I'm not sure he did, at least not in terms of serious, academic, literery theory but you can perhaps see how it might be a useful heuristic for an author in terms of thinking about what type of story they want ot write. Vonnegut was always throwing half baked ideas into the public realm just to see where they'd land and that's a large part of his appeal for me (c.f. the stories of Kilgore Trout).
This shapes of stories thing that resurfaces every so often is kind of perfect for internet amplification, it's easy to grasp there's the potential for some nice pictures and Vonnegut is always engaging as a both speaker and a writer. I'd read his essay on the topic in the 90s because I'm a Vonnegut completist but at the time I don't think it was considered anything other than a minor flight of fancy. It's kind of a shame that things like this and DFWs "this is watter" speech which are kind of easily graspable tend ot eclipse the more interesting stuff. Though maybe it's a gateway.
This shapes of stories thing that resurfaces every so often is kind of perfect for internet amplification, it's easy to grasp there's the potential for some nice pictures and Vonnegut is always engaging as a both speaker and a writer. I'd read his essay on the topic in the 90s because I'm a Vonnegut completist but at the time I don't think it was considered anything other than a minor flight of fancy. It's kind of a shame that things like this and DFWs "this is watter" speech which are kind of easily graspable tend ot eclipse the more interesting stuff. Though maybe it's a gateway.