Post #117 March 26, 2018

“Automated Storytelling”

Today, bots are writing stories in place or of in collaboration with human authors.  For the most part, this is more prevalent in journalism and the newspaper business.  With software like Buzzbot and Heliograph, journalists now have newsroom associates that are actually just algorithms, helping them craft stories from disparate facts.

Why are newspapers doing this?  Speed.  Efficiency.  Cost.  Some news stories are better automated than others.  When a type of story can be crafted from highly structured data, with well-defined patterns, easily understood templates, algorithms can help.  Examples might be sports recaps, stock market reports, some types of new stories like accidents, fires, routine police cases.  In all these cases, the foundation of the story consists of a set of fairly well-defined facts and the writing normally adheres to a well-understood pattern, or template.

Download the facts, select the temple and press START.  Out comes a story.  It may need a little editing but then so do stories done by human writers.

Is such a thing possible in the world of fiction?  It is and it’s happening now.

From the website Mashable.com, comes this little gem:

Deep inside an MIT laboratory, an artificially intelligent bot is composing ghastly tales of nightmarish creatures and strange shrieks in the night. 

MIT researchers named their bot Shelley (after Frankenstein author Mary Shelley). They endowed her with an artificial mind, called a neural network, an advanced form of machine learning in which a computer learns a task by relying on training examples. In Shelley's case, MIT researchers fed her silicon brain 140,000 horror stories published by writers on Reddit's "No Sleep" forum.

 Endowed with this massive story bank of fright, Shelley is a program that churns out its own unique tales of the undead and soon-to-be dead.

"She's creating really interesting and weird stories that have never really existed in the horror genre," Pinar Yanardag, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, told the Associated Press. Pinar gives the example of a man who awakes in a hospital bed to find he's pregnant. 

Another of Shelley's stories begins: I had no choice but to get out. I turned around and saw my mom. She had a menacing look on her face, holding a small box with my dad's stuffed animals in it.

But Shelley doesn't just concoct fictional dread by herself. Her MIT creators encourage Twitter users to interact with the hell-bot. Each hour, Shelley tweets the beginning lines to a story. Real humans can reply with the story's next lines, which Shelley will read and add to.

Shelley's MIT creators hope her autonomously-generated text will provide answers to an important question about AI: "Can machines learn to scare us?" 

As the machine receives more feedback from interactions from humans, it learns how to fashion authentic terror — or at least, that's how it's designed. This isn't too different from AI neural networks learning to render realistic faces or dominate popular board games. 

Shelley may not be truly terrifying just yet. But beware: In the deep witching hours when you're asleep, she's wide awake — and training to become even more horrifying. 

As a writer of science fiction and horror, I find this idea both compelling and a bit horrifying myself.  Could the bots be taking over the formerly sacred precincts of fiction writing?  Could these artificial storytellers possibly be convinced to help aspiring authors craft even better stories?

I can think of five ways storytelling bots might help fiction writers.

1. Speed of writing – get your drafts done and edited in record time.  Put in some details, select a template and voila!
2. Generating plot twists – with enough plot templates (and let’s face it, there’s a lot of formula in genre fiction), you could vary the complications in your story in such a way as to surprise even the most jaded reader.  Clive Cussler, look out.
3. Generating character bios – writing extensive character background is something I do a lot of as it helps in writing series fiction, where you have recurring characters and you have to be consistent to be believable.  If had some templates for character biographical background, I could plug in some basic facts (appearance, personality type, key events in their life) and let the bot do the rest.  Call it BioBot.  That would definitely make my life easier.
4. Help with story outlines – I do extensive outlines of my stories ahead of time.  I call them Chapter and Scene Details.  If a bot could help me flesh out my outlines, with help from the Plot Twist Bot (maybe these are the same), I could save days off my prep time and spend my afternoon hours on the back deck, watching the birds and planes with a beer in my hand.  Load all my character bios, select certain templates, set parameters on action and press START.  It’s nirvana.
5. Grabbing setting details off the Net – this is putting my bots to work as research associates, gathering facts, details, quirky bits of information that can add realism to a story, even if it’s set on the planet Tralfamadore (apologies to Kurt Vonnegut).

Could bots replace a writer’s unique, memorable, even edgy word sense?  Could bots simulate a Faulkner, a Mark Twain, a Stephen King?  I’m thinking the answer is no, at least not yet.  I think the best use for fiction bots is as a research assistant and copy editor.  Bots could definitely help in editing and already do, with spellcheck and online grammar-checking and auto-correct functions.  Maybe our bots could help in a deeper story sense, with balancing narrative against action scenes and recommendations on pacing. 

In my book, fiction bots have a definite role and are definitely coming, in some form.  They can best help us humanoid writers in planning, outlining, character bios, setting details, editing and adherence to genre styles and traditions, just like the Shelley bot above.

For now, though, the humans should stay firmly in control of the story.

Due to the Easter holiday, the next post to The Word Shed comes on April 9, 2018.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

 

Post #116 March 19 2018

“Excerpt from The Farpool: Convergence”

As promised in my last blog, below is an excerpt from my newest book, with the title indicated above:

Chapter 1

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Conicthyosis Lab

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

September 2, 2120

Angie Gilliam and Chase Meyer arrived at the Conicthyosis lab early in the morning, to meet with Dr. Josey Holland prior to undergoing the amphib hybridization procedure.  Angie was nervous.  She knew that her mother was adamantly opposed to having this procedure done, for when it was done, Angie would be an amphib like Chase, part Seomish, part human, and able to travel in and out of water, just like her boyfriend.

“You won’t feel a thing,” Dr. Holland told her.  “We put you in here—it’s just like a hotel room, go ahead, take a look—and you stay there for several days while the procedure’s going on.”

Angie peered into the comfortably furnished quarters.  Two rooms, a bedroom and kitchenette, with full bath and lots of screens, pads, tablets, TVs and other things to occupy her time.  “And it’s called a containment chamber?”

Holland shrugged, fiddled with some russet braids of hair on her shoulders.  She was amphib herself, but it didn’t really show.  The skin seemed as smooth as any middle-aged woman’s.  “Unfortunate choice of words.  I prefer to call this facility the ‘hotel.’  Sounds better.  But yes, in here, the entire procedure will be conducted.  It’s mostly automated.  The only reminder that this is a lab is that bed over there…with the arms sticking out of the wall.”

“Remote manipulators,” Chase said.  There were four articulating, tele-operated arms ‘parked’ in stowed position, hanging from a cabinet-like structure, with a bevy of cameras and instruments aimed down, themselves perched on arms.

“Exactly,” Holland agreed.  “During the procedure, there will be times where you’ll be in that bed—fully anesthetized—while we perform certain steps.  The medbot insertions, for example.”

Angie just shivered.  “You said this procedure has been done many times.”

Holland said, “Here at Woods Hole, the Lab has done the amphib procedure around a hundred and fifty times.  Haven’t lost anyone yet.”  She winced inside and realized she shouldn’t have said that.  Not everyone had the same sense of humor as her assistants.

“It’s perfectly safe, then?”

Holland nodded.  “Yes, of course.  But we do have some preliminary matters to attend to.  I’ll have to have you and Chase sign some waivers before we start.  Departmental…and Institute policy, you understand.”

Holland took them on a short tour of the interior of the containment quarters.  It resembled a small apartment and was more extensive than either Chase or Angie realized, with a small bed, toilet, kitchenette with sink and fab and refrigerator, and some bookshelves.  A vid screen dominated a small but cozy sitting area.  Along one wall, near the bed, a separate counter had been placed with ports above the counter for remote manipulator and surgical extension gloves to reach inside the containment zone, for samples, blood tests and short-range examinations.  Around the ceiling of the compartment, vid cameras were everywhere.

“First, you make yourself comfortable, right in that bed,” Holland explained. “The technology is largely based on use of genetically modified and programmed bacteria and microbial organisms. We begin with a genetic sequencing and a neural scan.  After the sequencing and scans, the bacteria and microbes are selected and ‘tuned’ to match yours.”  Holland was sympathetic to Angie’s growing anxiety.  It was normal; you could see it in their eyes, the way their lips tightened.

“Let’s go into my office—it’s just around the corner—and I’ll run through the tests and the basics of the procedure…what to expect over the next few days. Then there’ll be all the waivers and consent forms to sign.”

 

Later that afternoon, Angie announced she was ready.  She was already clad in a light blue hospital gown.  “Looks like a grocery sack,” Chase teased it.  That didn’t help.

She went into the containment quarters, gave Chase a quick peck, and watched with growing apprehension as the inner and outer doors cycled and locked themselves.  Her ears popped with the pressure change. 

I’m a nurse now, for God’s sake.  I put people under for procedures every day.  Why does this bother me so?

Maybe it wasn’t the procedure.  Maybe it was the outcome…she could still hear Dr. Holland’s words, describing the new abilities she would have as an amphib: gill sacs, cutaneous respiration, melanocytic modifications in her skin cells, tissue changes in her hands and feet, with barely discernible webbing.  “I’ll look like a frog on steroids!” she complained.  “I won’t be able to run laps with Gwen and the others—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chase told her.  “You can still run and you can swim like a fish too.  You couldn’t do that before.”

Angie seemed downcast the more she heard.  “I’m doing this for us, Chase. I hope you know that.”

They kissed and she disappeared into quarters.

The first steps of the procedure would be conducted in a bed-like cocoon pod in the front room of the chamber. 

Holland’s voice came over a speaker on the wall.  “Open the pod by pressing on the side…you’ll feel a series of bumps—when they’re both open, lie down inside, face up.  Fold your arms over your chest.  Then relax…we’ll do the rest.”

Angie gingerly lay herself down inside the pod, shifting about to get comfortable.  It was actually pretty cozy there, but she couldn’t stop the shakes. 

 “After you lie down inside, contractile fibers will unfurl and extend.  It’s perfectly normal. They will envelop your body.  The fibers have sharp tips.  You won’t feel it but the tips will inject a potion.  You will sleep.  And when you wake up, the first phase will be done.  If all goes well—“

Angie shuddered, wrapped her arms around her shoulders.  “Ugh.  If all goes well…I wish she hadn’t said that.”

“Ready, Angie?”

“As well as I’ll ever be.”

Then, the cocoon began squeezing her slowly between its wall segments, like she was being excreted into the pod.  The pod did look like a bed, a big oblong bed, encased in some kind of scaly outer covering.  Chase decided they looked like gigantic watermelon halves, even down to the black seeds scattered around the interior.  Those were part of the cushioning.

Angie made a face.  She lay back carefully inside the pod. 

For a long time, nothing happened.  She dozed off, then awoke hearing a faint whistle.  She sniffed something, it smelled like oranges.  Then she noticed a faint mist issuing into the pod. 

This is like being in a coffin, she thought.  She’d been wreck diving with Chase in tight spots like this, so she told herself she could get through it.  But she wondered nonetheless. What will I really look like when this is over…some kind of mutant gator? The mist thickened.  She didn’t know it but the mist contained the first wave of programmed bacteria.  The bacteria would begin the process, penetrating into her nose, her mouth and eyes, burrowing into her skin, breaking down tissues and bone and cartilage, rebuilding structures to begin making her more compatible with amphibs.

Of course, Angie didn’t understand all the details.  Her wristpad had been programmed to describe the process in detail, but the voice was soft and staticky and she wasn’t really listening.  Instead, she grew sleepy.

 That’s when the dreams came.

 

As a child, Angie had always been a serious person, committed and dedicated to whatever task she was working on.  She was extremely imaginative even as a very young child and often spent hours amusing herself with the VR slate (the oculus) and the holopod and 3d printer, creating and populating imaginary worlds.  She showed abilities as a filmmaker and writer/storyteller that impressed her Mom a great deal.

One of her favorite imaginary worlds was one she called Principia, full of kings and queens, fairy princesses and dragons and lots of horses.  Angie always loved horses.  Some of her own work with the oculus involved creating and animating all kinds of horses.  She had two imaginary horses, Lucy and Lucky, that she used a lot as imaginary creatures in her stories.

When Angie was four, her father Horace abandoned the family, for another woman.  The family was living in Gainesville, Florida at the time, and Horace was a professor at the University of Florida.  He taught American History and Political Science.  The younger woman was named Cecilia Fortnoy and she worked as an assistant staff aide to the Florida Governor in Tallahassee.  Horace became interested in her because he seemed to gravitate to woman who were “important” or doing important things in his eye.  Being around powerful people or celebrities always fascinated Horace.  Maggie, working in Gainesville as a waitress at a fast-food restaurant (Venetian Feast) couldn’t fill this need.  They divorced in the summer of 2106 and Maggie had to take a second, later a third job, to make ends meet.

Angie was devastated.  She felt totally abandoned. 

Working so many jobs to put food on the table, Maggie Gilliam (she kept her married name) was always tired and irritable.  Angie saw what this did to people.  One of the effects of Maggie having to work so hard and being tired and cranky all the time, was that Mom no longer had time to play games or do puzzles with her kids.  This made Angie feel lonesome and she retreated into her imaginary worlds even more.  At the age of six, starting school and Net Tutor, she was already writing and illustrating her own Principia stories. 

But nothing she had ever imagined for Principia ever came close to what she saw when she woke up from the conicthyosis procedure. 

This time, Angie knew she wasn’t dreaming.

 

The first day of waiting was the hardest for Chase.  He sat for hours in the waiting room at the Lab, amusing himself with games and stuff on his pad, then for kicks programmed the pad to google articles and interviews about amphibs.  Amphibs were the hottest thing now, even celebrities were doing it.  It was global.  It was a cultural phenomenon. Even Dr. Holland had gone through the procedure, though you had to look close to see it.

Chase’s wristpad chimed when a hit was made that matched his search criteria.  He’d dozed off on a sofa and forced his eyes open to catch the vid the pad was bringing up.  It was some kind of news item, something from Solnet, by the looks of it….

 

So that’s the excerpt.  Hope you found this intriguing enough to look for the complete book.  It should be available for download in early fall of 2018.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on March 26 2018.

See you then.

Phil B.

 

 

Post #115 March 12 2018

“Starting a New Book”

As of this writing, I’m about one week away from starting a new book.  The title is The Farpool: Convergence, fourth in the series The Farpool Stories.  This one should be available in the early fall of 2018.

While every writer is different, I have a set routine that I go through in the last few days before I begin the first draft.  Below, I’ve shown you part of my Next Steps file for this book.  It’s kind of checklist for making sure I’m ready to start. Let’s examine it in more detail.

1. Complete any needed expansion of Outline of the Story, especially any Research Needs. DONE
2. Complete List of Major Players DONE Add Tim Holland to bios.  DONE
3. Background and personality sketches on selected major characters DONE
4. Review ancient Earth and other planet geological and formation details (3 bya) DONE
5. Write brief description of sea-steading and ocean-based cities and states and how they came to be (ca. early 22^nd century). Example: Neptunia Free State. See Seasteading Details file. DONE
6. Write brief description of Amphib culture and lifestyles DONE
7. Write Chapter and Scene Details DONE
8. Projected start first draft: March 12, 2018
    
   The last few days before I start a new book are devoted to an all-up review of everything.  I concentrate on the outline, the characters and the setting.
    
   I’m a dedicated outliner and I write stories from fairly detailed outlines.  I call my final outline Chapter and Scene Details.  Below is one chapter from the outline for The Farpool: Exodus, now available at Smashwords and other fine ebook retailers:

Chapter 2

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Woods Hole, MA

May 3, 2115

Dr. Josey Holland, Biology Dept branch chief for cetacean species, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, is hurrying to a meeting in an upstairs data analysis room in the McLean Lab building, a meeting run by Dept chief Dr. Walter Williston, to sort through the data they have from Beagle and prepare some kind of statement for the press.  A press conference is set to begin in one hour, downstairs in the main conference room.  Reporters are clamoring for more information about this supposed New Atlantis.  Press reports have already exploded across all media.

Williston, Holland and others review findings from the aborted Beagle mission.  What happened?  It’s clear that something intelligent is down there, near the Muir seamounts, and in large numbers.  Perhaps a new species, unknown before.  They discuss what to tell the press, who are already speculating about the discovery of Atlantis.  The scientists decide to make a statement to the effect that Beagle was lost due to malfunction, that the data shows the possibility of a new, aggressive species near Bermuda and that further research is needed and more expeditions are planned.  They decide not to mention any speculation about the intelligence or intentions of this new species, who have been officially termed Tursiops digitalis (dolphins with fingers) by the researchers.  They also decide not to respond to media speculation that the US Navy already knows about this. 

The scientists also briefly debate whether to request Navy help and support for their next expedition, which they decided must include two submersibles, one unmanned (Proteus) and one manned (Poseidon).  They decide to alert the Navy but they don’t want anyone to interfere with the next ‘interaction’ with what seems like both an intelligent and fairly aggressive species.  No Navy support is to be requested.

In the days following this bombshell press conference, Holland works with others to organize the expedition and lobbies her boss Dr. Williston to accompany the expedition aboard Poseidon.  He agrees reluctantly. 

The expedition departs Woods Hole for Bermuda and the Muir seamounts.  Dr. Holland is both anxious and yet somewhat despondent and thoughtful during the trip; her shipmates learn that she is in the midst of a divorce and is worried about who will get custody of her two children.

You can see this is pretty detailed.  In starting a book, I have already completed detailed outlines so my final review consists of studying these in depth, adding any details or adjustments I may need to be able to write from the outline.  With a detailed outline, the writing part is (usually) easy.  I have been known to lift text directly from an outline and include it in my story almost verbatim.

Next, I review my main character backgrounds and bios, also pretty detailed.  I do this in order to fix in my mind the details of these people: what they look like, what they like and don’t like, formative incidents from their lives.  I try to get inside their heads and become these people well enough to be able to write about them and describe them accurately.

Here’s the opening of one my character bios.  This person appears in both Exodus and Convergence:

Dr. Josey Holland

(Biology Dept branch chief for cetacean species, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

 

Age: 38

Height: 5’4”

Weight: 100 lbs

Hair: Long blond tresses, with lighter highlights.  Holland keeps her hair long.  One wave of hair drops down over her right eyes. 

Face: Josey Holland has a big wide grin which dominates her face.  She has a fabulous smile.  Her face is tall, somewhat long with a prominent chin and nose.  She’s self-conscious about her nose.  She has sharp cheek lanes, but a pronounced dimple in her chin, which she is also self-conscious about. She has a high forehead.

Other Distinguishing Features:  Josey has sparkling, effervescent eyes.  Her eyes are bright blue and she has very expressive eyebrows and uses them to good effect.  Josey also has large lips that seem to pout at you, but always look kissable.  Her lips were a feature that Chase Meyer noticed first.  She is quick, almost furtive in her movements and gives the impression of barely contained nervous energy.  Her hands are never still and she uses them to express herself quite a bit.  She’s a bit of an amateur painter (mostly nature scenes and ocean scenes) so she is quite precise with her hand and finger movements, but you’d never get that impression from the way they flutter about.  Josey is thin, lean and willowy in build. 

A Short Biography: (NOTE: story takes place in May, 2115 AD)

1. Josey Holland was born on January 31, 2077, middle of three sisters to Dr. Olin Holland and Bea Holland, in Seattle, WA.  Her older sister is Heather, two years older.  Younger sister is Mel(anie), two years younger.  Josey’s full name is Josephine, which (of course) she hates and never uses.

The final aspect of my review involves studying up on details of setting and physical background.  All of The Farpool Stories take place in and around oceans, either on the distant planet Seome or on Earth.  Consequently, I have a lot of background on ocean stuff, details of topography, marine life, etc.  I go through all of this stuff one last time to fully fix in my mind where the story takes place and what it’s like to be there.  The author has to be able to describe places accurately and memorably, all the more important when it’s another planet in a galaxy far, far away.

By the time you read this, I’ll be well underway with the first draft of The Farpool: Convergence.

In my next post to The Word Shed, I’ll give you an excerpt from this new book.  Look for it on March 19, 2018.

Phil B.

Post #114  March 5 2018

“How Many Pages Should I Write Today?”

Every writer faces the same question when he or she sits down at the computer in the morning: how many pages, how many words, should I write today?

This is basically a matter of scheduling.  For writers of novels and non-fiction books, it goes without saying that there’s no way you can do the entire work in a day or a week, probably not even in a month. You have to divide it up into chunks, mainly because you’ve got other things to do with your life along with writing. 

Case in point:  I’m currently working on a series of science fiction novels called The Farpool Stories.  I anticipate that when the initial draft of a novel is done, it will come in at somewhere around 250 pages, when formatted for Smashwords.com.  Each page runs on average about 500 words, so we’re talking about 125,000 words in total.  Now, how to divide that up....

I’m doing 3-5 pages a day.  That doesn’t sound like much. But it leaves me with time for other tasks and projects.  Writing 5 pages a day takes me about 3-4 hours, depending.  But it’s 25 pages a week.  Divide 250 pages by 25 pages and you get 10 weeks, about four to five months.  At the rate I have chosen, I can do a draft of a Farpool book in five months.  Plus I can work on other things and have a life.

Could I write more?  Of course I could.  But you should choose a rate that is comfortable and sustainable over a long period, since it’s unlikely you can finish a novel-length project in a few weeks.  There are some writers who bat out a draft in a single marathon session of a month but I’m not one of them.  I take longer and take my time and try to do the thing right from the beginning. 

One the most important aspects of this writing process for me, when engaged in a lengthy work, is “staying in the story”, mentally.  I find that a daily regimen like I described above is a great way to do that.  Even away from my desk, I find my feverish brain cogitating on the next scene, the next sentence.  Sometimes ideas for snatches of dialogue or plot variations will come to me when I’m working out, mowing the lawn, eating dinner, watching TV.  I want that. 

Every writer approaches this differently. 

I’m also a detailed outliner and planner, when it comes to writing a novel, or writing anything.  I’ve covered some of this in earlier blog posts, but I work from the beginning to build a fairly detailed outline, with character sketches and setting and background details readily at hand for the actual writing.  Sometimes my outlines and sketches are detailed enough to be lifted and pasted into the novel text as is, or with little change.  That makes life easier, as long as it advances the story.  The story is everything.  I’m even been including an Appendix of some of this material at the end of The Farpool Stories, for readers who just can’t get enough detail on my imaginary world and its people.

That’s a little peek behind the curtains at the logistics or the mechanics of daily writing life.  I plan to do more of this sort of thing again. 

My next post comes on March 12.

See you next week.

Phil B