Strategy Follows Structure

I have been re-discovering one of my favourite authors early works, The English Assassin and The Condition of Muzak by the future literature genius to be, Michael Moorcock. Looked down on as being too science fiction orientated, he produces both science fantasy that was genre breaking from all those Conan characters of the past. As well as producing social satire given a veneer of science-fiction, giving shape to the genre Steam Punk with The Warlord of the Air and The Land Leviathan and writing some of the bleakest novels of man inhumanity man, with the Between The Wars tetralogy.

What struck me as I read his interviews with Colin Greenland on his various works in Death Is No Obstacle (publisher Savoy Books, 1992) is how novels can be structured. He points out how a novel would follow a diamond structure, starting with a point, widening to its furtherest point in the book and then contract to a resolution.

Moorcock illustrated one of his own novels, A Cure For Cancer (I would say a difficult read) as turning around the diamond as two triangles and them starting from a wide point, meeting in the centre and then widening again. He then doubled the shape, by putting two of these shapes together. He also described how the novels could be reflected in music and mentioned how his novel, Glorianna followed Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

Although, I had heard of setting down timelines, so that the characters can be laid out so they cross in the scenes where the author wants them to be. This idea of changing the narrative structure is new and is helping me look at my own work. I have used the golden section of laying down where parts of the image would be. It is inspiring my idea of The Mariners' Tales of how I can built the ideas of landscape with some of my book work.