BitbrainImagine a world where anyone can create and read the stories they’ve always dreamed of – that’s the world I’m building with my fiction engine.
I come from a software development background but I’ve been an active digester of fiction books for my entire adult life. I have tried my hand at writing. Spent time reading articles on how to write stories. But I found I lack the attention to detail most writers are born with or gain through experience.
When I first encountered ChatGPT, my first instinct was to see if it could help me write stories. So I settled down with one of my story ideas and had it help me with plots and such. I was blown away by its ability to bring my ideas to life and explore them in depth. Fantastic!
Then I tried to see if it could write them.
When I saw it could write reasonable sections several paragraphs long, I think that was the beginning.
However, it was when GPT4 was released and because I had a plus account I got access. When I saw how it could take any section of story and rewrite it to a completely different genre (try it!) I knew there was something here.
So I started working on version 1.
My software works by gathering a genre and a summary of what type of story the user would like to read or create. It then produces an outline and writes a story based on that outline. The LLM comes in at all stages of story creation, from the summary which is based on the genre and what the user entered. Through the outline and then the actual prose.
What the user enters can be as simple as they’d like or very complicated. As a test I’ve entered a prompt as simple as “whateveh!” and still ended up with an interesting outline.
I started with the genre and summary. That was pretty easy. GPT provided me with a list of genres and subgenres and what they were about. The summary is nothing more than asking GPT to take the genre and the data entered by the user and produce a summary for a story.
If I choose the genre “Contemporary” and then the subgenre “Magical Realism” and type in “She discovered her deck of tarot cards were magical and led to other realms”
I receive the following:
Title: “The Magician’s Deck: The Extraordinary Adventures of Luna and the Mystical Tarot Cards”
Summary:
In “The Magician’s Deck,” 26-year-old Luna stumbles upon an old deck of tarot cards while cleaning out her grandmother’s attic. After a supernatural encounter where the cards come alive and transport her to another world, Luna realizes that the deck is no ordinary set of cards. With the help of her trusted best friend, Luna embarks on an adventure, discovering that the deck is indeed magical and can open portals to other realms. As Luna’s powers grow, she uncovers secrets about herself and her family, and ultimately learns that her destiny is intertwined with the mystical deck. But as the lines between reality and magic blur, Luna must determine if the risks of wielding such a powerful tool are worth it.
One caveat for sure, fans of Harry Potter can already spot one issue. GPT likes to use certain names and they come up all the time. Fixing this is definitely on my mind. There are simple ways to stop this such as just checking for names that are too common in a genre or too popular.
Once the summary is produced and accepted by the user it begins to create the outline for the story.
The outlines have issues though. And so the stories did too.
It turns out creating a good outline is harder than convincing gpt to write decent prose. At least that’s my opinion.
I continue to modify the program, test it with new and old story ideas. I create many outlines and summaries which get lost to the universe shortly after. My plan is to get outlines working well. Then get back to producing prose. From there, world building.
When done, I hope to allow people the freedom to create and read the stories they’ve dreamed of. The ones they can’t write themselves and that nobody will write for them. I want to give people freedom to be creative in the same way Midjourney and other generative programs have allowed.
The future I see is looking crazier by the day. I see progress in text to video daily. We will eventually see entire movies created in this way and my fiction engine will help power scripts for these movies. The same will happen with video games, or perhaps movies and video games will become one. A story engine that branches based on what the user does but at the same time, sticks to tried and true formulas for narrative structure. Every story in every video game could have a basic structure such as similar events, the same characters but the details could be different for every single player. Or, the holy grail of gaming, you could save or doom everyone in the game based on a choice but it will still be a complete game.
There is a long way to go and I’m just starting out.
You can follow my journey or view the output of different versions on my website, https://www.recursiverealms.com
(Note: This post was written almost completely by myself but I did ask GPT to help me clean it up a bit.)
