The Simple Shapes of Great Stories, According to Science (and Kurt Vonnegut)

When I was 15, I fell in love with an 80-year-old man who lived in Midtown Manhattan. His name was Kurt. 

I never actually met Kurt, even though he lived just 15 miles from me across the Hudson River. But I was obsessed with his stories. I read 27 Kurt Vonnegut books that year, and they made me want to become a writer.

A few years later, I was a senior at Sarah Lawrence College, drinking like Hemingway and scamming the curriculum to take as many creative writing courses as possible. One hazy morning, I discovered a gem on early YouTube: a lecture by Vonnegut outlining the simple Shapes of Stories that Western civilization loves the most. It’s a delightful masterclass in storytelling.

Vonnegut’s story graphs sit on two axes. The X-axis runs from beginning to end. The Y-axis runs from good fortune to bad fortune. 

For instance, Man in a Hole — “a story we can’t get enough of” — looks like this. Someone living a good life runs into serious trouble—the hole— and needs to get out of it.

We love this story. It’s Finding Nemo, Jurassic Park, Die Hard, Rocky, and The Lion King. We never get sick of it.

Then there’s the most popular story in our civilization — the one where, according to Vonnegut, every time someone tells it, they make a million dollars: Cinderella.

In the Cinderella arc, a character starts in deep misfortune and receives a series of gifts from a deity (ex. fairy godmother) that propel their fortune, only for it to come crashing down (clock strikes midnight) before living happily ever after. 

As Vonnegut recognized, this is also the story shape of the most powerful tale of all time: the New Testament. It’s also the arc of the second most powerful story of all time: Magic Mike.

A man before his time, Vonnegut theorized that “there’s no reason these shapes couldn’t be fed into computers.” A few years ago, a group of researchers decided to do just that—using sentiment analysis via natural language processing (translation: some AI sh*t) to analyze nearly 2,000 popular works of fiction to see if Vonnegut was right about stories having universal shapes.

Was he? Of course he was! He’s Kurt freaking Vonnegut. Not only was he right; he could also see into a future in which our AI overlords would prove him right. In aggregate, the arcs of the stories analyzed matched the eight shapes of stories Vonnegut identified in his career (with some very slight differences).

Telling better stories, with a little help from Vonnegut

Amazingly, Vonnegut first developed his Shapes of Stories theory before he wrote a single book. He pitched it for his thesis for his anthropology program at the University of Chicago; he believed that a society’s stories could tell us more about it than its pots and spears. It was immediately rejected. So he quit the program and became one of the world’s first content marketers at GE News.

If Vonnegut hadn’t become one of the greatest novelists of all time, he would have made one hell of a content marketing thought leader. His Shapes of Stories are so brilliant because they make storytelling way less scary. In the video above, you can feel his joy in giving his students the gift of storytelling. 

For instance, take Harry Potter. The plot seems intricate, but as the researchers found when they ran “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” through their NLP analysis, it’s just “Man in a Hole” over and over again. The tension keeps us glued to the page. I bought this book the day it came out while 19-years-old and backpacking through sunny Spain. I didn't leave my hostel for 24 hours while I finished it.

I use Vonnegut’s shapes of stories when writing personal essays or working on the TV show I’m co-creating, but I use it in business storytelling, too. If you’ve ever wondered why certain founder stories go viral on LinkedIn and X, the answer is pretty simple: they all follow the “Man in a Hole” or “Cinderella” arcs. 

Don’t believe me? Let’s break down the beats of a viral founder’s story. 

• Intro: The story always starts with a stable, comfortable pre-entrepreneurial life and a call to adventure. (Ex: “I was making six figures selling alligator insurance to rich third graders — but I wasn’t happy. And I had a vision to transform the way B2B marketers drive leads.”)

• The Fall: Next, they experience initial hardships. (“I had a strong vision and early revenue. Things were going great, but then it turns out something was terribly wrong: my hotshot CRO was actually three kids in a trench coat.”)

• The Hole: Then they share personal and professional struggles. (“I maxed out all my credit cards and racked up debt. My supposed CRO stole my dog. I kept trying the same B2B sales tactics over and over, but they weren’t working.”)

• The Climb: Next, they turn the tide with perseverance, innovation, and support. (“I fired my sales team and started listening to my customers—taking them on an ayahuasca retreat to contemplate the true meaning of an MQL. I had a breakthrough and hustled like hell to reinvent our product.”)

• Conclusion: At last, they’re thriving and living happily ever after. (“Now we’re doing $100M in run rate and I gained 50K LinkedIn followers. Follow me to see what we do next!”)

Try this drawing arc as an outline when telling your next story or writing your next LinkedIn post. (Just avoid coming across like a total tool, as in the example above).

Once you start looking for the Shapes of Stories, you’ll see them everywhere. And you’ll realize that telling stories people love is easier than you think.

3 Links: What I'm reading/doing/going to

Book: Future Proof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of AI by Kevin Roose. If you want to know how to survive and thrive in the age of AI, read this book.

Event: A.Team's AI x Future of Work Summit. I'll be MC-ing and making horrible dad jokes. We have ridiculously good sessions and workshops planned. Plus lots of food and booze. Attend virtually or IRL in NYC.

Podcast: Pivot: Shutdown Deja Vu, AI and Actors, and Guest Meredith Levien. Come for the breakdown of why actors may have gotten screwed over on AI. Stay for the fascinating glimpse into how the New York Times' CEO has kept the company thriving while every other outlet struggles to survive.

I'm the head of Marketing at A.Team and best-selling co-author of The Storytelling Edge. Subscribe to this newsletter for insights on content strategy, AI, and the art and science of storytelling.