Novelist Kurt Vonnegut Explains The Structure Of Stories

Kurt Vonnegut At Typewriter

Writers, here’s a little fun Thursday lunchtime activity for you. Think about the story you’re currently working on/avoiding. What shape does it take? Get a pen and some paper and trace it out. On the axis of good fortune versus ill fortune, where do your characters tend to fall?

Kurt Vonnegut was born 99 years ago today, so it’s high time we revisit one of his best craft lectures. In it, he breaks down his taxonomy of storytelling. But none of this “beginning → rising action → climax → falling action → resolution” crap that we learn in middle school. He begins: “Stories have very simple shapes, ones that computers can understand.” And then he goes on to do a little literary stand-up comedy, tracing the story arc of HamletThe Metamorphosis, and even Cinderella. Not by plot, but by the feelings of the characters we follow. For Kurt Vonnegut, the true movement of a story lays in a character’s happiness.

If you have 17 minutes to spare today, I recommend you give it a watch and maybe plot your own happiness, too. In fact, tag yourself. (We’re Kafka’s cockroach.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ

Astroturf: the Black Art of Deceit Exposed

This talk is a real eye-opener. Veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson shows how fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests and known by the cute epithet “astroturf”, manipulate and distort media messages. Some of the most egregious exponents of this black art of deceit are – you guessed it – certain pharmaceutical corporations. Attkinson’s revelations leave Wikipedia’s credibility utterly shredded as she exposes what is essentially a criminal operation designed to con, intimidate, ruin and deceive. This is an education no-one should miss, not least because she gives you simple strategies for seeing through it and sifting fact from fiction.
http://www.goforwardtogether.com/2015/03/17/astroturf-the-black-art-of-deceit-exposed/