Don't give up your day job

A computer expert in Florida has designed a program that is capable of writing stories. But don't panic, all your scribes out there: it doesn't write very good ones.

The software, called Xapagy, has been loaded with a lot of existing tales, translated into a language it can understand, then asked to create new writing of its own.  At first it was given a section of a known tale, such as Red Riding Hood, then asked to predict what came next.

Anyone who was taught English by a creative teacher in the 60s will be familiar with that technique. Xapagy looks for familiar connections within the given script, and uses them to create the next stage of the narrative. Here's an example of its work:

"My, what a big mouth you have Grandma," says Little Red Riding Hood, with just a hint of suspicion. The wolf sneezes. "Bless you," says the little girl.

The idea of the program is to improve the design of future robots; to make artifical intelligence more human and therefore more user-friendly. Experts predict that eventually it will be able to make up its own stories, once it has a large enough store of existing ones.

Xapagy's tale is told in the December 8 edition of New Scientist. I had to check that it wasn't from April.
The programmer's name? Lotzi Bölöni.

Back to work

I've written some rubbish today, which is a pity, since I'm paid to write more sense. What's that? Paid to write?  Correct. Although don't get excited all you desperate authors. I am not paid to write fiction. I am supposed to write news. I'm in the middle of producing a newsletter for the charity I work for, and trying madly to find interesting, relevant and vaguely scientific tales to tell. I found a few, but after two weeks of seasonal goodwill my skills were less than honed today.

Nil desperandum. I have words in hand, and will edit viciously in a couple of days when my work ethic returns.

Should I or shouldn't I?

When I write (anything really, short stories, novels, poems, press releases, whatever) I tend not to use contractions. You know: shouldn't, won't, I'll etc. But I have a problem. I have an idea going round my head that simply has to be written in first person and that person would never speak in full words. It's just not in his nature! I can hear his voice in my head, telling me the story, or at least setting up the situation so he CAN tell me the story, and he is obviously the kind who uses contractions.

My question is: would that put you off reading something of novel length?

In need of a good editor

I'm going to have a short rant. And if I offend anyone, I'm sorry. But I'm feeling in need of a pressure valve this morning.

There are an awful lot of bloggers who want to be writers. Some of them have even set themselves up as sources of advice to other potential writers. Some are published, some are hopeful, but the thing that many of them have in common is their apparent inability to use English correctly. Their posts are frequently full of errors.

I'm not talking about an occasional typo. I'm not talking about the UK/US variations in spelling. I'm talking about using incorrect vocabulary (malapropism), apostrophes in plurals, confusion of homophones (their, there, they're etc), the kind of mistake that should have been corrected at school.

I understand that not everyone was lucky enough to have an education as good as the one that I had. I appreciate that some people have battled with learning difficulties.

But surely, if you want to be a writer you should make an effort to improve your basic skills, shouldn't you?

You wouldn't set yourself up as a carpenter if you couldn't saw a straight line. Why on earth would you think you can be a writer if you can't follow some simple grammar rules?

The joy of subs

It's not obvious to me why - possibly because I was a journalist for 13 years - but I tend to be a little touchy when it comes to the use of language. Bad writing makes me angry.

When you are a trainee journalist (or at least - 35 years ago when I was a trainee journalist) you are taught not to make basic errors because your copy goes through a lot of stages before it sees daylight in a newspaper. (Many more than the stages it then goes through to end up wrapped round fish and chips!)

At every stage you are likely to be hauled (verbally) from your desk and bawled out publicly to 'teach you a lesson'.

The copy correction process is called subbing, because it is carried out by sub-editors, known as subs, and everyone who ever worked in newspapers understands that.

Today I read a blog comment about editing a novel and the writer kept using the word 'subbing'. It confused me, because they didn't mean subbing - they meant submitting.  And my subs always used to tell me that if your writing confuses the reader - it's bad.

Do you want to know the really depressing thing? This person is a published author. A 'proper' novelist. Clearly the people at the publishers haven't put them straight on what subbing really is. Perhaps they don't know either, which is deeply disturbing for me because it carries a worrying implication.

Maybe I shall never be a novelist because it seems I don't speak the same language any more.