Lessons In Storytelling From Kurt Vonnegut

Posted June 09, 2019

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This week, I am working on new lessons for Storytelling

As such, my research has sent me to some pretty intersting places.

This one, courtesy of my old friend Neil Silberman, author of such great books as Digging for God and Country. He is a great storyteller in his own right, and he recommended a lecture on storytelling by Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors when I was in college, and if you have not read his classic books, you should start with Cat's Cradle. But perhaps his best know is Slaughterhouse 5, a memoir, of sorts, of his own experience as a POW in Dresden in the Second World War. 

In this lecture, rather an old video I am afriad, Vonnegut explains the basics and in many ways, the universality of storytelling.

I am given to understand that this was his Master's Thesis at college, one for which he never got credit. 

He did OK anyway.