
At the Blackboard:  Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the shapes of stories (2005) - homarp
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/arts-letters/blackboard
======
ryanchoi
In 2016 people analyzed a bunch of fiction and these trajectories showed up:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07772](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07772)

Articles about:

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601848/data-mining-
reveal...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601848/data-mining-reveals-the-
six-basic-emotional-arcs-of-storytelling/)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/the-
six-main-arcs-in-storytelling-identified-by-a-computer/490733/)

~~~
beautifulfreak
The arxiv paper holds a link to the hedonometer, where all books in Project
Gutenberg have been mapped.
[http://hedonometer.org/books/v3/1524/](http://hedonometer.org/books/v3/1524/)

~~~
jonnydubowsky
I love the "per word happiness shift". I could totally see an ill-conceived
startup offering a quantified self analysis tool... "with our handy all-day
surveillance via your phone, we will analyze every word said by or to you and
help you understand your per-word happiness shift!".

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goto11
I think some people are taking exactly the opposite from this talk than what
Vonnegut intended.

It is not like Vonnegut have discovered stories have different dramatic
curves. This was common knowledge at the time of Aristotle. The genres Tragedy
and Comedy was _defined_ by the Greeks according to the curve of fortune: A
tragedy was about bad things happening to good people (to put is succinctly)
while comedy was the opposite.

So the curves of fortune have been fundamental for the understanding of drama
since antiquity.

What Vonnegut is pointing out is that in Hamlet the change in fortune is
actually not so clear-cut. It is often ambiguous if what happens is actually
"good" or "bad". So you cant really plot it on such a curve. Hence his
assertion that Shakespeare was a bad storyteller - at least according to
simplified narrative models.

What he actually states is that real life is too ambiguous to plot on a
god/bad curve, and that Hamlet is a masterpiece because it reflects this
ambiguity.

He is _not_ condoning Heroes Journey or other cookie-cutter narrative models.

~~~
weinzierl
This is an excellent summary.

> I think some people are taking exactly the opposite from this talk than what
> Vonnegut intended.

It's understandable though: Vonnegut spends more than half of the talk
explaining the curves. When he comes to the really interesting point about
Hamlet the connection to the first part is only loose. He only references
_Cinderalla_ and _The Metamorphosis_.

And this is were my real gripe is: Of all the typical comedies and tragedies
of the world he could have chosen any two to make his point. But he chose _The
Metamorphosis_ which is one of the worst examples to support his point.

Sure, Gregor Samsa starts out in a bad position, but does he end worse? He
doesn't seem to be concerned much about his death. Besides that everyone else
in the novella ends up much better than in the beginning and the last chapter
is certainly the brightest (warm sun and all).

------
iaw
There's an excellent video where he goes through these [0], worth a watch if
you have the time.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc)

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TipVFL
If you're interested in story structure, Dan Harmon (creator of Community, co-
creator of Rick and Morty) wrote some great tutorials that you can read here:
[http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_...](http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit)

It's basically a distillation of Joseph Campbell, and it's really entertaining
and informative.

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RangerScience
I remember reading about how older stories - Odyssey, creation myths, god
myths - are a different "sort" of story than we have now, and miss notable
elements such as twists. Mysteries weren't a thing.

And, that this was because these stories were primary told through oral
tradition, so you would hear the same stories over and over again. So stories
that weren't enjoyable when you knew what would happen either didn't get told,
or didn't last.

Now, we experience most stories only once, so things like twists work.

Thought that was an interesting idea, and Vonnegut's take on primitive stories
reminded me of it.

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hirundo
I wonder if there's a decent correlation between the Vonnegut diagram of a
movie's protagonist and the movie's box office. I'd guess that flat and
monotonic downward curves are at a disadvantage, an upsloped ending an
advantage. But you might be able to find interesting things about the number
and intervals of minima and maxima, etc. It'd be interesting to look at the
magnitude of the peaks and troughs too, but how would you calibrate the x axis
across movies or between scenes?

If it works you could be as successful in Hollywood as Raffles, the barefoot
executive.

~~~
goto11
Oh yeah, basically all successful manistream movies follows the same dramatic
model with standardized plot points designated "inciting incident",
"midpoint", "point of no return" and so on. You are not going to revolutionize
Hollywood with this insight. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
act_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure)

I think Vonnegut is actually satirizing this and saying truth is more
important than dramatic structure. Popular fiction tend to have very clear
dramatic curves, but Vonnegut is saying real life is more ambiguous.

~~~
sacado2
I am really amazed at how much we talk about that 3 act structure. Basically,
it says, well, you have a beginning, and then a middle, and then the story
ends. Not very helpful for writers, and it is not even descriptive.

If only it told you "well, your first third is the beginning, next third
middle, last third ending", but no. Actually, the second act is usually twice
longer than each other, as shown in the wikipedia article, and it is usually
cut in two parts, as there is a huge event in the middle ("No, I am your
father"-kind-of-event). OK, so, basically, you have 4 acts, right? Why not
call it a 4-act structure? And you still don't know how to structure them.

OTOH, I like Lester Dent's famous master plot formula, written in the 30s for
pulp fiction short stories: [https://www.paper-
dragon.com/1939/dent.html](https://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html) . It
is written for action-packed short stories, obviously, but describes pretty
well the structure of most Hollywood successes, too. And it can help writers,
well, write interesting stories (although it must be adapted, obviously,
unless you are writing a "must defeat the villain" story).

~~~
dragonwriter
> OK, so, basically, you have 4 acts, right? Why not call it a 4-act
> structure?

Because there's a fairly concrete distinction between acts in stage plays, and
that's how plays using the structure are tradition broken up (act divisions in
film and novels are often more metaphor than concrete, so, yeah, without the
stage precedent, it would make more sense to name it for the four parts, two
of which are jammed together in the three-act model.)

> And you still don't know how to structure them.

Yes, you do; the general “shape” of the structure had been described in detail
for a long time; the three-act structure isn't just “a beginning, middle, and
end”, it's a very particular shape (the Wikipedia page is a good brief
description, but their are good sized books covering it in detail.)

> It is written for action-packed short stories, obviously, but describes
> pretty well the structure of most Hollywood successes, too.

Not really; it's got a lot of genre and form specific but, though it's
certainly not entirely useless outside of that focus. _The Writer 's Journey_
is better for describing the shape of Hollywood successes ( _Save the Cat_
does so even more precisely for recent ones, providing very close to a minute-
by-minute breakdown.)

~~~
sacado2
> Because there's a fairly concrete distinction between acts in stage plays,
> and that's how plays using the structure are tradition broken up (act
> divisions in film and novels are often more metaphor than concrete, so,
> yeah, without the stage precedent, it would make more sense to name it for
> the four parts, two of which are jammed together in the three-act model.)

I don't know, lots of classical works were written with more than 3 acts, for
instance lots of works from Molière, Corneille or Shakespeare consist in 5
acts. The legend says back then acts were as long as the candles lighting the
scene lasted, but I don't know if it's true. If it is, it's the old equivalent
of five act structure in tv series, mandated by commercials' breaks: the
number of acts is determined by external reasons, not narrative ones.

> Not really; it's got a lot of genre and form specific but, though it's
> certainly not entirely useless outside of that focus. The Writer's Journey
> is better for describing the shape of Hollywood successes (Save the Cat does
> so even more precisely for recent ones, providing very close to a minute-by-
> minute breakdown.)

Yeah, I forgot about those 2 (I wrote my comment in a hurry). They are way
better examples, for sure.

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2bitencryption
I have no clue what Vonnegut's speaking voice/manner is like, but I read this
with Feynman's voice, and it worked very perfectly.

~~~
mjrbrennan
Here is a video version of it so you can hear!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ)

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palad1n
I had the great fortune of seeing him do this live, back in the last
millennium. The best one had to be Kafka's "Metamorphosis".

~~~
ArrayList
I think that warrants a more detailed account of the story... do tell?

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andy_ppp
I highly recommend The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut - little read compares
to his other books but fantastic Sci Fi IMO.

~~~
yesenadam
I love that (well, and _Breakfast of Champions_ ) so much I could never get
into his other novels much, because _they 're not them_. _Sirens_ was the
first novel that I _really_ connected with. I've read it so many times. "It
flung them like stones." Ha, come to think of it, I was in a band called _The
Ghosts of Saturn_ , my brother was in one called CSI (ChronoSynclastic
Infundibulum).. Isn't there supposed to be a movie coming out soon?

Once years ago I was in a 2nd hand bookshop in Sydney, and could hear a few
staff members chatting excitedly in a back room. They were laughing over plot-
points in _Sirens_! I listened for a long while, without revealing my
presence. It was glorious. :-)

It just occurred to me to recommend to anyone who hasn't seen it the movie
_Gentlemen Broncos_. I hadn't associated that and _Sirens_ before, but there
are many similarities. It's totally sci-fi, totally hilarious, and has a kind
of Vonnegutian sugar-coated melancholy too. 5 stars!

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davidw
> I have just demonstrated to you that Shakespeare was as poor a storyteller
> as any Arapaho.

What do the Arapaho have to do with any of this?

~~~
elefanten
It's a callback to the section about "primitive peoples" and their supposedly
flat stories.

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blackzeppelin
I learned this in a creative writing workshop and now I can't never think of a
story without these guidelines. Every story each time fits into one of those
descriptions, even the things that I write somehow end up being a shape of a
story as described by Vonnegut. I find it very helpful but at the same time
exasperating.

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homarp
An infographic version [http://www.mayaeilam.com/2012/01/01/the-shapes-of-
stories-a-...](http://www.mayaeilam.com/2012/01/01/the-shapes-of-stories-a-
kurt-vonnegut-infographic/)

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nsomaru
As an aside, I always thought that Polonius’ advice to Leartes is excellent,
and certainly did not read it the way Vonnegut implies.

