A Survey on Story Generation Techniques for Authoring Computational Narratives

Computers are often used as tools to design, implement and even visualize a variety of narrative forms. Many researchers and artists are now further attempting to engage the computer actively throughout the development of the narrative itself. Any form of computational narrative authoring is at some level always mixed-initiative, meaning that the processing capabilities of the computer are utilized with a varying degree to automate certain features of the authoring process. We structure this survey by focusing on two key components of stories, plot and space, and more specifically the degree to which these are either automated by the computer or authored manually. By examining the successes of existing research, we identify potential new research directions in the field of computational narrative. We also identify the advantages of developing a standard model of narrative to allow for collaboration between plot and space automation techniques. This would likely benefit the field of automated space generation with the strengths in the field of automated plot generation.