One of the projects I’ve decided to inflict Morti with is an improved version of the random stories that ALICE tells. If you ask Morti right now to tell you a story, you get the same stuff that ALICE tells you, and I’m just not satisfied with those short paragraphs of random famous people dealing with emotional inadequacies or skewed expectations. To me, those aren’t really the sort of “stories” that I want Morti to tell. So I’ve decided to make his “stories” not only more engaging and entertaining (sorry, ALICE), but also to add an element of interactivity, as well.

This endeavor is being approached in stages; first in the genre of stories available (there will be three, at first: Adventure, Comedic and Romantic), and then in the way that the stories are created, and told. When you ask Morti to tell you a story, he will ask what type of story you want, listing options. From there, Morti will generate various variables for the story, such as the hero/heroine and villain details (name, gender, occupation and goal, along with others, based on the story’s genre), and then literally “write” the story from there, using literally hundreds of random options for the story’s location, sub-adventures along the way, etc. The stories will still be very short (around 5-10 paragraphs, depending on conditions), and may not always have a “happy ending”, but I feel that the finished product will be very entertaining.

Right now, this project is still in the planning stage, and I’ve only got the barest of outlines for the adventure/hero story. The only “proprietary” bit of code that these stories will be using will be choosing character names based on a chosen gender (We don’t want Morti referring to John as “she”, do we?), but aside from that, the project will be AIML standards compliant, so that, should someone wish to use the code for their bot, only that one aspect will have to be altered.

Thoughts, opinions, contributions, or any other feedback is not only welcomed and encouraged, but also requested. If you have something to say, please do so.

Skynet has a similar capability. He uses it if you ask him to write you a story or press release.

I took inspiration from mad libs story generators and descriptions of how to write stories.
http://www.eduplace.com/tales/
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-structure-a-story-the-eight-point-arc/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=storygen

“Madlibs on steroids” is sort of the idea I’m going for here.

Thanks for the links, Merlin. I’m certain I’ll get some great use out of them. I’ll have a look at the “Wacky Tales” link tomorrow, as it seems that there are a lot of stories there. The daily writing tips article was great, and will surely help with the overall outlines of the stories. Sadly, the 7th Sanctum didn’t work for me, even using three different browsers.

“Using AIML to Create Random, or Interactive Stories” ...hum… pretty fascinating concept.  Like movies, alternative endings.  And midlibs….. OMG, years ago, I almost broke a rib laughing, with friends as we ran small madlibs scripts over a few beer lol.

I’m still undecided whether I want Morti to provide the variables for the stories, or to let the visitors do so. The first is easier to code, but may not be as engaging, while the other will possibly hold the interest in the user a bit more, but would be VERY challenging to code in AIML. I don’t think it’s impossible, mind you. Just a lot harder than not doing so.

I think that, for now, I’ll have Morti pick all the variables, and then once that’s up and running, work on the more complex version.