The Yitsun Chronicle 01: Thinning the plot.

Fairytale plots with Claude3 -- LLMs are good at making shit up.

Once, not so long ago, in a place called Yarongara, there lived a yeti. He was only a ragged, floppy old thing, with shaggy off-white fur, a lolling neck and stuffing that had long lost its vigour. But Yitsun the Yeti was little Ravi's most beloved toy and closest friend.

His big sister Rosie also had a best friend, a flesh-and-blood friend called Wendy. But unlike calm old Yitsun, Wendy had been trapped in a terrible sickness for weeks now. She spent most of her days muddled and confused, drifting in and out of troubled dreams, just barely able to take food and drink in those short times when she was awake and aware. It broke Rosie's heart to see her best friend so unwell.

Rosie and Ravi were in their room after another difficult visit with Wendy. As they got ready for bed, the little boy looked to the wise old face of the yeti sitting patiently as ever on his bed. "Yitsun, the doctors don't know how to help Wendy. Do you think you can help her?" The children often asked Yitsun for wisdom; his clear blue eyes seemed like windows into a world of experience from whatever distant valley yetis came from. But they gave no answers, at least not yet.

Rosie smiled and ruffled her kid-brother's hair. "Hang in there, mate. The doctors will figure something out. But Yitsun, if you can lend a hand, we'll take anything we can get".

Then, too sad to play up, the pair got into their beds and went to sleep. Almost as if they were well-behaved children.

That is the beginning of a children’s story that will not be called the “Yitsun Chronicle”. That title belongs to this series of blog posts about what I am learning from using an AI Chatbot to help me write fiction.

I’ve heard that (unlike it’s competitors) Anthropic’s Claude3 is very good and writing stylish prose, and adopting any style you ask for. So I’d love to report that thanks to Claude3, I was able to write superb prose with minimal effort. Sadly I can’t: although the passage above has a complicated textual history, the short version is that the text is almost completely my own. I can’t even claim my prose is superb. It’s fine. I like it. It will do. But C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling would have both done it better. And sadly I am talking about the real Lewis and Rowling, Claude3 pretending to be them does not cut the mustard. I know, because I tried.

I am going to keep experimenting to get Claude3 to generate good prose, and I’ll report what I find in later articles. This post, will be about the area where I really did get a lot of use out of Claude: outlining and plotting. That’s a thing I am frankly rubbish at. I often come up with ideas for characters and themes that (in my own mind) will make for a cracking good a story, but then I get plotter’s block. I am totally at a loss trying to pull these elements into anything that resembles an interesting story, or even some kind of story.

Fortunately there is an easy way to at least reach the “some kind of story” bar: just pluck random tropes out of our literary heritage and glue them together in cliched fashion. And this of course, is what Claude and other Large Language Models are born to do. So I got lots of mileage from asking Claude to outline a story and then iterating.

I don’t want to give away the Yitsun plotline, so instead I’ll show you how it’s done with another example I whipped up for this article in about five minutes in between Tadpole-care chores.

TW: Hi Claude. I want you to help me write a children's story about a talking frog. Please propose an outline using numbered bullet points.

It’s important to make clear you only want an outline. If you forget, then it will deliver the whole shit-for brains story. You don’t want that. Also I shouldn’t have asked for anything as nonsensical as “Numbered bullet points”. Claude made the best of it;

C3: Here's a potential outline for a children's story about a talking frog:

1. Introduction

   • Meet the main character, a young child (establish their name, age, and any relevant details)

   • Describe their fascination with the nearby pond and the creatures that live there

2. The Encounter

   • The child visits the pond one day

   • They hear a strange croaking sound

   • They discover a frog with the ability to talk!

3. The Talking Frog

   • The frog introduces himself (decide on a fun name)

   • Explain how the frog gained the ability to speak

   • Establish the frog's unique personality and quirks

4. An Unlikely Friendship

   • The child and the talking frog become friends

   • They share adventures and experiences around the pond

   • Highlight the lessons they learn from each other

5. The Conflict

   • Introduce a problem or challenge that the child and the frog must overcome

   • This could be a misunderstanding, a threat to the pond, or a personal struggle

6. The Resolution

   • Describe how the child and the frog work together to solve the problem

   • Emphasize the importance of their friendship and the strengths they both bring

7. The Conclusion

   • Wrap up the story with a heartwarming ending

   • Reinforce the central message or moral of the story

   • Hint at the possibility of more adventures with the talking frog

Feel free to modify or expand on this outline as you see fit to create an engaging and imaginative story for children.

Now I this is not a great story, nor is it my story and worst of all, it’s incredibly vague: “Introduce a problem or challenge that the child and the frog must overcome”! What problem?

And yet Claude had done something magnificent here: it has blown right through my plotter’s block. In one interweb round-trip, it’s pieced together the elements of something that looks like a story. Even more profoundly, Claude is educating me in the basics of storymaking: form relationships between characters, make these characters face challenges, bring those challenges to a resolution. WHOA MAN! How cool is that! I never knew.

Of course this plot is still nowhere need good enough. We still have to iterate. And the beauty is that computers are great tools for iterating . I’ll show you how this works, but for brevity, I’m going to ruthlessly editorialise Claude’s side of the chat..

TW: Let's keep the child out of it. The main character is the frog himself.

Claude flipped it to the frog’s point of view, but kept the child in. This turned out to be for the best. But Claude did come up with a really weak reason for the kickoff:

C3: …

2. The Frog's Curiosity

• The frog becomes curious about the human world beyond the pond

• He decides to venture out and explore

TW: Let's replace (2) with some troublesome event that forces the frog into action -- give me five options.

So here I introduce another technique for using the LLM’s uncanny ability to pick random tropes. If you have some vague placeholder like “challenge” or “troublesome event”, you can ask for options to fill it in with:

C3: …

1. Drought …

2. Pollution …

3. Construction …

4. Predator Invasion …

5. Natural Disaster …

How boring! Actually this is my fault, it had never occurred to me that this story would be anything but a fairy tale. The Claude beast is telling me something the world, or myself. I can’t tell which, but I can fix the story.

TW: Let's make them all more like a fairytale

C3:

1. Wicked Wizard's Curse …

2. Jealous Fairy's Revenge …

3. Goblin Construction Crew …

4. Slimy Swamp Monster …

5. Mermaid's Stolen Voice …

Ironically, I take a fancy to the least fairy-tale like of the lot.

TW: Ok let's go for a Goblin construction crew. Give me the outline again -- this time he doesn't meet with humans or children, but with a good goblin who helps him.

Now here’s the beautiful part. I a started this goblin thing by whingeing about point (2) — the frog’s motivation for the adventure. But now I have introduced a theme that weaves it’s way all through the story. And Claude will automatically do the weaving.

C3: Here's an updated outline with the goblin construction crew as the catalyst, and the frog befriending a good goblin instead of humans

1. Introduction

   • Meet the talking frog (name, description, how he learned to talk)

   • Establish his peaceful life in the pond and surroundings

2. Goblin Construction Chaos

   • A band of mischievous goblins arrive at the pond

   • They begin draining the water to build a grand mud castle

   • The frog's home and friends are threatened

3. Attempted Negotiations

   • The frog bravely confronts the goblin workers

   • He tries to reason with them to leave the pond alone

   • But the goblins don't understand and continue their work

4. Meeting the Good Goblin

   • The frog encounters a kind-hearted young goblin among the crew

   • This goblin can understand the frog's speech

   • They become unlikely friends, despite coming from different worlds

5. The Good Goblin's Help

   • The good goblin explains the workers are under the goblin king's orders

   • He agrees to help the frog by taking him to the goblin kingdom

6. Facing the Goblin King

   • The frog and good goblin sneak into the kingdom

   • They make their case to the goblin king about saving the pond

   • The king is moved by their courage and friendship

7. Resolution and Compromise

   • The goblin king allows the pond to be restored

   • In return, the frogs teach the goblins about coexisting with nature

   • The good goblin becomes an ambassador between the two communities

8. The Conclusion

   • Wrap up with the newfound understanding between frogs and goblins

   • Hint at more adventures with the frog and his goblin friend

Let me know if you'd like me to modify or expand on any part of this updated outline!

See most of the vagueness is gone, and we have a real story. But there’s still some technicalities to deal with:

TW: Propose ten names for the frog

( 10 frog names.)

TW: Let's pick Slippy, now ten for the Goblin.

(10 Goblin names.)

TW: Mudlump. Now give me the outline.

C3: Here's the updated outline with Slippy the talking frog and Mudlump the good-natured young goblin:

1. Introduction

   • Meet Slippy, the talking frog (description, how he learned to talk)

   • Establish his peaceful life in the pond and surroundings

2. Goblin Construction Chaos

   • A band of mischievous goblins arrive at the pond

   • They begin draining the water to build a grand mud castle

   • Slippy's home and friends are threatened

3. Attempted Negotiations

   • Slippy bravely confronts the goblin workers

   • He tries to reason with them to leave the pond alone

   • But the goblins don't understand and continue their work

4. Meeting Mudlump

   • Slippy encounters Mudlump, a kind-hearted young goblin among the crew

   • Mudlump can understand Slippy's speech

   • They become unlikely friends, despite coming from different worlds

5. Mudlump's Help

   • Mudlump explains the workers are under the goblin king's orders

   • He agrees to help Slippy by taking him to the goblin kingdom

6. Facing the Goblin King

   • Slippy and Mudlump sneak into the kingdom

   • They make their case to the goblin king about saving the pond

   • The king is moved by their courage and friendship

7. Resolution and Compromise

   • The goblin king allows the pond to be restored

   • In return, the frogs teach the goblins about coexisting with nature

   • Mudlump becomes an ambassador between the two communities

8. The Conclusion

   • Wrap up with the newfound understanding between frogs and goblins

   • Hint at more adventures with Slippy and his goblin friend Mudlump

Let me know if you need any clarification or have additional ideas to incorporate into this fairy tale outline!

And there you go. After about no time at all, we have the plot of an exciting and heart-warming story. It’s already good enough that I could just tell it to my Toadlet, verbally ad-libbing the details.

Or I could keep going, I don’t really like the ending, and no doubt I could ask Claude for better options. This plotting business is tremendous fun. I did this frog outline in the five minutes I could steal away from dad-duty. But the Yeti story (like this blog post) was done late into the night with the help of a brandy-glass, I had no objection to spending hours lovingly honing the story and expanding some of the details.

The real challenge was to stop that game and get to the work of actually writing text. That will be for a future blog post. Not even the next post. The next, post will be more philosophical, about what process showed me about the natures of large language models, Human beings, and creativity.