I’d seen the diagrams, which I’ve used in the classroom for a few years now (along with Margaret Atwood’s excellent short short “Happy Endings”) but never seen this video (metaphorical hat tip to ‘klept reader ccllyyddee, who says he saw it at Curiosity Counts—cheers!).
Kurt Vonnegut on Story Shapes (Video)
Biblioklept 
I remember Kurt Vonnegut giving this same talk at the university I was attending in the early ’90s. The most memorable story plot he drew, which isn’t included in the video, was for Hamlet. The line began about where Cinderella’s does, on the “Ill Fortune” side of the B/E axis, and ran straight as an arrow from beginning to end. I don’t want to quote Mr. Vonnegut incorrectly twenty years later, but I’m pretty sure he referred to this plot as the one in Western literature that most resembles real life. So it goes.
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thanks for the comment/anecdote. it’s easy to imagine that Vonnegut’s depressive nature would identify Hamlet as the “real” plot of life (i.e. “Everyone Dies”).
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True enough–and yet, in typical Vonnegut fashion, it got him another big laugh from the audience. We were putty in his pessimistic hands….
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‘Happy Endings’ is the icing on the cupcake. Amusing.
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Oh, I miss Vonnegut. I don’t care what he says, no one tells a story like he did.
Lasagna looks great, I’m making my husband watch this even though it’s past V-day :)
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I also remember Vonnegut saying at one point that every good story follows three punctuation marks:
?
!
.
A great writer.
“Jesus Christ is a robot who died for our sins.”
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