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