The Snark | Kurt Vonnegut’s Rollercoaster Ride

It’s not just a plot – it’s a rollercoaster graph of human misery and delight

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the sheer audacity of a literary genius walking up to a blackboard and saying, in essence: “All of human storytelling can be plotted on an X-Y axis.”  That’s exactly what Kurt Vonnegut did in a vintage (and criminally underwatched) video from decades ago. With chalk in hand, a mischievous grin, and the confidence of a man who’d seen war, written science fiction, and survived both, he launched into what might be the simplest and smartest storytelling framework ever drawn on a chalkboard: The Shapes of Stories.

Link to Kurt’s video here.

And the best part? It’s funny. It’s smart. It’s suspiciously like real life.

This Is Not a Theory, It’s a Graph of Human Suffering

Here’s the basic setup. Vonnegut draws two axes:

• The horizontal X-axis is time, from the beginning of the story to the end.

• The vertical Y-axis is fortune, from ill fortune (poverty, loneliness, poor health) to good fortune (love, money, boisterous good health).

Then, he starts mapping the arc of a character’s life along those axes like he’s charting the S&P 500 – except this graph includes fairy godmothers.

You can almost hear him smirking as he says, “This is the shape of the story of Cinderella.” He plots it gleefully:

• Starts low. (Dead mom. Evil steps.)

• Gets a little bump (invited to the ball).

• Big move down (forced to stay home).

• Big swoop up (fairy godmother, glass slippers, dancing with royalty).

• Down again – sharply! (clock strikes midnight, loses the shoe).

• Skyrocket! (The prince finds her. Wedding bells. Social mobility.)

It’s a rollercoaster rags-to-riches-on-steroids swooping story arc that Vonnegut presents like he’s teaching second-grade math. It’s that elegant. And that powerful.

Kafka’s Shape: A Flatline into Oblivion

Not all stories get the fairy tale treatment. Vonnegut loves pointing out that in The Metamorphosis, poor Gregor Samsa wakes up as a bug… and stays a bug. No catharsis. No redemption. No upward tick on the graph. Just a slow crawl toward death and family disappointment.

It’s one of the flattest, most miserable story shapes on the chart – and yet it’s deeply resonant. Sometimes, your shape is a sad little tail dragging across the Y-axis like a slug with no plot armor.

And that’s exactly the point: different stories, different shapes.

Move Over Hero’s Journey – This Chart’s Got Curves

Vonnegut’s Shapes of Stories doesn’t replace Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey – it complements it with delicious bluntness. While Campbell gives you myth, rite, and archetype, Vonnegut gives you outcomes. Fortune. Misfortune. Up. Down. He’s not interested in the sacred call to adventure. He’s asking: “When exactly did your hero’s life suck? And when did it not suck?”

And more importantly: Why?

This simplicity isn’t shallow. It’s a structural x-ray. It forces writers to think:

• Where does my character start?

• Where are they going?

• How bumpy is the ride?

• Is this more “Cinderella” or “Kafka?”

• Or – deliciously – both?

Writers, Grab a Pen. And a Ruler.

Let’s be real: writers love to complicate things. (We say “arc of transformation” when we could just say “sad to happy”.) Vonnegut’s approach slices through that. It demands that you know your trajectory – and not just for your protagonist.

Plot the arc for every main character.

Maybe your heroine starts rich and ends heartbroken. Your villain starts smug and ends enlightened. Your sidekick starts invisible and ends in a blaze of glory. That’s three story shapes, not one. And once you see those curves drawn out? Oh boy, does your brain start bubbling with scene ideas.

Suddenly you’re not just writing events – you’re sculpting emotional geometry. You’re executing on a shape, not just meandering through vibes.

And when that shape starts to match the inner world of your characters, and you nail the movement from ill-fortune to good (or the other way around), guess what? You’re not just writing fiction.

You’re writing life.

The Moral of the Story: Be Like Kurt. Graph the Pain.

Here’s Vonnegut, the man who gave us Slaughterhouse-Five, explaining with a chuckle that all good stories have shape – and that those shapes have meaning. You don’t need a degree in comparative literature. You need eyes, a pencil, and maybe a little self-honesty.

Are you writing a tragedy, or a redemption? A flatline, or a thunderbolt? A fairy tale… or a farce?

And if you don’t know – maybe start with a chalkboard.

Or better yet, a blackboard and chalk. Draw the curve. Find the shape. Then let the story rip.

The Snark