In our most recent session, Ben Wild introduced us to Kurt Vonnegut’s “story shapes.” Vonnegut came up with eight of these, and said that every story—from ancient fairy tales to Shakespeare to modern fiction—fits into one of them.
Ben guided us through an activity where we mapped the rise and fall of our emotions that morning, or in recent days. We used Vonnegut’s graphs as a starting point to notice how, even in a few short hours, so much can shift beneath the surface.
From this, a mix of writing emerged. Some poetic, some reflective, some playful or philosophical.
Together, they explore what it means to feel, to tell stories, and to question the patterns we’ve been taught to follow.
Read more: Stories and Emotions
– adapted by Ben Wild for use in our workshop to explore emotional arcs in storytelling. Picture taken from https://storyempire.com/
Patrick Steel
Wild Saturday(s)
We enjoyed an interesting and learned talk from ‘Be(n) Wild’ of MMU on the use of emotions in storytelling. I was intrigued and so sceptical when he mentioned that a researcher, Kurt Vonnegut, postulated that there are a set amount of patterns of emotions in all stories – a conclusion he arrived at way before the invention of computers.
We were invited to try one pattern to write about our emotional state that morning. I initially chose the flatline schemata, ‘Good news or Bad news’, as I was raised as a traditional male stoic so I have difficulty relating to my emotions. Indeed, how do we even tell if events are good or bad in the present? For example, a broken leg may save you from conscription! But conscription could mean glory and incredible service. We can only evaluate fully in our last days. With gender blurred in modern society, I feel less embarrassed to give it a go and analyse my own emotions… imagine my surprise when I read it back as a rollercoaster journey.
Woke up this morning. As usual the body was stiff and painful. Sad that I ached and attributed it to the wear and tear of time. Happy to be still alive. What’s the alternative? Angry with myself that I hadn’t yet developed the discipline of daily exercises to try and slow the degeneration. Thought about my plans for the day. Afraid that I couldn’t do everything… the fear of missing out, FOMO the young ‘uns call it. Chose the workshop, but unable to do a volunteer task from 10–2 today. Disgusted that I had so little time and energy to get out the door and face the day, and accomplish all I wanted to. Delighted to meet an old friend walking on the way there. Shared our grumbles about our common ailments. Settled into our seats, with a coffee or tea, and prepared to listen to our instructions. Finally, my open mind went emotionally into neutral! Or so I thought… Oh the joys of learning!
Pauline Omoboye
Today
Today I woke up happy
I could picture the day ahead
Today I woke up happy as I got out of my bed
My feelings are those of contentment
I saw it in my dream
I knew my day was mapped out in a happy scene
But then I gazed up at my watch
The time had gone so fast
The feelings of being late came out and cast
A shadow deep into my heart
At the thought of what I could miss
But as I entered the room
Came that feeling of sheer bliss
It’s going to be the day I wanted
It brought to my face a smile
My emotions rising to the top
This feeling should last a while.
Pauline Omoboye©
Margaret Kendall
I woke up early, pleased to see the blue sky and sunshine. Downstairs, I saw the frost on the lawn and rooftops and felt somewhat anxious about our trip to the Lakes tomorrow in the camper van: how cold will it be there?! I took a cup of tea back to bed, one for me, one for my sleeping partner, read for a while and fell back into a heavy sleep. “Oh no, I’ll be late for Stories of our Lives,” I thought when she finally woke me. I got ready quickly, left the house and met a neighbour. We exchanged a few words, I hurried on, met another, then another! I felt resigned to being late, but glad to live where I do – I feel like I belong. I walked into the garden of the church and met Jane – such a lovely calm person, she explained that she couldn’t make it to the group as her daughter was taking her out for the day. Her warmth calmed me, I came through the door and felt happy to be with everyone. My late arrival didn’t matter at all, after all.
Jolene Sheehan
It started with some charts.
As a prompt to start today’s workshop, Ben Wild brought Kurt Vonnegut’s famous model of story shapes. They showed us the rise and fall of fortune, arcs of success and failure, and a way to make experience fit a pattern: things got better, then worse, then better again.
But something felt off. It treated the protagonist’s fortune as if it existed in isolation, as if emotions and events happened in a vacuum. Yet in real life, stories aren’t just about one person moving through change. Stories are about relationships, movement, space, and time. Emotions don’t simply rise and fall; they ebb, flow, transform, stagnate, spill over. And then the idea came—what if the way we structure stories shapes how we experience emotions—and therefore, life itself?
We’ve inherited a linear way of storytelling, shaped by Greek theatre, the Enlightenment… and more recently, the news, X Factor, and advertising. These structures train us to see life as a tidy journey with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. This individualistic framework tends to fit us one of three slots—hero, villain, or victim—meaning everyone (and sometimes even everything) else has to occupy the remaining two spaces. Perfect fuel for polarisation and the prioritising of self over community, really, isn’t it?
I started wondering… maybe it’s time to expand beyond this. To explore traditions that honour cycles, interconnection, and emotional fluidity. And perhaps the next step isn’t another rigid framework at all… but permission to let stories move naturally, mirroring the world around us. Then I thought about how part of this shift might mean learning to stop seeing emotions as ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, and instead finding a way of welcoming them in—like Rumi suggested. And if his idea of greeting them all as friends feels too exposing, maybe we could imagine emotions as places we move through—different ways of meeting them.
Some emotions are experienced in a brightly lit room, full of hyper-awareness. Others take place in a cluttered basement, where feelings get boxed up and labelled Do Not Open. Sometimes we’re rushing through corridors, searching for a way out of feeling at all.
But as I was walking during these reflections, the idea of walls started to feel restrictive. I searched the sky for an answer, but it was too vast and formless. Then I saw a rock, steady and still. Suddenly, I heard its story: “I was once buried deep in a quarry,” the rock said. “Now I sit in the open air, where people rest their tired legs. You think I am cold, but I hold the warmth of time. I will outlast you and your family. But I will hold your stories within me.”
And that’s when I realised—I didn’t need lines or walls to plot or frame emotions or storytelling. Stories and feelings don’t just happen inside people or even rooms. They unfold in rivers, trees, skies, shifting weather, and the way light moves across water. Nature has been witnessing stories forever, without ever needing an arc or tidy resolution. A tree doesn’t fail when it loses its leaves. A river doesn’t succeed when it reaches the ocean. The sky isn’t wrong when it is filled with storms.
Maybe if we start experiencing and then telling our stories this way—with a greater sense of interconnection and spaciousness, where we don’t need to be the main character—we realise we don’t have to force our narratives to make sense. We don’t have to stay stuck in one perspective. Instead, we can let our experiences be spacious, complex, and relational.
So here’s where I am now…
My stories don’t have to be about winning or losing. They can be about movement, flow, cycles, connections.
My emotions don’t have to be overcome like opponents. They can be witnessed, held, allowed to exist without urgency. Because the frameworks we use to make sense of things don’t just describe reality—they shape it. And I am ready for a different shape.
Finally, sometimes, the best thing we can do is step outside, listen, and let the landscape teach us something new.
The Stories of Our Lives 