ANNALES
A NaNoGenMo chronicle of rulers and kings, by Mike Lynch, who also created A Mighty Host.
He’s written three blog posts about the details of how it works: a neural net generates the basic vocabulary for the names, which is used by a Haskell text generator that uses combinators to compose the generation, which is in turn invoked by an event generator that simulates events at the court.
The result is a nicely done generated historical record that reads about right. Mike says that he’d like to have had the chance to add more variety and details–which is par for the course in my NaNoGenMo experience. We’re gradually getting better as a group at composing readable prose with intent behind it, but there’s a lot of scaffolding to solve every year.
We’re getting closer to the point, I think, were people whose primary skill is interactive writing can participate without needing deep programming knowledge. Indeed, Tracery is close to being all the tools you need for that, though novel-length generation is not its forte. I look forward to seeing future literary efforts in NaNoGenMo—and not just because I want my next effort to have as much value in the writing as in programming. (There will, of course, always be space for more programming: that’s how we got these tools in the first place, after all.)
Mike’s reasons for using Haskell mirror my reasons for using Clojure for my first couple of NaNoGenMo novels, though the ecosystem was much less developed back then and Mike’s got some elegant-ish solutions to some of the problems I struggled with at the time.
The other interesting thing about generating a historical record is that it’s precisely the kind of thing that could be meaningfully incorporated into another generator. Any story can be used as backstory for another story, after all. Or expanded upon. And these sound like some interesting stories:
Reign of Genus Dan I.
Glude Game Pola I was spellbound.
Succession of Genus Dan I.
Willian, an exylophonetic man, adept at the use of the resisket, was promoted after having impressed Packley.6.GD.I
In this year Visuanca, a dentric woman, mighty at the chase, was much spoken of.
Genus Dan I established the Temple of Lawchus.
12.GD.I
Genus Dan I married Lail with wild aumeorision.Bull-Wattion, a man of humble birth, whose father sold waterwyrkey, was much spoken of after having bested the Pacive Potricari.
Interregnum.
Genus Dan I died of solomenicisy.
Now began the War of Entging, in which Bull-Wattion, Visuanca and Willian were joined.INT.3
The forces of Visuanca and the warriors of Bull-Wattion met on the Bogs of Bamweol. Hundreds of soldiers died in harness.Now the clay of Bull-Wattion leaves not those fields.
INT.4
Visuanca, allied with opetistic cherrious ringings, took the soldiers of Willian all unawares.INT.5
Willian took the warriors of Visuanca all unawares.
Reports of neadocyres in Umpio.Reign of Visuanca I.
The soldiers of Visuanca and the warriors of Willian met on the Meadows of Quear.Countless men bedewed the grass.
A hungry coptet was the end of brave Willian.
Visuanca I was acclaimed princeps by triumph.
Rumours of gai psens in Passionopire.