November 30, 2008

Three 1K Story Generators

by Nick Montfort · , 9:50 am

To follow up on the 1K story generator I posted ten days ago, here is a slightly revised version of that generator and two new ones.

On a Mac or Linux system, you can run one of these, for instance, story2.py, by downloading it to the Desktop, opening a terminal Window, typing “cd Desktop”, and typing “python story2.py”. These run on Windows, too, but you will need to have Python installed, either by having already installed it or by installing it (e.g., version 2.6) yourself

7 Responses to “Three 1K Story Generators”


  1. ElliotM Says:

    These are really neat. While looking at the source code of the first one, I noticed that the sequence has an intentional arrangement to it but I also wondered what you meant by specifically written sentences. Did you have any guidelines you would give to anyone interested in writing their own text for something like this?

  2. Nick Montfort Says:

    Elliot, sure – I just meant that I didn’t simply write a 23-sentence story, but has in mind that each sentence had to be optional. Rather than offering guidelines, I’d suggest that people take a few minutes and try writing a story generator of this sort. (You’re all welcome to post them here, too.) People will probably quickly come up with better methods than I could suggest.

  3. J.R. Carpenter Says:

    Here are Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR based on the above story1.py: http://luckysoap.com/lapsuslinguae/2009/06/excerpts-from-chronicles-of-pookie-jr.html

  4. Post Position » Story Generation with Pookie and JR Says:

    […] Cape, and other fine works of e-lit, print and xerography, has delightfully repurposed one of my 1k story generators to have it tell stories involving her and a hermit crab named Pookie. The program has grown to […]

  5. J.R. Carpenter Says:

    The saga continues. NYC based artist/programmer Ravi Rajakumar has ported the Chronicles of Pookie & JR to Javascript. Rajakumar notes that in javascript the whole thing ends up being about 11k with the css and html, and not including the jQuery includes, but the actual core bit of js is still around 2k. http://luckysoap.com/pookieandjr

  6. J.R. Carpenter Says:

    First year Dartington College Performance Writing students group blog remixed using the above story1.py script to create Darting Stories Remix: http://luckysoap.com/lapsuslinguae/2009/12/darting-stories-remix.html

  7. Post Position » “Les deux” / “The Two” Says:

    […] , de Serge Bouchardon. La version anglaise était auparavant disponible en Python. C’était le second de trois générateurs de 1k que j’avais réalisés à la fin de 2008. “Les deux” génère des histoires toutes […]

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