Story Plot Research Articles

Bringing Stories Alive: Generating Interactive Fiction Worlds

Interactive fictions—also called text-based games—are games in which a player interacts with a virtual world purely through textual natural language. In this work, we focus on procedurally generating interactive fiction worlds. Generating these worlds requires (a) referencing everyday and thematic commonsense priors in addition to (b) being semantically consistent, (c) interesting, (d) coherent throughout, all while (e) producing fluent natural language descriptions of places, people, and things. Using existing story plots from books as inspiration, we present a method that first extracts a partial knowledge graph encoding basic information regarding world structure such as locations and objects. This knowledge graph is then automatically completed utilizing thematic knowledge and used to guide a neural language generation model that fleshes out the rest of the world. We evaluate generated worlds with human-participant studies, comparing our technique against rule-based and human-made baselines

Variations in Viewpoint Presentation: The ‘Pear Story’ as Told by People with a Schizophrenia Diagnosis

In this study we explore linguistic viewpoint representation by language users diagnosed with schizophrenia, a heterogenic group theorized to diverge in the way they present, or choose, perspective in both language and cognition. We collected and analyzed retellings of the “Pear Story”, addressing the building of, and navigation between, separate but interconnected mental domains by focusing on the use of a broad range of linguistic and narrative phenomena: interactive framing, evaluations, story plot construction, causal connections, reference and speech and thought representations. The results point towards great complexities and varieties in viewpoint reports and navigation between subjects, thereby shedding light on perspective-taking abilities and possible difficulties in this group of people. These findings advance research into the diverse and complex ways in which viewpoint can be represented and navigated in stories, while gaining a better understanding of how cognitive and experiential viewpoint disturbances might be expressed in non-neurotypical populations.Publisher’s Note: This article was originally published with an incorrect peer review statement, which said that this article was an internally reviewed editorial. This has now been amended to reflect the fact that this is a piece of research that underwent double blind peer review by two external reviewers.

Subtextual Scopes of Meaning in Vs. V. Ivanov’s Story «By the Old Road to Smolensk» («Bliz Staroi Smolenskoi Dorogi»)

The article deals with cognitive and semantic organization of Vs. V. Ivanov’s story «By the Old Road to Smolensk» («Bliz Staroi Smolenskoi Dorogi») in historical, cultural, poetical and ontological aspects. The constructive function of the subtext with its plot-building potential is revealed. The aim of the research is to disclose subtextual scopes of meaning and semantics on the motive and imagery; architectonical and compositional; idea and philosophy levels of the text. With this aim the structural and typological method of investigating literary phenomena was used along with the elements of hermeneutical, stylistic analysis of literary prose in its syntagmatics and paradigmatics. Vs. V. Ivanov’s story devoted to the anniversary of the Battle of Borodino and written in the years of the Great Patriotic War gives implicit parallels between the events fateful for the Russian history, presents a national image of the world and conceptualizes the notion of an individual private history with its close connection with world history. The author’s attention is focused on the image of a Russian peasant woman who accumulated the archetypical features of Mother Earth and Motherland having renounced all her family for the sake of the victory. Comprehension of severe hardships of Homeland is given though her understanding of war and peace. But the image of the old woman – Agrippina Caryina – and her life drama in Vs. V. Ivanov’s story is represented through the eyes of Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky who impersonated the author’s mind. The conflict/dialogue of two different life worlds shapes the inner plot of the story realized in the subtext, which helps the author to comprehend the life and fate of the heroine. The subtext being a constructive means of the story plot building enables the artist to transfer the real thoughts of the heroine, the tragedy and feat of her family in the Battle of Borodino, which she does not directly speak about, but which are clear to the «enlightened» interlocutor.

Teaching Constraint Programming Using Fable-Based Learning

The paper presents the pedagogical innovations and experience of the co-development of three MOOCs on the subject of “Modeling and Solving Discrete Optimization Problems” by two universities. In a nutshell, the MOOCs feature the Fable-Based Learning approach, which is a form of problem-based learning encapsulated in a coherent story plot. Each lecture video begins with an animation that tells a story following a novel. The protagonists of the story encounter a problem requiring technical assistance from the two professors from modern time via a magical tablet granted to them by a fairy god. The new pedagogy aims at increasing learners' motivation and interests as well as situating the learners in a coherent learning context. In addition to scriptwriting, animation production and situating the teaching materials in the story plot, another challenge of the project is the remote distance between the two institutions as well as the need to produce all teaching materials in both (Mandarin) Chinese and English to cater for different geographic learning needs. The MOOCs have been running recurrently on Coursera since 2017. We present learner statistics and feedback, and discuss our experience with and preliminary observations of adopting the online materials in a Flipped Classroom setting.

Story Realization: Expanding Plot Events into Sentences

Neural network based approaches to automated story plot generation attempt to learn how to generate novel plots from a corpus of natural language plot summaries. Prior work has shown that a semantic abstraction of sentences called events improves neural plot generation and and allows one to decompose the problem into: (1) the generation of a sequence of events (event-to-event) and (2) the transformation of these events into natural language sentences (event-to-sentence). However, typical neural language generation approaches to event-to-sentence can ignore the event details and produce grammatically-correct but semantically-unrelated sentences. We present an ensemble-based model that generates natural language guided by events. We provide results—including a human subjects study—for a full end-to-end automated story generation system showing that our method generates more coherent and plausible stories than baseline approaches 1.

Vegan stories: revealing archetypes and their moral foundations

PurposeThis study aims to identify the archetypes, moral foundations and plots associated with veganism through the stories told by vegan bloggers and the effect on mainstreaming of this ideology.Design/methodology/approachNarrative data was collected from 15 publicly available vegan blogs. Underlying archetypes, morals and story plots were identified and presented as a “story re-told,” highlighting the context and content of what was being said by the protagonists and associated meanings.FindingsThe analysis revealed three moral foundations on which vegan ideology is built: sanctity of life, enacting the authentic self and freedom. A universal hero archetype was also unearthed; however, the moral orientation of the storyteller (agency vs communal) dictated how these morals and archetypes were expressed.Research limitations/implicationsThrough the use of common story archetypes, master plots and moral foundations, a deeper understanding of vegans and the choices they make is facilitated, thus making vegan ideology appear less threatening. Storytelling plays an important role in establishing connections through commonality.Originality/valueThis study applies cultivation theory, storytelling analysis and archetype theory to reveal how vegan bloggers counteract mass media cultivation of vegan stereotypes through the stories they tell. We offer a more robust description of vegans, moving beyond stereotypes, and the morals driving behavior. Moreover, a unique mechanism of mainstreaming is exposed that shows vegans connect with people by tapping into universal archetypes and morals that anyone can relate to and relive.

AN INVESTIGATION OF MOOD AND TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS IN THE SHORT STORY “FRUIT PASSION”

This research aimed to investigate mood and transitivity analysis employed in popular short story Fruit Passion. the reseacher choose one of short story from 8 th grade of junior high school students’ textbook. This text belongs to jokes for kids which mostly found in meme. The objectives of the research are analysing the interpersonal meaning realized in the short story by identifying the mood types, speech roles, and modality. Besides that, identifying the process based on ideational meaning and explaining the contribution of both interpersonal meaning and ideational meaning towards teaching English as a foreign language in Indonesia. The result revealed that the prominent use of statements in the text, the author provides a broad and comprehensible information in the short story. Therefore, the objective of the text is successfully achieved based on the text genre. Besides that, the existence of ideational meaning which apply material process as the dominant process revealed that mostly the story emphasizes on what the actor do or what happen to the actor. The employment of material process in narrative text assists the author in designing the story plot in order to construct comprehensible and meaningful story. Keywords: Mood analysis, transitivity, short-story.

THE ROMANCE FORMULA IN CECELIA AHERN’S LOVE, ROSIE

This research analyzes the romance formula presented in Love, Rosie by discussing the standard convention of the novel. The romance formula analysis tends to prove what is the sociocultural background in 20th century of Ireland society which becomes the cultural background of the novel. We discuss the issues among popular culture and also finding out the dominant components of the story which builds the story into a romance story. The discussion is employed the Cawelti’s concept and supported by Radway’s theory of romance. This study discusses Romance formula in Love Rosie is presented by the two dominant elements, those are the romance plot formula and the characters. The inventions of the romance formula in Love Rosie is found in the writing style of the novel. The novel is written in the form of instant messages and letters that are sent between the hero and heroine. The results of this study indicate that Love, Rosie has two dominant elements that built the story into a romance story. The first element is the story plot and the second is the main characters of the story whom develops the love relationship in the story, which are the hero and the heroine. The story plot of Love, Rosie can be classified into four stages, those are the first meeting of Alex and Rosie, Alex and Rosie fall in love to each other, Obstacles which contain the internal and external conflicts of the hero and heroine, and the ending of the story.

The effects of empathy and persuasion of storytelling via tourism micro-movies on travel willingness

ABSTRACTDomestic and foreign tourism marketing has adopted micro-movies as a new tourism information communication media in recent years. A tourism micro-movie compiles the story content to include the scenic spots and characteristics of travel destinations, thus enabling viewers to resonate with the leading characters and story plots when watching the micro-movie. Therefore, this study investigates tourism micro-movies and analyzes whether the empathy and persuasion developed by the story plots in viewers when watching them will affect their attitude and response to travel destinations and further induce their travel willingness.

Гуманизированное искусственное тело в итальянской литературе середины ХХ в.

In various epochs, science fiction writers shared an interest in problems related to the humanization of an artificial body and the process of human interaction with a man’s own creation. In the 20th century Italian literature, in particular, this theme emerged already at the dawn of the century (e.g. а futuristic novel by F.T. Marinetti) and was present up until the beginning of the current “age of artificial intelligence.” Fantastic plots of several short stories and novellas by D. Buzzati and T. Landolfi, written in the 1950s and 60s, depicted ambivalent perception of the technogenic civilization and its novelties by the modern cultural consciousness. On the one hand, these works reflected the turning of the machine into an indispensable attribute of the social status of the modern human, the guarant of her private life success and mental health. On the other hand, in science fiction, there is a clear tendency to dramatize the problems and difficulties that the technological age set for a human — in particular, the problem of preserving the privilege of the human consciousness over the increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence of the machine.

Executive control of language production in schizophrenia: a pilot neuropsychological study

To test the general hypothesis about executive deficits in language production in schizophrenia as well as more specific hypothesis that this deficit would be more pronounced in the case of higher demand on executive functions. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and twenty-seven healthy controls were asked to tell a story based on a series of pictures and then to give an oral composition on the given topic. Schizophrenia patients, compared to controls, demonstrated poorer programming as well as shorter text and phrase length in both tasks. Oral composition on the given topic in patients was characterized by the presence of agrammatism, need for leading questions due to the difficulties of story plot generation as well as higher variance in syntactic complexity and text length. Therefore, the authors revealed executive deficit in language production, more pronounced in the task with less numerous external cues for planning and sequential text explication, in schizophrenia patients.

The significance of selected characters' personal and family names in the Shona novels, Pfumo Reropa and Mubairo

Some Shona writers exploit purposeful naming in their literary works. They use personal and family names that carry various suggestive details about the characters and their experiences or which serve as precursors to the story plot. Using the classical or sense theory of proper names, this article discusses the use of Shona names in Pfumo Reropa and Mubairo and observes that the names play a central and very important role in the literary works. They go beyond individualising the characters and families to being pointers to the qualities and/or behaviour of the bearers, and illuminators of the plot of the novels. In addition, some names convey characters' experiences and gender dynamics, while others reinforce particular themes, with yet others, serving sarcastic or satirical purposes. These observations have significant bearing on onomastics, literary characterisation and further research.

EEG "Signs" of Verbal Creative Task Fulfillment with and without Overcoming Self-Induced Stereotypes.

The study aimed to reveal task-related differences in story creation with and without the mental effort of overcoming self-induced stereotypes. Eighteen right-handed subjects (19.3 ± 1.1 years old) created stories. The subjects reported the formation of story plot stereotypes (as we call them: self-induced) during self-regulated creative production, which had to be overcome with the instruction to continue the story. Creative task fulfillment (without formed stereotypes—first stage of creation) was characterized by a decrease in the wave percentages of 9–10 Hz, 10–11 Hz and 11–12 Hz frequencies and EEG desynchronization (decreases in EEG spectral power) in the theta (4–8 Hz), alpha1 (8–10 Hz) and alpha2 (10–13 Hz) frequency bands in comparison with the REST (random episodic silent thought) state. The effortful creation task (with overcoming of self-induced stereotypes-second stage of creation) was characterized by increases in waves with frequencies of 9–10 Hz, 10–11 Hz, 11–12 Hz in temporal, occipital areas and pronounced EEG synchronization in alpha1,2 frequency bands in comparison with the free creation condition. It was also found, that the participants with the higher originality scores in psychological tests demonstrated increased percentage of high frequencies (11–12 Hz in comparison with those who had lower originality scores. Obtained results support the role of alpha and theta frequency bands dynamics in creative cognition.

For Popularity, Pleasure, or Other Reasons? The Treatment of Sex in The Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah

Sex or the intimate relationship between or among characters is an act that is explicitly depicted in the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah for various purposes. The purpose of sex should not just be sex for the sake of sex, or for the sake of making a writer ‘popular’. The paper argues that the act of sex plays a number of literary functions in these relationships. The thematic as well as other literary relevance of sex is explored through literary concepts such as ‘linguistic foregrounding’ and ‘paradigmatic associations’. Through these literary concepts of stylistic analysis, it becomes clear that sex plays the following roles in Armah’s novels: serves as an avenue for characterization; establishes a relationship as loving or adrift; is a tool of oppression and also vengeance; creates suspense and retains readers’ interest; obscures the real story plot for a literary effect such as ‘to motivate but also shock his (Armah’s) audience into activity’ (Fubara 72); and cures characters’ negative emotions like loneliness and anguish, among other roles. The paper concludes that Armah’s treatment of sex in largely explicit terms in his novels is not gratuitous, but fundamental for the appreciation of his literary works.

An Analysis of Plots in James W. Ellison “Akeelah and The Bee”

An Analysis of Plot in James W. Ellison “Akeelah and the Bee”. Thesis English Program of STKIP Muhammadiyah Sorong. The object of the analysis is Plot in the novel Akeelah and the Bee, the plot is taken as data, classified into the kind of plot and analyzed using descriptive analysis method. The purpose of this research is to know the kind of plot in Akeelah and the Bee novel. The result of this research show that in Akeelah and the Bee novel using (Flashback Plot because containing the elements are; Conflict, Exposition I, Exposition II, Exposition III, Exposition IV, Climax I, Climax II and End). And the writer analyze based on the theory of Russel and Freytag. The result of this research can give useful addition information for lecturers, especially in teaching literature about intrinsic element of story. For the students, the result of this research can be used as additional knowledge to improve their knowledge and ability of the literature, especially in plots of story.

How stories generate consumer engagement: An exploratory study

Understanding how branded storytelling content impacts consumer engagement (CE) is needed to advance research in this topical field and better calibrate story elements. This paper aims to understand the interplay between branded storytelling content and CE, considering the different features of stories and the multidimensional nature of engagement. It takes a netnographic approach to a collection of consumer responses − close to 1000 rich comments offered in four languages − to digital videos posted on YouTube by the brand Dove. Findings reveal that story plot, characters, and verisimilitude trigger consumer engagement by activating cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses in a certain sequence and with variable intensities and valences. The results, as well, show the important interactive aspect of story-based engagement. The paper contributes to CE research by offering a framework linking branded storytelling with CE, which is applicable by managers to design effective storytelling content.

Análisis narrativo y guerra. La cobertura del diario El País sobre el conflicto de Kosovo

Este trabajo es una aproximación a la estructura latente de la cobertura mediática en España de la intervención de la OTAN en Yugoslavia en las fechas en las que se produjo el bombardeo de este país tras el recudrecimiento del conflicto en la provincia de Kosovo. El estudio se basa en el empleo de dos métodos de análisis textuales. Por un lado, se utiliza el análisis semiótico para observar la secuencia narrativa de los acontecimientos (siguiendo a Propp, Levi-Strauss y Greimas) y, por otro, el análisis de contenido que examina las designaciones y atribuciones a los actores implicados en el conflicto, así como su presencia en la secuencia. El corpus textual está formado por las noticias aparecidas en las portadas del diario El País desde unas fechas anteriores al inicio de los bombardeos hasta el 31 de julio de 1999 ( un mes después de la firma de los acuerdos entre el ejército yugoslavo y la OTAN para la incorporación de las tropas occidentales en Kosovo). El análisis de los datos muestra una tendencia de los medios a presentar los acontecimientos dentro de una estructura narrativa en la cual se pueden determinar los actores, la secuencia de los relatos y las entidades contracturales y sancionadoras de la realización del héroe de cuento, así como el sistema de oposiciones binarias que contribuyen al desarrollo de la historia.

The Synchronous War Novel: Ordeal of the Unarmed Person in Serhiy Zhadan's Internat

In Serhiy Zhadan's recent novel Internat (2017), the protagonist epitomizes the quintessential east Ukrainian under scrutiny today, while his journey depicts working through trauma. His transformation portrays the ultimate shedding of melancholy when, in response to violence, the past is replaced by the present. I elicit some of the key symbols and features of this process, which I call triggered mourning, and attend to the role of real-time menace in initiating it. This article draws connections not only between the story's plot arc and the ongoing war, but also between Ukraine's past and present from the perspective of trauma theory. The four sections of the article (on the transformation, the void, the defect, and the antidote) propose and expand upon the notion that Internat is a synchronous war novel—a narrative that emerges parallel to, and closely entwined with, unfolding warfare—and examine its significance for scholarship on Ukraine, for Slavic studies, and beyond. Trauma studies in the context of literature are central to this analysis, with postcolonial studies providing some helpful illustrative parallels.

The Human Elements of Child Story Books

Research has established that the transfer of knowledge is facilitated by similarity between the context in which the information is learned and the context in which it is to be applied. However, many learning contexts designed for young children reduce the similarity between learning and transfer by using fantasy contexts and or fantasy characters to teach information that is meant to be applied in the real world. Among this context the representation of human in the story plot Is an important focus thus, the general objective of this study is to assess the representation of human in Ethiopian child story books. To conduct a content analysis 30 teacher in 6 preschools rated the story books they mostly used to read or refer for story telling for children. Through this method the top rated 12 books were selected for analysis which contains a total of 97 stories. The finding indicates that majority of the story’s 60 (61.83%) bases their story’s animal vs animal character, 31 (31.95%) of the story mentioned about the family type. Among which 13 (41.93%) of them are two parents, 14 (45.16%) of single parent of which 8 (57.14%) of them are single mom and 6 (42.86%) single dad. Regarding child representation only 18 (18.75%) of them involve children in the character of the story. Finally, the finding indicates 7 (7.21%) of the story portrayed people with special need as their central character. Among which only 2 (28.57%) of story represented people with special need in a appositive way. Thus, human representations in child story books are less emphasized and many focuses are given to the anthropomorphism character.

The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known Versions trans. by Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema

Reviewed by: The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known Versions trans. by Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema Yan Ma THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO AND OTHER YUAN PLAYS: THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERSIONS. Translated and introduced by Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 403 pp. Hardcover, $65.00; E-book, $64.99. The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays by Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema consists of an introductory essay on Yuan (1260–1368) zaju and the English translations of seven printed Yuan zaju plays with respective dramaturgical backgrounds as well as the translations of Ming (1368–1644) rewrites of four of the seven early prints. Zaju, as described in the volume, is "a form of musical drama that required one actor, playing the lead male or female character, to sing four suites (one [End Page 256] per act) of eight to twenty songs" (p. 1). The seven Yuan texts selected in this volume were preserved in fourteenth century editions, the earliest known versions of zaju. The four Ming texts selected are derived from the Ming court. To suit the reading preference of the educated literati in the Ming, the palace manuscripts were anthologized, among which the most notable is A Selection of Yuan Plays (Yuanqu xuan), edited by Zang Maoxun (d. 1621). Three Ming texts in this volume are from Zang's anthology. By trying to closely follow the original Chinese texts of the Yuan and Ming scripts, the authors allow readers to trace format changes of the zaju texts and the changes between earlier and later versions of each in terms of plot, character, and theme. In addition, the book allows readers to investigate the differences in the social and cultural worlds the plays represent and from which they were derived. The different formats of the Yuan and Ming scripts were determined by their functions. Yuan scripts were cooperative works created by writers, actors and performance troupes. The most popular scripts were copied and circulated among different performance troupes. The texts that this volume uses are the commercial printings of these performance texts. In these Yuan texts, there are no physical divisions that identify the acts (zhe), although individual scenes within them are physically separated. The term "zhe" is used to mark the scenes that do not involve the lead actor. However, in the Ming texts, the term "zhe" is adopted by the editors to mark act divisions, in which each unit that has a single suite of arias is identified as an act. These Ming printed editions intended to "clearly break the text into reading units that order the narrative (not the performance) and make reading and commentary easier" (p. 17). Therefore, while the Yuan scripts are performance texts that reflect the performing actions of the actors, the Ming editions are the reading texts that reflect the literary taste of editors and readers. The volume also informs the reader that Yuan performance texts served as scripts intended for the use of a performing troupe's male or female lead. Most of these Yuan texts include little more than the arias sung by the lead actor, with minimal directions that may provide summaries of dialogue. Directions for supporting roles generally provide only cues for the lead actor. In the Ming palace editions, the number of arias sung by the lead actors has been reduced, while there is extensive dialogue not limited to the leading role. The Ming printed editions, which are mostly derived from the palace manuscripts, are fully written-out scripts that include complete stage directions, arias for the lead actor, rhymed poems, and dialogue for every actor. Therefore, while the Yuan texts focus almost entirely on the performance of the lead actors, the Ming scripts include performance information for [End Page 257] every actor; this difference is probably due to the changes made in the palace editions to ensure appropriate performance for the emperor. In addition to the changes in format, alterations concerning the characters, plot, and theme(s) of the single story can be perceived in each play. One of the most common changes is the disappearance of the emperor as...