Random Word Retrieval for Automatic Story Generation

Over the past forty years, significant research has been done on story/narrative generation in which the computer is the author.Many existing systems generate stories by filling in a template or copying an analogous story (and changing the time, place, etc.) or by prompting the user to provide a start to the story.Very few systems generate variable stories without these techniques.While it is impossible to quantify a human writer's inspiration, we can consider a common exercise that authors perform; namely 'writing prompts'.A writing prompt is just a topic or idea around which to start writing.The prompt can simply be a few words, which becomes the basis for a story.In this paper we present story generation from the perspective of how human authors create stories via writing prompts.The system will select a few random words as a prompt, which will form the basic parameters for generating a story.But unlike a human writer, a computer cannot intuitively know the context of a chosen word.Therefore, the Internet (and existing 'Concept Knowledge' systems) will be used to find the context for the selected words, thus guiding the story generation process.