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I know, I know... I'm being presumptuous, annoying, and possible inconsiderate!
But I've been cast as a 'know-it-all' all my life - so, I have no intention of stopping now.
My reply is giving advice to ALL of the writer's out there.
I choose to first generalize the situation of the circumstance, then apply the solution to the generalization.
This is really a case of how to handle a property that's become a 'hit'.
First as a content creator, you are responsible for any work that you have created. If you care about the work then treat it like it's your child - you should never abandon it, you can pass it to another to insure proper care if you know you can't; but to just leave it out there is to leave it to the wolves (and, no, Rome is not the usual outcome).
For a work that spawns successors there should be a 'bible' of some sort - even if it's just the corpus of the notes that the work was based on - it will give guidance to those who follow. Do not worry about inconsistencies in that bible and/or retconing the narrative - every major religion, political platform, and multi-generational content has had these things happen to it.
I'm going to use the content from DC Comics as examples - DC had its 'Golden Age' heroes that were reimagined (now-a-days we call this rebooting) into the 'Silver Age' heroes; which were, in turn, reimagined again to what we call the 'Bronze Age'. DC used the universe altering multi-title concept 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' to reboot their entire superhero line. DC, subsequently, has continued to tinker with the 'formula' by rebooting and/or retconing in large and in small. Moral of this mini-tale is that a work is a 'living' thing that does get reinvented every now and again... and that is not a bad thing.
For all of you who wish to be successors in the telling of the story - remember your telling is your interpretation of the predecessor's work and is as valid as the original. The choice is yours on how close to canon (or the 'bible') you wish to adhere to. The key is to respect the work that came before, especially if it has a following. If you are making a major reimagining, then say so; either in a forward/preface or a prologue that points to a 'logically consistent' fork in the storyline. [note: the fork can be totally arbitrary - the 'logical consistency' part is required to minimize the 'suspension of belief' so that you get some 'buy in' from loyal readers of the canon].
Look, Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' has been 'covered', revamped, rewritten, reimagined, etc. thousands (if not millions) of times but the readers don't get tired of it nor do writers get tired of trying their hand at reworking it. If a story is good enough to have its own 'fan' base then it usually has something that begs to be flattered by imitation. Talking about 'Romeo and Juliet', I want to tackle a retelling of Paul Atreides and Chani's story in a Voodoo/Loa setting - go figure!
The only way your vision will see the light of day is for you to create the content!
Now I'm going to slink back in my corner to lurk some more and try to take my own advice.
'nuff said
~Ciao
I have two itches that I'm going to scratch today.
First, a warning about using A.I. too deeply to assist you in your writing.
Please, never forget that the principal feature/function of A.I. is to learn - not to help you. While it is assisting you, it is learning about you, your work, your style - and, most importantly, there is nothing in the contractual relationship between you and the A.I.'s maker that prohibits reuse of what is learned. In fact, it is almost a given that there is going to be some reuse, and there is no guarantee that it won't be specific enough to be identifiable.
I have come across a news article about suspicions of regurgitation in the scientific community, where what was learned in one lab by an A.I. was used for a solution elsewhere by that same A.I. Then there's the writer who got his award invitation revoked because it did not pass a test for A.I. influence.
Next, if you are an author, I have some vaporware that I'd like to blow up your nose.
I have conceived something I am tentatively calling ‘The Story Maker's Tool’.
This tool is built with the assumption that a (literary) content creator will use the mise-en-scène technique (essentially 3rd party camera like / fly-on-the-wall descriptive notation) to storyboard the tale. The real strength is that it's not just storyboarding - it is story graphing! If a picture is worth a thousand words - a graph is worth a magnitude more than a picture!!
Using journalistic principles, eight fundamental object classes are defined: Characters (the who), Props (the what thing), Resources (the what is), Actions (the do what), Places (the where), Instances (the when), Links (the how - from cause to effect), and Motivations (the why - which are usually causes in the plot).
Distinct & discrete (identifiable but not necessarily identified) Characters, Props, Resources, & Places each get an entry in their class specific database. Each entry is a description of the object's properties. Properties are divided into several categories: discretionary terms (names, etc.), (story) role (protagonist, 2nd female lead, etc.), inherent capabilities (ability to move, communicate, etc.), its lifeline (from birth/creation to death/destruction), its characteristics (observable things that make this object distinct), its behavior (default response to specified stimulus), its relation to other objects. All of this follows the modeling done in computer gaming and object-oriented programming; so, nothing new there.
What is sorta new is the concept that the Storyboard is a (scrollable) frame-of-reference for a ‘world’ context where time progresses horizontally, and Places (discrete locations that are interrelated) are arranged vertically. In addition to the aforementioned Places, every Storyboard has a set of Characters, a set of Props, and a set of Forms that are associated with it. Every Storyboard is populated with one or more Scene(s).
The Story, itself, is usually comprised of one Storyboard but may have more when necessary. An example of a Story with possibly three Storyboards is a tale of three groups: one group is on a lengthy voyage from somewhere to elsewhere, one group is the left behind at somewhere, and the last group is already at elsewhere unknowingly awaiting the new arrivals; each group is isolated from the others (for the majority of the time) while being immersed into a ‘world’ unto itself, hence the separate Storyboards.
The innovation continues, with each Scene being framed (vertically) by the (discrete) Spots in a Place and (horizontally) by the Scene's time(duration)line (where an identified Instant is a point on that line). Each Scene on the Storyboard correlates with its brethren, where Scenes that are on the same horizontal row are Scenes at the same place and Scenes that vertically overlap have portions that are occurring simultaneously.
A Scene contains one or more Scenelet(s). It also has an abbreviated cast of Characters and a list of Props that appear in the Scene; plus, a subset of Resources applicable to the Scene. This is to ensure that Characters & Props can only appear in one Scene at a (specific) time.
A Scenelet is one or more Character(s) and/or Prop(s) occupying a Spot or a locus of Spots at the same Moment (a short duration of time) for the purpose of interaction and/or change in their state/status. Actions are bound to a Character or Prop in the Scenelet, with the Action potentially affecting the other members of the Scenelet (which, in turn, can cause a reaction in them). A specific point of time (an Instant) in an Action/Reaction is an Event. Of special note is the Action of ‘speaking’. It is a ‘bar’ anchored to a Character whose length is the duration of the utterance with the text of the utterance in a ‘pop up’ box/bubble; it also has the properties of mode and targets. Resources, being immaterial and/or service/process/structure related, are bound-to/used-by the Character(s) and/or Prop(s).
Moments and Actions are constrained in time by their starting & ending Instants. The lifelines of Characters, Props, & Places are marked by the Instances that they are involved in. The framing of the Scene allows the tracking of the where and when of the spotting of Characters and/or Props within a Place. Placement of a Character or Prop in a Scenelet is done via a token to ensure that a Character or Prop only appears in one spot at a time within the Scene.
Links are used to connect the cause of a change to the effect of that change - illustrating the ‘how’ of things. They link events, from the before to the after of a change in position and/or state. The Link is usually restricted to a single variable (other than time) change - i.e. a specific Character's change in state or position.
The ‘why’ of things is related to the story’s plot(s); with Motivations being associated with (key) Role Holders (Characters) as plot points. Additional plot points are assigned to Events associated with Role Holders that ‘move’ the plot along. Links between plot-points highlight the ‘cause & effect’ chaining in the plotline.
Then there are features related to the Story’s telling; the primary two being, (telling) sequencing (starting where you want, flash-backing, flash-forwarding, ending where you want, etc.) and (telling) structuring (chaptering, sectioning, etc.); plus, some neat secondary ones, such as, point-of-view shifting w/shrouding (rendering unavailable/hiding what is unknown to the Character or Prop).
Why, you ask, am I bringing up this vaporware?
Because, besides being a ‘bee in my bonnet’ for years, now that I’ve read blogs here on SoL about authors using A.I. as an assistant to curate their work – it's now a full-blown itch in places I can’t scratch by myself. I’m aghast at the loss of privacy & the potential for petty theft of intellectual property.
It has finally got me off of my ‘duff’, to publicly offer this product as an alternative to A.I. for assisting an author in high level meta-activities such as composition, structuring, & presentation while insuring the privacy & integrity of the content creator’s work. An additional feature of my solution is the facilitation of controlled secured sharing amongst authenticated & authorized participants in the creation process.
I welcome any questions or suggestions that you may have about my vaporware.
I’ve rattled on enough for now.
~Ciao
Blame Microsoft!...
For the last 19 years (and billions of documents) MS Word (version 2007 & later) has auto styled & auto corrected the em-dash into its prominence.
MS Word will auto replace a dash into an em-dash when you precede the dash with a space then follow it with a space, a punctuation-less word, & a another space.
Because so many Word users either have mindlessly accepted this 'styling' feature or have wholeheartedly accepted this as styling gospel... A.I. has been, truly, mindlessly misguided in its training.
Which gets back to the moral of the story - 'Garbage In - Garbage Out'!
'nuff said
~Ciao
I read a summary for an article in the NYT.
The articles title is "One Woman Conceived a Baby. One Carried Him. Who’s the Mother?"
The summary reads... "A surrogate refused to have an abortion after the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart problem. She fled to Texas and had the child. Now she wants a judge to give custody to her instead of the biological parents."
[the above was directly quoted from [email protected] and is the property of the New York Times]
In this situation, to me, the bio-parents insistence on an abortion is equivalent to them requesting a discontinuation of the carriage of the fetus. Ergo, the new word - discarriage (the purposeful cessation of a pregnancy - aka an abortion). This is a contrast to a miscarriage (an accidental cessation of a pregnancy).
Why the new word?; to highlight by contrast & commonality the underling difference in meaning. One is purposeful and the other is accidental. In most jurisprudence, the distinction is crucial to judgement.
Why am I blogging about it here? To illustrate to other authors and readers that word choice is crucial to 'fleshing out' the reasoning & meaning of a written (or spoken) passage. If you feel the need, coin a word! {just make sure you explain your rational for the coinage somewhere}
re: the above real-life scenario -
I think adoption law covers it adequately. The bio-parents relinquished responsibility for (abandoned) their unborn child by requesting discarriage of the fetus (the unborn child). The surrogate mother makes her case for adoption by carrying the child to birth. All that's left in the adoption process is the test of suitability of parenthood - which I think should be waved (as it is for all other birth-mothers).
The issues of contractual obligations in the surrogacy is a whole different can of worms!
~That's all for now, folks~
~Ciao
I chuckled when I read the title of your blog...
and out right snickered when I read your whole blog...
You've gotten what I've been trying to say in my infrequent blogs!
-to truly create content from snippets you truly have to be an artist-
... and as all artist know...
-it's, gain through pain-
therefore:
to responsibly use A.I. well does not make the the artistic process easier or simpler.
{no shortcuts - no free lunch}
to all the content creators out there -
your craft fundamentals is your foundation...
A.I. is just a tool!
to all the content consumers out there -
don't pan it because it contains content you don't like or uses a technique that you don't care for...
pan it because it is poor quality art (conversely, praise it when it's good quality art).
... but, first, you have to try it...
more cents
'nuff said
~Ciao
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