Seemingly complex things are often simpler when understood.
This applies to many things.
For example, great writing is diverse and nuanced ... but its underlying structure often isn't.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote several "Classics", including Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Sirens of Titan.
Despite his great writing and its complexities, he was able to simplify his stories into a few basic narrative shapes.
Here is a graphic that explains the concept.
Here is a 17-minute video of Vonnegut discussing his theory of the Shape of Stories. You can grasp the basic concepts within the first 7 minutes, but he is witty, and the whole video is worth watching.
You can explore a bit more elaborate version of his "Shapes of Stories" idea in Vonnegut's rejected Master's thesis from the University of Chicago.
Researchers recently extended Vonnegut's idea by using AI to extract the emotional trajectories of 1,327 stories and discover six core emotional arcs. In case you are curious, here they are.
- Rags to riches (a rise)
- Tragedy (a fall)
- Man in a hole (fall, then a rise)
- Icarus (rise, then a fall)
- Cinderella (rise, then a fall, then a rise)
- Oedipus (fall, then a rise, then a fall)
For more on writing from Kurt Vonnegut:
My friend, John Raymonds, also has a substack. He just released a great article on the power of storytelling. It dives deep into the nature of stories and narrative transportation. Check it out.
Have a nice week.
