The famous author plots out the three most compelling story arcs.
The fundamental concept behind Kurt Vonnegut's master's thesis in anthropology at the University of Chicago was, in Vonnegut's words, "that stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper."
Every story, Vonnegut playfully asserts, can be 'shaped' on a Y-axis of Good Fortune & Ill Fortune extended along the X-axis of Time.
“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”
“The Shape of Stories,” according to Kurt Vonnegut, was his master’s thesis in anthropology at the University of Chicago. In his 1981 autobiography “Palm Sunday,” he says it was rejected because it…
The fundamental concept behind Kurt Vonnegut's master's thesis in anthropology at the University of Chicago was, in Vonnegut's words, "that stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper."
Story Lines This comic was inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s classic lecture about the shapes of stories. It appears in the most recent issue of The Southampton Review. Posters are available at my shop.
Are certain familiar narrative arcs inherently appealing?
“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”
Need a simple way to visualise your character arc? Print this worksheet + learn about Kurt Vonnegut's hilarious story shapes.
“There’s no reason why the simple shape of stories can’t be fed into computers, they have beautiful shapes.” — Kurt Vonnegut This video is an except of a longer talk. The full transcript of this can…
Are certain familiar narrative arcs inherently appealing?
Need a simple way to visualise your character arc? Print this worksheet + learn about Kurt Vonnegut's hilarious story shapes.
It’s impossible to quantify what, exactly, makes a good story. However, underneath most popular stories, there are only a handful of familiar story ar
Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, said in his autobiography that his "prettiest contribution to culture" was his rejected master's thesis on the shapes of stories. Maybe it's because I've always struggled a bit with plotting (or maybe it's because Vonnegut's dry wit is so on
