The phrase "are shaped as" is correct in written English.
It is usually used to describe the form of something. For example, "The chairs are shaped as cubes".
But, except in "American High," the circumstances of their lives are shaped as carefully as any fiction, the players chosen with just as keen an eye for dramatic conflict.
The stories are shaped as physical journeys.
The earthworks are shaped as perfect circles, rectangles and composite figures sculpted in the clay rich soils of Amazonia".
The answer derives from understanding how the sensory-motor mechanisms producing the behaviour are shaped as the dog matures from a puppy into a functional adult animal.
"I want Spain to win, of course," he says, arguing that loyalties and national identity are shaped, as he puts it, "a little where one is born and a lot where one is fed".
Younger heroines, it seems, are the ones getting guidance from beyond, though interestingly their shows are shaped as complex family or crime dramas to attract adult audiences as well.
It is shaped as much by the margins as the mainstream.
Taste is shaped as much by listening experience and national musical culture as by scholarship or individual personality.
The entire rind of each wheel of authentic Parmigiano is imprinted with the name as the cheese is being shaped, as well as the month and the year.
I am an Indian, and my history has been shaped as much by the institutions of this empire as by a long tradition of struggle against them.
Above all, modern nations were shaped as imagined communities.
