What's a Novel?

[victorangeloblancada]

This year, I'll be working on a NaNoGenMo novel inspired by the Socratic method.

[hinextapp]

Sounds very interesting, can you elaborate a little? I'm imagining a dialog-like output, maybe by letting loose two chatbots on each other?

[victorangeloblancada]

@hinextapp , nice idea but I'm thinking more along the lines of this Abstruse Goose comic. Not exactly the Socratic method but I already have a good idea of what Python libraries and corpora I'd like to use.

[victorangeloblancada]

An Update

I have a somewhat readable novel though I'm still tweaking some settings.

Here's a link to my repo and a link to the output as of today.

An excerpt:

The schoolteacher muttered gently, "The Age of Discovery (or the Age of Exploration -"

"What's Exploration?" a girl wondered furiously.

The lecturer acknowledged the query with a nod.

The teacher seethed timidly, "Exploration is the act of searching for the purpose of discovery of information or resources, especially in the context of geography or space, rather than research and development that is usually not centred on earth sciences or astronomy. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans. In human history, its most dramatic rise was during the Age of Discovery -"

"What's Age of Discovery?" a pupil said crudely.

The teacher ignored the interruption and proceeded.

[dariusk]

I laughed pretty hard. I love that sometimes the teacher expects a question and doesn't get it.

[lee2sman]

This is so good! I love it.

[amirouche]

Great! I am looking forward reading the code.

[victorangeloblancada]

It is Finished!

The final outputs can be found here and here.

After tweaking some settings on my original script, I also added an over-engineered solution to vary the question from 'what' to 'who' depending on whether the student is asking about a person or not. The code for that can be found in this script.

Preview here:

"Hello and welcome, class! Today we'll be discussing Generative systems," the instructor breathed calmly.

The students stifled their yawns.

The educator explained carefully, "Generative systems are technologies with the overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences. When generative systems provide a common platform, changes may occur at varying layers (physical, network, application, content) and provide a means through which different firms and individuals may cooperate indirectly and contribute to innovation.Depending on the rules, the patterns can be extremely varied and unpredictable. One of the better-known examples is Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton. Other examples include Boids and Wikipedia -"

"What's Wikipedia?" a student demanded sadly.

The professor disregarded the interruption and continued.

The educator sang quickly, "- Wikipedia. More examples can be found in generative music, generative art, and, more recently, in video games such as Spore. In 2006, Jonathan Zittrain -"

"Who's Jonathan Zittrain?" a boy demanded gently.

The professor acknowledged the query with a slight jig.

The lecturer murmured calmly, "Jonathan L. Zittrain (born 24 December 1969) is an American professor of Internet -"

"What's Internet?" a pupil demanded mechanically.

The professor acknowledged the query with a nervous laugh.