Literary Constellations by Nicholas Rougeux

When a story is well-written, you can become so immersed while reading that it becomes your world. All your surroundings disappear and all that remains are the words on the page guiding you through the story. These words can be transformed into constellation-like diagrams. The first words of a story—and even every chapter—are unique in that they set the stage for what's to come.

Constellations were created from words of first sentences of each chapter in classic short stories to draw a paths based on word length and part of speech. The directions of lines were based on part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) and length is based on the length of the word. Star sizes are also based on word length. Constellations were hand-arranged in a loose clockwise pattern starting at the top with a faint highlight connecting each in the order chapters appeared in the story representing the cloud of the galaxy usually shown in vintage star charts.