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NaNoGenLab

See also: The Swallows (2013) ∘ MARYSUE (2015) ∘ 2017 Entries2018 Entries2019 Entries


Herein may be found novel-generation experiments for NaNoGenMo conducted under the auspices of Cat's Eye Technologies.

Note that the word "experiment", like the word "novel", may mean many things.

Isaac Asimov has suggested a triage process which divides scientific claims into three groups: mundane, unusual and hogwash [my terms]. As an example, a claim that "My computer has generated 50,000 words of text" is pretty mundane. No-one would disbelieve me, but they wouldn't be very interested. A claim that "My computer has generated a 50,000-word story" would probably result in mild disbelief and requests to have a look. Finally, a claim that "My computer has generated a 50,000-word novel" would be greeted with cries of "Hogwash!"

with apologies to the sci.skeptic FAQ

Everything in this repository is in the public domain; see the file UNLICENSE in the root directory for more information.

Now that NaNoGenMo 2014 has passed, the purpose of this repository is a bit up-in-the-air. We may just keep using it for the purposes of continuing to develop the lab equipment and/or experimenting with generated text in the off-season. For what it looked like at the end of NaNoGenMo 2014, see the tag nanogenmo-2014-end.

An experiment a day during November

Having not come up with a really ripping idea for a novel to generate, I decided fairly early on in November to make my goal for NaNoGenMo 2014 to run one little experiment per day (on average) in the generation, transformation, and general mutilation of text (and images, yes those too. See the link for more details.)

In roughly chronicological order (based on when they were started, not when they were finished), the experiments have been:

  1. join-at-pivot
  2. levenshtein-equidistant
  3. infix-neologisms
  4. pyramidal-reduction
  5. checkerboard-layout
  6. narrative-makefile
  7. eliza-vs-eliza
  8. naive-cut-up
  9. poetic-inventory
  10. wikimedia-illustrations
  11. evaporating-text
  12. shanty-generator
  13. reluctance-generator
  14. columnar-cthulhuian
  15. ending-concordance
  16. find-cut-up-regions
  17. levenshtein-pathway
  18. selfref-timeline
  19. perm-count-finder
  20. uniquified-novel
  21. binary-phone-words
  22. recursive-template
  23. infinite-grammar
  24. quick-and-dirty-markov
  25. wordplay-finder
  26. levenshtein-word-replacement
  27. sensible-paste-up
  28. joke-o-matic
  29. levenshtein-swapper
  30. advanced-spoonerizer

Plus special bonus experiments!

  1. narrated-card-game
  2. multisource-markov

Plus experiments that were started but are not considered proper experiments mainly because they don't really add anything on top of one of the other experiments:

  • narrow-cut-up (not different enough from naive-cut-up)
  • naive-spoonerizer (not different enough from advanced-spoonerizer)

Anything in this repo not listed above is either a piece of lab equipment:

  • fetch-chronam
  • guten-gutter
  • image-calipers

or a supply of lab materials:

  • generic-corpora