Suspenser: A Story Generation System for Suspense

Interactive storytelling has been receiving a growing attention from AI and game communities and a number of computational approaches have shown promises in generating stories for games. However, there has been little research on stories evoking specific cognitive and affective responses. The goal of the work we describe here is to develop a system that produces a narrative designed specifically to arouse suspense from its reader. Our approach attempts to create stories that manipulate the reader's suspense level by elaborating on the story structure that can influence the reader's narrative comprehension at a specific point in her reading. Adapting theories developed by cognitive psychologists, our approach uses a plan-based model of narrative comprehension to determine the final content of the story in order to manipulate the reader's suspense. In this paper, we describe our system implementation and empirical evaluations to test the efficacy of this system.

[1]  Subbarao Kambhampati,et al.  Planning as Refinement Search: A Unified Framework for Evaluating Design Tradeoffs in Partial-Order Planning , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[2]  Marc Cavazza,et al.  Character-Based Interactive Storytelling , 2002, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[3]  Stephen G. Ware,et al.  CPOCL: A Narrative Planner Supporting Conflict , 2011, AIIDE.

[4]  Richard J . Gerrig.  The Resiliency of Suspense , 2013 .

[5]  Andrew Stern,et al.  Façade: An Experiment in Building a Fully-Realized Interactive Drama , 2003 .

[6]  Yun-Gyung Cheong,et al.  A Computational Model of Narrative Generation for Suspense , 2006, AAAI.

[7]  Lee Spector,et al.  Partial and total-order planning: evidence from normal and prefrontally damaged populations , 2001, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  William F. Brewer,et al.  Story structure, characterization, just world organization, and reader affect in American and Hungarian short stories☆ , 1988 .

[9]  Ann Blandford,et al.  Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock: twist-centred story generation by transformation , 2002 .

[10]  Johanna D. Moore,et al.  Decomposition and Causality in Partial-order Planning , 1994, AIPS.

[11]  R. Michael Young,et al.  Using Grice's maxim of Quantity to select the content of plan descriptions , 1999, Artif. Intell..

[12]  Robert Michael Young,et al.  A Use of Flashback and Foreshadowing for Surprise Arousal in Narrative Using a Plan-Based Approach , 2008, ICIDS.

[13]  M. Wied,et al.  The role of temporal expectancies in the production of film suspense , 1995 .

[14]  Stephanie W. Haas.  The Creative Process: A Computer Model of Storytelling and Creativity, by Scott R. Turner , 1996, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci..

[15]  Nikitas M. Sgouros.  Dynamic Generation, Management and Resolution of Interactive Plots , 1999, Artif. Intell..

[16]  R. Gerrig,et al.  Readers as problem-solvers in the experience of suspense , 1994 .

[17]  Robert Michael Young,et al.  Narrative Planning: Balancing Plot and Character , 2010, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[18]  Robert Michael Young,et al.  Automatically Generating Summary Visualizations from Game Logs , 2008, AIIDE.

[19]  James C. Lester,et al.  Narrative prose generation , 2001, Artif. Intell..

[20]  Michael Toolan,et al.  Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction , 1989 .

[21]  William F. Brewer,et al.  Stories Are to Entertain: A Structural-Affect Theory of Stories. Technical Report No. 265. , 1982 .

[22]  Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan.  Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics , 1983 .

[23]  Johanna D. Moore,et al.  DPOCL: A Principled Approach To Discourse Planning , 1994, INLG.

[24]  Brian Magerko,et al.  Mediating the tension between plot and interaction , 2004, AAAI 2004.

[25]  Peter Vorderer.  Toward a Psychological Theory of Suspense , 2013 .

[26]  Andrew Ortony,et al.  The Cognitive Structure of Emotions , 1988 .

[27]  J. Bryant,et al.  Responding to the screen : reception and reaction processes , 1991 .

[28]  Peter Vorderer,et al.  Suspense : Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations , 2009 .

[29]  T. Trabasso,et al.  Causal relatedness and importance of story events , 1985 .

[30]  Alessio Lomuscio,et al.  A logic for ignorance , 2003, DALT.

[31]  Robert J. Yanal,et al.  THE PARADOX OF SUSPENSE , 1996 .

[32]  L. F. Alwitt.  Suspense and Advertising Responses , 2002 .

[33]  R. Aylett.  Narrative in Virtual Environments - Towards Emergent Narrative , 1999 .

[34]  A. Graesser,et al.  Question answering in the context of stories , 1991 .

[35]  Nicolas Szilas,et al.  A New Approach to Interactive Drama: From Intelligent Characters to an Intelligent Virtual Narrator , 2001 .

[36]  D. Zillmann.  The logic of suspense and mystery. , 1991 .

[37]  Michael Lebowitz,et al.  Story-telling as planning and learning , 1985 .

[38]  J. Bryant,et al.  FACTORS INVOLVED IN GENERATING SUSPENSE , 1982 .

[39]  Marc Cavazza,et al.  Revisiting Character-Based Affective Storytelling under a Narrative BDI Framework , 2008, ICIDS.

[40]  M. Bal,et al.  Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative , 1988 .

[41]  S. Chatman.  Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film , 1980 .

[42]  Marc Cavazza,et al.  Interactive Storytelling with Literary Feelings , 2007, ACII.

[43]  R Core Team,et al.  R: A language and environment for statistical computing. , 2014 .

[44]  James C. Lester,et al.  Probabilistic Goal Recognition in Interactive Narrative Environments , 2006, AAAI.

[45]  W. Brewer.  The Nature of Narrative Suspense and the Problem of Rereading , 2013 .

[46]  Alessio Lomuscio,et al.  A Logic For Ignorance , 2004, LCMAS.

[47]  R. Barthes,et al.  An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative , 1975 .

[48]  Randall W. Hill,et al.  Virtual Humans in the Mission Rehearsal Exercise System , 2003, Künstliche Intell..

[49]  Robert Michael Young,et al.  Cinematic Visual Discourse: Representation, Generation, and Evaluation , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games.