first thanks all for subscribing!
We have three months of rhymes in the queue - publish to come will covering the falling action of Virata, stories of Jayadratha taking Draupadi during the Pandavas exile in the wilderness, Duryodhana’s arson attempt that sends the Pandavas into hiding at the beginning of their story, Hidimba the birth of fan-fav. Ghatotkacha. Following that I am thinking the chapter where the Pandavas ascend to heaven and fall out one by one. After that idk. Every time I think the project is complete, it’s not long before my mind turns toward translating more.
fair-warning this may be one of those posts.
So the idea - I pitched my editor the idea of how to adapt the war into a film. The concept was simply - a long continuous shot at the beginning from the perspectives of soldiers watching Arjuna and Krishna discuss whether Arjuna should fight on their chariot in the distance. Then just a steady stream of every event in the war - breaking only for the day 12 intermission of another long continuous shot of the horses - and then through to the end. The fade to black credits goes to the post-war middle of the night murders of the sleeping Upapandavas, Dhristadyumna and Shikhandi by Ashvatthama, Kripa and Kritavarma.
The challenge for those that may not have read is the quantity of action described in the war. To that end I broke down some of the math - count up every event and use an average number of seconds. I found that if every event could be an average of 30 seconds, the entire war would fit within a three-hour film. My editor suggested I put together a concept pitch so she could float the idea to script writers she knows. So that’s I am working on.
However in the process of quantifying the war yielded what may be interesting metrics that quantify the war. I threw these up in the notes. check em out.
Plot Point Math
rising action, climax and falling action represented in math
yoke
distribution of how many battles each warrior participated in yields a bell curve.
two chariot wheels
shares of war fighting by warrior pie graph
blocks
bar graphs of warriors activities
the event count follows from the text - lines and numbers as documented in the war chapters.
incidentally - here is the post that I am working on to share with scriptwriters. g’luck!
happy friday y’all!