I’m about to settle down with the manuscript of WATERSPELL Book 3: The Wisewoman to make my final revisions and get it ready for a Spring 2012 release. While sorting my notes, I found a triangle I had sketched as a visual summary of how the trilogy is structured.
THE WISEWOMAN
At the base—that is, at the bottom tip of this downward-pointing triangle—we find The Wisewoman: she who is the instigating character, the one who gets the ball rolling.
The upward-sloping left leg of the triangle represents Book 1: The Warlock. The wisewoman (Megella, pronounced Meg-Ella) sends Carin off on her quest, then remains in the background as that initial part of the story unfolds.
The top line of the structure represents Book 2: The Wysard. In this, the middle segment, Carin and Verek continue the quest, with Megella deep in the background, barely mentioned. As depicted in this little diagram of mine, during Book 2 Megella is visually and literally removed from the main action.
It’s in Book 3: The Wisewoman that Megella comes into her own. The rightmost leg of the triangle takes us back toward the beginning, back toward the woman who started things moving in the first place. In Book 3, Meg steps into the foreground, joining Carin and Verek and taking a prominent role as they conclude the quest.
ALCHEMY
The fascinating thing is: A downward-pointing triangle is the alchemical symbol for water! Get it? WATER-SPELL?
You might think I must have fully understood this structure before I began writing. But no: It only came into focus when I was deep into the writing of Book 3.
Something tells me, however, that the wisewoman has always seen how things connect. From the beginning, she’s been aware of her place at the core of the whole complex framework.
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