...according to a computer:
The Six Main Stories, As Identified by a Computer - The Atlantic
The story types:
I like that an SF writer came up with the concept - Vonnegut was one of the old line 'Greats,' but find the '6 main types' a bit misleading. (There are other story types, some popular.) Plus, the model comes across as overly simple.
The Six Main Stories, As Identified by a Computer - The Atlantic
By then, he said, the thesis had long since vanished. (“It was rejected because it was so simple and looked like too much fun,” Vonnegut explained.) But he continued to carry the idea with him for many years after that, and spoke publicly about it more than once. It was, essentially, this: “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes.”
That explanation comes from a lecture he gave, and which you can still watch on YouTube, that involves Vonnegut mapping the narrative arc of popular storylines along a simple graph. The X-axis represents the chronology of the story, from beginning to end, while the Y-axis represents the experience of the protagonist, on a spectrum of ill fortune to good fortune. “This is an exercise in relativity, really,” Vonnegut explains. “The shape of the curve is what matters.”
The story types:
1. Rags to Riches (rise)
2. Riches to Rags (fall)
3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)
4. Icarus (rise then fall)
5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)
6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)
I like that an SF writer came up with the concept - Vonnegut was one of the old line 'Greats,' but find the '6 main types' a bit misleading. (There are other story types, some popular.) Plus, the model comes across as overly simple.