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Too late to change now, as my attempt was in the post on Monday, but I didn't get my crayons out. Given "relating to writing, or to descriptive, delineative, or diagrammatic representation" I don't see how an appropriate word can be marked as wrong.

Throck, I don’t submit, so my espousal of the pictorial idea doesn’t mean much. I agree, as it happens, that “graphically” has a very broad potential remit, so any representation of the fate within the destination ought to be accepted. But I’m not John Green!

A struggle, not helped by adding a letter to an answer when the letter was actually removed which served to make the location of the destination much less obvious. “The escapees spell out certain thematic characters … [and] their final fate”. i.e., the letters from 34A to 8D. “Then depict … the fate of the characters within the destination.” If the “characters” within the destination is interpreted as meaning the same as the use in “a character has escaped” then they are not those that suffer the described fate, it’s the ones doing the wending but they are without the destination. Hopefully more than one interpretation of the latter sections of the preamble will be accepted because of the obvious ambiguity. I’m going back to watching the deliberately confusing season 2 of Westworld for a little light relief.

After a monumental struggle to fill the grid, I now seem to be falling at the final hurdle. I have the destination and three characters wending their way to it. I think I know roughly where the fourth character lies, but he seems to me to be wandering about beneath the destination, rather than escaping from it. If I am right, his first three letters are in plain sight and I can find his fourth letter by using the first extra word. I can also find the sixth letter and the rest of his name by using the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh extra words. However, I do not seem to be able to find the fifth letter of the escapees name, or to be able to use the second extra word. Am I close to the solution, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Sounds like you’re pretty much there to me.

Stating the obvious, the fifth letter is between the fourth and the sixth - do you have the right extra word from 27a

0pt0, the final character is definitely escaping from the destination, at least to the same extent that the other characters are entering it—but given you say the first three letters are in plain sight, this should be the case in your grid already?

Regarding the extra words, as candledave said, it does sound as though your second extra word may be incorrect.

Candledave and Chrisremo, thanks for replies. I had the correct extra words, but where I had gone wrong was to try to start the escapee from 38 down. It almost works except it crosses the seven letter character. Thanks to your inputs, I can now see that there is a much more logical starting point for the escapee. Thanks again.

Damned hard work.
The penny finally dropped yesterday in the pub when I was chatting to the comely barmaid, who has just got her BA in Eng Lit, and I recommended to her this very work, which I've actually been re-immersed in for the last two weeks with great pleasure, but which she'd never heard of.

Over a pint of the black stuff, pulled with due reverence and the requisite pauses.

[Apropos her future career I had also advised her that success is dependent on talent, hard work, but most of all on a whole lot of luck - the occurrence of good luck is outside one's control - but recognising it and grabbing it as it rushes by is a skill to be assiduously cultivated. Several times in my life I've suddenly realised that I was the right person in the right place at the right time, and grabbed the opportunity. These occasions have genuinely changed my life, and those of others, in very positive ways. Conclusion of digression.]

So - Yup - I dwell in the Land of Serendip.

The work My absolute favourite in the genre - as Jorge Luis Borges almost certainly said; "...toda la diversión sin necesidad de machete..."

All together now!: APOPIYOM!!

[maybe TMI? - but it's late in the week...]

Hard work, this one, but I found I made steady progress. Grid now done, characters, destination and survivor found. FWIW I used an orange highlighter “within”, and all the artistry I possess (which is not much).

I just have one hesitation: the escapees were to tell us where the characters “first appear”, in the work and the grid. My shortest and longest characters do indeed each appear at one of the things that the message tells us, but the middle length character just seems to show up, well, in a middle. Am I being too picky? Or have I come adrift?

Not enjoyed this at all. Have slogged my way to a full grid I think (although have a couple I can't parse), but now struggling with the endgame. I have one character of 9 letters starting on the left and finishing in the middle by changing 6 letters. Can't see any other characters or the destination,

Is the destination we are looking for 3,4,5?