Kurt Vonnegut – Write on the World

The best way to understand a city is to walk it—and on my first morning in Indianapolis, that’s exactly what I did. I’m currently on my very first house sit through TrustedHousesitters, caring for two incredibly sweet, easygoing dogs. While they’ve been wonderful company during my downtime, this trip has also doubled as something I want to be intentional about moving forward: a writing retreat. Building travel around writing time—quiet mornings, unstructured afternoons, space to think—feels less like a luxury and more like a necessary shift in how I want to move through the world.

Much of downtown Indianapolis can be seen from the canal walk.

That mindset carried into my first full day, which started with a solo walk along the downtown canal. The full three-mile loop offers one of the most immersive introductions to the city you could ask for. The path winds past water, public art, and a cluster of museums that practically guarantee I’ll be back. It’s the kind of place where you don’t feel rushed. You notice things. You let the city unfold at its own pace.

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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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