Kurt Vonnegut on the 8 “Shapes” of Stories
The goal is not to keep the TICHN cart empty and thus write a “perfectly normal” story. A story that approaches its ending with nothing in its TICHN cart is going to have a hard time ending spectacularly. A good story is one that, having created a pattern of excesses, notices those excesses and converts them into virtues.
George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories and Why Uncertainty Is the Crucible of Creativity
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
Our personal narratives, I began to think, have shapes as much as our family ones do. Each of us carries around an unspoken set of assumptions that dictate how we expect our lives will unfold. These expectations come from all corners and influence us more than we admit. We’ve been led to believe that our lives will always ascend, for example, and a
... See moreBruce Feiler • Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age
“A story-teller must tell his story in such a way that the reader will not feel that his time has been wasted.”
Kurt Vonnegut • Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style
Moral: any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you’ll be ahead of the game. Readers bearing their own associations will do some of your work for you.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
When the shapes coalesce and evoke a truth from their association, the observer is rewarded with an overwhelmingly powerful experience.