A literary experiment · No. 01
An ocean
made of words.
A visual map of the words that recur through the novel.
Choose a current such as care or doubt. Each wave represents one chapter; the lit crests mark where that language gathers. Select a crest to see a short passage. You can explore without revealing later chapters.
Explore the interactive story mapThe language of memory, across sixteen chapters
Drawing the tides…
Choose a word above, then select a chapter wave. Select a lit crest to read a short passage.
These are traces of language, open to interpretation.
What lies underneath
A word can stay the same.
Its meaning can change.
A rule in an orientation packet. The same rule, months later. A word for care that begins as a promise and becomes a demand.
Follow a current, then touch a lit crest. A short passage lets you hear the words in context: a greeting, an instruction, a question someone can’t put down. The opening chapter is there to explore. Later passages wait until you’ve read the book.
Read the field notesHow this landscape was made
Six small, published word lists were counted in the sixteen chapters of the finished manuscript. The tides show their frequency across forty equal word windows within each chapter, with gentle smoothing between neighboring windows. The moon and colors are the frame; the crests come from the text.
Up to three high-frequency windows for the selected current are marked on each selected wave, spaced apart where possible. A short exact passage from each window connects the crest to its source; ellipses mark cuts within a sentence. The text can change the meaning of what looks like a simple peak. These are literal word matches, not measurements of emotion, intent, or plot intensity. Context, metaphor, and words outside the lists can escape the chart entirely.
Chapter interpretations are editorial readings, separate from the word counts. Inspect the data and word lists (includes full novel spoilers). Visual inspiration: Mike Bostock’s PSR B1919+21. Original rendering for this novel.
Behind every line, a story
Into Alignment
Walt loves his job. Then a customer he actually cares about asks the one question he isn’t supposed to answer honestly.
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