A story can have multiple layers and threads, of course. But there is usually one thematic focal point, one throughline, one framing device that holds the whole story together.

In the version of the logline at the top of this thread, the unifying thematic focal point or framing device seems to be two lives that converged and then diverged and are now converging for a denouement. Which raise the dramatic question of how it happened and, more importantly, why did their lives play out like that?

But in your latest interaction your thematic focal point or framing device seems to be something else, about how (and why?) some outlaws came under the spell of a charismatic woman and followed her to their doom.

fwiw.

What does “cope with the knowledge…” mean? What’s the action line, the visual on that? Isn’t it rather the case that the knowledge of their imminent death forces them to reflect upon and confront the choices they made (or didn’t make) that has brought them to the present state of affairs? Are they not passing final judgement on how they lived their lives just before the firing squad passes its final judgement?

“Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” — Samuel Johnson. But concentrates on what?

And if the priest is trying to save her soul before she dies, that’s sounds pretty goal-driven to me. Desperately, urgently goal-driven (since there is, no doubt, a ticking clock: death at dawn, high noon or whenever).