HackerTube

THE VIDEO SHELF · story structure

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

A short lecture in which Kurt Vonnegut graphs the simple shapes of stories, such as Man in Hole and Boy Gets Girl. He sketches how fortune rises and falls over a narrative.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN cites it as a charming, funny way to see story structure and a source for the idea that plots have shapes.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
David Comberg
Topic
story structure
Format
lecture
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
5
HN mentions in dataset
9
Recommendation years in dataset
2012–2022

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Agreed. It's a shame to think about all the interesting things that might be getting built instead. Programming a novel generator is a great example. What a fantastic challenge being overlooked. It reminds me of this great video of Vonnegut graphing the emotional shape of …

    baconner on Hacker News · 2012-12
    In Programmer creates 800,000 books algorithmically, starts selling them on Amazon

  • Vonnegut is really special. I always like coming back to his Shape of Stories talks: [VIDEO] Here's a longer one: [LINK] It's interesting to see the difference in him with age. He seems to giggle more as an older man.

    bmitc on Hacker News · 2020-11
    In Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction No. 64 (1977)

  • It's not about logic vs. illogic. Logic is important to understand for a technical person- if they do not understand logic, their programs do not work, and their bugs cannot be fixed. But normal humans do not respond to logic. Normal humans respond to stories, …

    ZenPsycho on Hacker News · 2012-01
    In Dear Tech Community, We Have A Communication Problem

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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