspiracies, etc.
Oh, and the Game Master POV arrives. We don't notice yet that he's The Bad Guy.
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Section Summary - Part IV
Words: 21301-ish (~20,000) [Probably miscounted here]
POVs: Evil Conspiracy, Protagonists, Pursuers, Game Master (secondary)
Word counts for longer chapters where each faction is the primary (but not necessarily exclusive) POV:
(1) Protagonists - 19627 words
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 392 words
(3) Pursuers - 1674 words
(4) Game Master - 0 words
Chapters / Cliffhangers in section: 16
# of "Small" Appearances (short chapters and secondary POVs):
(1) Protagonists - 0
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 4
(3) Pursuers - 2
(4) Game Master - 1
Developments
(1) Farewell Stepping Stones; we hardly knew ye.
(2) Multiple CANONICAL LECTURES: starting at @73708 words, @74527 words, @77865 words, and @81177 words. It's actually easier to say when the lectures (canon and noncanon) stop: at roughly 85,000 words, when Silas crashes into the room.
(3) This section serves as the midpoint climax. Everybody -- the Pursuers, the Evil Conspiracy, the Protagonists, and the Game Master -- collides at around the 85k mark. Somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 through the section.
(4) After the infodump, the rest of the section devolves into a fight and chase.
(5) Even though the protagonists sit still for a gigantic infodump, Brown gives us repeated glimpses of the Evil Conspiracy and the Pursuers closing in. You'll want to do the same to keep the readers rooted in the present.
(6) The section ends with Sophie reminding us that there's still a LEFTOVER PUZZLE to solve -- the cryptex. She focuses everybody's attention on that. You can practically hear the cryptographer, symbologist, and religious historian cracking their knuckles as they grin at the cryptex like wolves around a carcass.
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Adapting it to the Fifth War
Not much to say here:
--> Rin and Shirou get almost the entire story of the Fourth Grail War, minus Kirei's involvement. You could include the idea that the Grail was corrupted, too. (Kiritsugu presumably tried to warn the Einzberns, and they didn't listen). Probably no nitpicky canon 3rd War details about HOW it got corrupted yet, though. Where / from whom / how they get these lectures up to the author. You might even have multiple tellers.
--> House Matou, probably in the form of Shinji, finally strikes.
--> So does Ilya.
--> Go briefly to Kirei's viewpoint, whether or not you've chosen to place him in a scene with any of the factions.
--> Massive pileup. Lots of magic exchanged. Fireworks, etc.
--> Rin and Shirou barely escape by the skin of their teeth, but now they realize that they've got bigger problems thanthe Grail War. If the info they've just received is accurate, the Grail may be corrupted. What to do...? [At the very least, they realize that there's something up with the Grail by now.]
--> You could kill Shinji off at this point, really. As a parallel to The Da Vinci Code, remember that Silas diminished as an independent threat from this point forward, while Teabing got stronger. And Zouken's still around to lead House Matou. Plus he has Sakura -- who will serve as a nice little surprise later on in the vein of Teabing / Remy.
I quoted this section before, but it just reminded me of one of the better fanfictions in recent history:
Devil May Care.
Ian Fleming's estate paid a well-regarded novelist named Sebastian Faulks to write "as Ian Fleming". Not just "write a Bond novel," notice, but "write a Bond novel indistinguishable from the originals."
Faulks read Fleming's description of his own methods -- "How to Write A Thriller" -- analyzed Fleming's prose style, read a bunch of literary criticism about Fleming, and got to work.
The ensuing act of literary necromancy sounded a lot like Fleming's voice. "Original flavor", if you will. And everybody was In Character. A lot of writers have "influences" on their own work, but this took it to a higher level.
Piece by Piece Dissection, Part V
Tallied Word Counts
Our heroes have hopped on a plane for England, and they have the box. They just found another clue about how to open it, too: a piece of paper with script that they'll later reveal as mirror writing.
PUZZLE (piece) @ ~93,000 words -- The mirror writing. (Solved within a chapter)
PUZZLE (piece) @ ~94,500 words -- More mirror writing, and a poem.
Brown couples these with some historical lectures about atbash ciphers, iambic pentameter, "goddess" worship, etc. He's scrunched multiple puzzles in a short space, so the lectures and the puzzles weave right into each other.
They also include a brief lecture about the Priory's orgy ritual at ~97,000 words, complete with Sophie's rather disturbing flashbacks of watching her grandfather in one. (Yes, it went there.)
Oddly enough, this second (third?) lecture ties in more with the characters' personal issues, rather than the solution to the cryptex.
PUZZLE (piece) @ ~99,000 words -- The fiendishly complicated process to open the cryptex continues. More cipher lore. Aaaaand...it opens.
To another cryptex.
At this point, we learn that this chapter's puzzle is actually more fiendishly complicated than expected. Even dying from a gunshot wound, Jacques Sauniere was a sadistic old bastard.
So this is going to be a two-parter as well. The first part was easy: opening the cryptex. The second part will be much tougher: Finding the clue to open the SMALLER cryptex inside the first one. Fortunately, we have help: a riddle.
In London lies a knight a Pope interred...[and so on.]
Once again, Brown gives us a new clue just as the last one is solved. The two-part puzzle divides this section almost evenly. The characters quickly solve this one, though, which makes it more about tying up loose ends. It still belongs to the first puzzle.
So our heroes hie themselves off to the appropriate place for interred knights: the Templars' church in London. But when they get there, no Grail. So they'd actually arrived at the WRONG solution.
Ha! Thought unravelling a 2,000 year old conspiracy was going to be easy, didn't you?
Ladies and gentlemen, our puzzle remains the same as the one we began this section with: the poem. Not that Our Heroes have long to think about this failure, since Remy betrays them, Silas breaks loose, and the Forces of Darkness make their move at ~110,000 words.
So to summarize:
* Two part puzzle. First part ends at ~100k words. Second part ends at ~110k words.
* The second part turns out to have been wrong, though, which effectively presents our heroes with a "new" puzzle for the next section.
* Two or three noncanon lectures throughout. Two tie in with the puzzle pieces. A third relates to one of the Protagonists' personal issues.
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Section Summary - Part V
Words: 19,674 (~20,000)
POVs: Evil Conspiracy, Protagonists, Pursuers, Game Master
Word counts for longer chapters where each faction is the primary (but not necessarily exclusive) POV:
(1) Protagonists - 13809 words
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 406 words
(3) Pursuers - 1621 words
(4) Game Master - 913 words
(* This section also contains two "shared" main POV chapters. The first splits 1940 words between the Protagonists and Pursuers. The second splits 1427 words between the Evil Conspiracy and the Pursuers. So you have options again.)
Chapters / Cliffhangers in section: 16
# of "Small" Appearances (short chapters and secondary POVs):
(1) Protagonists - 0
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 0
(3) Pursuers - 2
(4) Game Master - 3
Developments
(1) The Game Master has started to creep up.
(2) After the Protagonist-heavy infodump section last time, Brown leavens the codes, ciphers, and lectures with not two, but THREE factions after the Protagonists. The POV word counts mislead you a little here; Brown created two split chapters that could give up to ~3500 more words to the non-Protagonist factions.
(3) No canonical lectures here, but the clues still unlock infodumps that qualify as lectures for all practical purposes.
(4) To everybody's surprise, Remy turns traitor. Betrayal! Gasp.
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Adapting it to the Fifth War
Probably something like:
--> Shirou and Rin try to figure out how to put a stop to the Grail madness. The alternating lectures and problems probably involve a lot of magecraft technobabble, plus a little bit of history. Rin reveals more of her own family's history (including Daddy, and probably Sakura) in a heartfelt confession-slash-lecture. These pieces will become VERY important later, since they reveal Kirei's treachery. For now, though, Shirou and Rin's frantic hypothesizing goes on the wrong tracks. They know that somebody screwed with the Grail in War #4 and ruined the game for everybody, but they don't yet suspect Kirei, so the sequence is off. Perhaps they finger Kariya and Zouken as likely suspects. The Matous are behind everything. Shock. Horror.
--> IN THE MEANTIME...The Matous have been damaged, but not beaten. Zouken activates his backup schemes. Probably involving Sakura and True Assassin. (Although Sakura is not treacherous or conniving like Remy, revealing her now would serve the same dramatic purpose).
--> We start to see Kotomine move. As yet, we don't know that it's Kotomine -- just that somebody has activated Gil.
--> Ilya, dogged little psychopath that she is, is still chasing Shirou. Berserker's banged up, but Ilya reasons that Saber and Archer (if he's even still alive at this point) probably aren't doing too hot either. She's right. Ilya's inner monologues might even give us some clues that Rin and Shirou are missing.
--> Archer's betrayal / attempt to kill Shirou might work somewhere around here, actually. It parallels Remy's flip-flop.
Last edited by Zalgo Jenkins; April 5th, 2014 at 02:33 AM.
Closing in on the finale now...
Chart #3 - Tallied Word Counts
Piece by Piece Dissection, Part VI
PUZZLE (piece) @ ~111,000 words -- Second verse, same as the first: Where's the knight's tomb?
--> Answered at ~120,000 words -- It'sthe economy, stupidIsaac Newton's Tomb.
PUZZLE (piece) @ ~120,000 words --...But wait a minute. What does Newton's tomb actually SAY about solving this mess?
--> Answered at ~130,000 words: His tomb doesn't contain an apple. That's the cryptex password. Apple.
Ta da.
So once again, Brown's included two puzzle pieces before the cryptex opens. And they're spaced pretty evenly, just like most of them have been throughout this story.
While he occasinally diverges from the pattern (at the beginning and the infodumpy middle), Brown's favored section structure seems to be:
* 20k words -- two linked clues at ~10,000 word intervals, or close thereto.
The 10k intervals aren't perfect, which is why I opted for a longer 20k interval structure. But they're usually pretty close.
That aside, the final pieces fall into place here: Teabing reveals himself as the Game Master, and nixes the albino assassin in the process. Fache does a 180 and joins the good guys, which reduces tension from his side of the fence. Langdon solves the last puzzle after a stirring climax. Teabing loses, and falls off his crutches in a bad Kayneth impression.
But we still have some mopping up to do. And the next section will settle those pesky little details.
Lectures: The Alexander Pope "lecture" is kinda weird -- it's a description of repeated internet searches. And the final puzzle doesn't have a lecture at all. It uses stuff we already know: a piece of historical trivia and wordplay involving apples.
Again, cutting the lectures makes sense. Brown wants a finale, not another infodump. The Pope "lecture" probably does qualify as a short one, though.
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Section Summary - Part VI
Words: 19,702 (~20,000)
POVs: Evil Conspiracy, Protagonists, Pursuers, Game Master
Word counts for longer chapters where each faction is the primary (but not necessarily exclusive) POV:
(1) Protagonists - 5423 words
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 2868 words
(3) Pursuers - 1917 words
(4) Game Master - 2953 words
* This section also contains LOTS of "shared" main POV chapters. More by far than any other section. They are:
-- Game Master / Protagonists (1827)
-- Game Master / Protagonists (2848)
-- Game Master / Protagonists (2624)
Total = 7299 words shared POV between the Game Master and Protagonists
Chapters / Cliffhangers in section: 16
# of "Small" Appearances (short chapters and secondary POVs):
(1) Protagonists - 0
(2) Evil Conspiracy - 3
(3) Pursuers - 1
(4) Game Master - 2
Developments
(1) The Game Master could get a LOT of development in these chapters if you choose to use those words. Brown knew what he was doing: those extra POV words gave both sides an emotional stake while the situation unraveled. If you look at The Da Vinci Code honestly, it's not nearly as pyrotechnic as most people remember. A couple people die, mostly offstage. The albino assassin doesn't shoot -- or even shoot AT -- any of the main characters. The finale involves a single crippled guy holding a gun on Langdon and Sophie. And yet it all works because Brown's entangled everybody and everything so closely. The stakes are incredibly high for everybody. I therefore recommend that you give at least SOME of that massive block of shared words to your Game Master, whoever he is.
(2) By the end of this section, Brown has defanged both the Pursuers and the Evil Conspiracy. Fache realizes that he's been an idiot and basically joins the Protagonists by the end. (Although his help comes late, and is largely useless). Silas gets shot. Brown removes these guys to focus the last conflict on the Game Master and the Protagonists, just as it should be.
(3) During this section, the "chase" pattern reverses itself. Langdon and Sophie stop running from the Pursuers, and start chasing the Game Master. (Although Teabing turns on them and catches them first.)
(4) More than any other section, this one focuses on the peripheral guys: the Game Master, the Pursuers, the Evil Conspiracy. They splinch out one by one, leaving only the Pursuers and the Game Master to duke it out.
--> Fache bows out of the chase almost as soon as the section begins: at ~113k words.
--> Silas takes longer, but he's running at this point. The Teacher has already told him that his mission is over.
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Adapting it to the Fifth War
--> Kotomine ties up loose ends with a vengeance. Gil rips Ilya's heart out and pulverizes whatever's left of the Matous.
--> Shirou and Rin finally figure out that Kotomine has been playing them the whole time. Most of the 4th War's remaining mysteries have resolved themselves. Kirei killed Tokiomi and tried to destroy the world. And he's trying to do it again.
--> More puzzles are solved at long last: Kirei's child-unfriendly basement battery scheme, why on earth Gil's still around (Yeah, I forgot that part earlier -- it would also make a good piece of mystery to solve), and why Kotomine allowed Shirou to get so far. Shirou now realizes that he didn't "connect" with Kotomine at all. He was an experiment. But now that experiment has decided he needs to put the experimenter down.
--> While the second infodump runs its course, Shirou, Rin, and Kotomine fight it out. Arturia and Gil do likewise. Unlike Brown's comparatively subdued climax, this one crackles with pyrotechnics galore.
--> Kotomine loses. The heroes triumph. All is right with the world...or as right as Nasuverse is ever going to get, which is actually pretty sucky considering the body count.
To Be Continued...
Last edited by Zalgo Jenkins; April 5th, 2014 at 02:34 AM.
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