I’m not sure if it would be helpful for your project, but you might be interested in the concept of the grammar of graphics (https://towardsdatascience.com/a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-grammar-of-graphics-for-effective-visualization-of-multi-dimensional-1f92b4ed4149).
I use a version of this in R as implemented in ggplot2. What is nice about it is that you can use standard text descriptions to build an arbitrary graph.
Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney is exactly what you are looking for.