Story Generators: Models and Approaches for the Generation of Literary Artefacts

This session is concerned with the automated creation of fiction or "literary artefacts" that might take the form of prose, poetry or drama. Special focus is placed upon those approaches that include the generation of narrative structures and therefore use some kind of story model. First attempts in automated story generation date back to the 1970s, with the implementation of Meehan's TALE-SPIN (1977) based on the achievement of character plans and Klein's automatic novel writer (1973/1979) that simulates the effects of generated events in the narrative universe. Currently, story generators enjoy a phase of revival, both as stand-alone systems or embedded components. Most of them make reference to an explicit model of narrative, but the approaches used are diverse: they range from story grammars in the generative vein to the conceptually inspired engagement-reflection cycle. Real-life applications include the generation of a set of plot plans for screen writers in a commercial entertainment environment, who could use the automatically created story pool as a source of inspiration, and the generation of new kinds of interactive dramas (video games).

The creation process of literary artefacts is of particular relevance to Literary and Humanities Computing. Not only does it provide methods of simulating and modelling narrative processes, but it identifies basic and combinatory elements of story and discourse. The definition of these elements can in turn help scholars involved in the analysis of narrative to produce annotation (mark-up) that might be re-used in the story generation models.

Research into Story Generators is by nature an interdisciplinary project and as such constitutes an exemplary case for Humanities Computing efforts that are of a more speculative kind, as opposed to application oriented approaches. While the humanities – and more particularly, narratology – are called upon to clarify and systematize basic concepts and theoretical models of narration, computer scientists and AI researchers try to translate these models into workable system architectures and processes. Accordingly, our session brings together one theoretical and two applied approaches to the generation of literary artefacts. The theoretical paper presents an attempt towards formulating an ideal Story Generator Architecture based on a narratological model of story generation. The applied papers discuss the role of the story model in a stand-alone fairy tale generator (ProtoPropp), and the problem of story management in games, using Façade and other story (drama) management architectures as examples.