Multi-strand Narrative

[ojmason]

My aim is it to generate a sequence of events through some mechanism similar to Meehan's TaleSpin, and render that as a narrative from different PoVs. The result should be something similar to Jarmusch's Mystery Train, where there are separate interwoven episodes, with characters of each crossing over.

The narrative will probably be fairly boring when compared to a human-authored novel, but I aim to use it as an exercise in trying out if we can do improve TaleSpin etc with 'modern' technology.

[kamn]

Best of luck! Doing something like Talespin is pretty cool. It will be fun to see multiple perspectives.

[ojmason]

I'm documenting my progress on my blog.

So far I can generate a basic sequence of narrative functions which need further fleshing out. Next on the list are character generation, and the world simulator, and finally the NL generator, which should be a bit more sophisticated than Mumble -- though I'll use CD theory as a representation.

[ikarth]

If you're not already aware (which you very well may be) the source code for TaleSpin is available online: http://storygen.org/systems/micro-talespin

Some past efforts that may help (or may not): https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2015/issues/59

There's been some use of Propp as well, though none, I think, with your particular angle. Still, they might be useful: https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2015/issues/22 https://github.com/MichaelPaulukonis/NaNoGenMo2014/tree/master/propp.gen https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/58 https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2014/issues/6

[ojmason]

Thanks for the pointers; yes, I was aware of TaleSpin being available. I came across it in Schank & Riesbeck's Inside Computer Understanding, though it's ancient Lisp in there...