Unmet Creativity Support Needs in Computationally Supported Creative Writing

Max Kreminski, Chris Martens


Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) enabled by the datasets and computing power of the last decade have recently gained popularity for their capacity to generate plausible natural language text from human-provided prompts. This ability makes them appealing to fiction writers as prospective co-creative agents, addressing the common challenge of writer’s block, or getting unstuck. However, creative writers face additional challenges, including maintaining narrative consistency, developing plot structure, architecting reader experience, and refining their expressive intent, which are not well-addressed by current LLM-backed tools. In this paper, we define these needs by grounding them in cognitive and theoretical literature, then survey previous computational narrative research that holds promise for supporting each of them in a co-creative setting.
Anthology ID:
2022.in2writing-1.11
Volume:
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants (In2Writing 2022)
Month:
May
Year:
2022
Address:
Dublin, Ireland
Editors:
Ting-Hao 'Kenneth' Huang, Vipul Raheja, Dongyeop Kang, John Joon Young Chung, Daniel Gissin, Mina Lee, Katy Ilonka Gero
Venue:
In2Writing
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
74–82
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.in2writing-1.11
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2022.in2writing-1.11
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Max Kreminski and Chris Martens. 2022. Unmet Creativity Support Needs in Computationally Supported Creative Writing. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants (In2Writing 2022), pages 74–82, Dublin, Ireland. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Unmet Creativity Support Needs in Computationally Supported Creative Writing (Kreminski & Martens, In2Writing 2022)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.in2writing-1.11.pdf
Video:
 https://aclanthology.org/2022.in2writing-1.11.mp4