Vonnegut’s lecture here suggests that formulas exist in stories. Formulas that help you consider and build your story, formulas that help your audience identify with the story, and formulas that can help you analyze a story or story form.

Don’t believe me? Think Law & Order franchise or This American Life. It is a simple formula that grips audiences every week and keeps us coming back for more.

So what? Well, as we begin to think about creating stories it can take the route of deciding what type of story to tell. I also think we can start with a story and retrofit the story to a shape.

It got me thinking about the shapes application to longer stories, epic novels, or the emerging narrative genre. What of Ulysses? What of Gone with the Wind? What of the Corasanti Trial in my home town of Buffalo, NY that is unfolding as of the date of this post.

Do Vonnegut’s shapes continue down an infinite x-axis cycling like a sin wave? Perhaps that is more than a story.

I began to think about the stories in my life; not my life as a story mind you (who would play me in the movie?) but the smaller stories in my life. I applied Vonnegut’s shapes to some important stories in my life.

Happily Married – Boy Meets Girl

Thyroid Cancer Survival – Man in a Hole

My Dissertation Journey – Which Way is Up? (though I’m hoping for Man in a Hole)

Those are some serious stories but what about the stories I like to tell to my daughter?

Dad Fishes with Papa – Man in a Hole

Dad Runs a Marathon – Boy Meets Girl (usually around Mile 11 comes the “Oh God damn it”)

Dad Camps for the First Time – Man in a Whole

Dad Gardens – Which Way is Up?

I’d have to give the other shapes and stories more thought. One thing thing about seeing the shape of stories si that I can’t seem to turn it off. Like when you first recognize the formula in This American Life you can’t not see it (Thanks Jamie Bono for that one) or when you hear a newscaster say ‘uh’ or ‘um’.