This short video of Kurt Vonnegut talking about the shape of stories has inspired this post.

I took a stab at creating my own story shape for Wreck-It Ralph.

Since it may be a spoiler for some people who haven’t seen the movie yet, click below to read more.

Vonnegut uses the following axes:

 G = Good fortune

I = Ill fortune

B = Beginning

E = End

This is my attempt to recreate the Wreck-It Ralph story through Vonnegut’s shape theory.

So Ralph starts out as a bad guy, and he’s tired of being the bad guy.

He wants to be the hero for once, so he goes out on his journey, finds a way to become a hero, so he’s doing okay.

Then he loses the medal to a little girl.

He begins to relate to how this little girl feels, alone and unwanted, so he wants to help her. He’s on cloud nine, knowing that he’ll get to be a hero.

Then he smashes the little girl’s dreams, and he feels pretty low about himself.

But then, things turn around, and he figures out the truth. He helps the little girl again, he becomes the hero of his game, and everyone lives happily ever after.

To represent a digital story…

We did not have to pick a video, and I hadn’t originally planned on using this, but I felt that this video is so well done that I believe it encompasses how to tell a story through media.

If you haven’t seen both seasons of Game of Thrones and plan to watch them in the future, this video will have NUMEROUS MAJOR SPOILERS. Also, this video is just as graphic as the show, so beware if you have a soft stomach.

The author of this video used clips from the show, a song, and audio clips. All of the choices are very well done.

What this video does best, though, is show the “game” for the throne. With so many point of views for this series, I can’t believe that it almost seems like one storyline in this video (that’s a good thing!).

That’s what digital storytelling is all about: using different forms of media to express a story. This one just happens to be of my favorite series.