ANNOUNCEMENT: ISO guest bloggers to write posts for each of the story structures listed below. Please scroll to the bottom of this post for details.
Kurt Vonnegut, the acclaimed American author known for his satirical and anti-war writings, was critical of the traditional, linear approach that dominates much of literature and popular culture. He preferred a more experimental, non-linear approach that allowed for more creativity and surprise. In a lecture on the shapes of stories, Vonnegut suggested that stories could be graphed on a simple chart, with the y-axis representing the level of happiness or unhappiness experienced by the protagonist, and the x-axis representing the progression of the story over time.
Vonnegut also identified several basic story structures that he believed were common to most stories. These structures are based on the emotional journey of the protagonist and the overall shape of the plot. Following are some examples of a few of the simple shapes of story structures identified by Vonnegut:
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