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 isn't.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a number of "Classics", including Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Sirens of Titan.
For all his great writing, and all the complexities, he simplified stories into a few basic story 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 get the basic concepts in 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" from his rejected Master's thesis from the University of Chicago.
Vonnegut's idea was fulfilled not too long ago--a computer was used to identify story shapes. Researchers extracted the emotional trajectories of 1,327 stories and discovered that there are six core emotional arcs:
- 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:
Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 9th, 2019
Tuesday was the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests. Here's a video of Chinese college students being asked about the event. It is a pretty interesting look at censorship and fear of government consequences for lack of free speech.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
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