Story shapes
Man in a hole
Someone gets into trouble and gets out of it, ending better off: the story shape people never seem to tire of.
- Time15 to 30 minutes
- People1 to 6 people
- Steps4
What it's for
Draw fortune on one axis and time on the other, and this story falls into a hole and climbs out higher than it started. It is the shape of most good case studies: things were fine, something went wrong, and the way out left everyone better off.
The depth of the hole is what makes the climb satisfying. Don't skip the bad part.
How to run it
Set the start4 min
Where were things before the trouble?
Dig the hole6 min
What went wrong, and how bad did it get?
Climb out6 min
What did they do to get out?
End higher4 min
How are things better than before?
Tips
- A case study that starts with the solution has no hole. Start with the trouble.
- Show the low point with a detail: a number, a quote, a moment.
Where it comes from
One of the story shapes Kurt Vonnegut drew on a blackboard in his talk on the shapes of stories, an idea from his rejected master's thesis in anthropology. He wrote about it in Palm Sunday (1981) and A Man Without a Country (2005).
Pairs well with
Rags to riches
Someone starts with little, rises, loses it all in a crisis, and wins it back for good by growing into who they need to be.
Freytag's pyramid
Five parts of a drama (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution) drawn as a rise to a peak and a fall.
Story spine
Eight sentence starters, from "Once upon a time" to "And ever since then", that give any story a beginning, a turn and an end.