
InkWell: A Creative Writer’s Creative Assistant [pdf] - bootload
https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/InkWell.pdf
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jawon
This is just an advanced madlibs generator. As a copywriter who dabbles in
creative writing I see nothing here that would help me. It's just too "dumb".

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wwwdonohue
Which is the whole point, really: it doesn't facilitate the actual "writing"
so much as the "thinking," at which stage you're still developing ideas and
seeing how they fit together.

Several generations of writers (and other artists) have found great results
cutting their work up and rearranging it to find deeper insights into the work
they might still produce: Burroughs, Bowie, and others!

Anxious for the day I can give this thing a spin.

~~~
jawon
Aleatoric processes are more interesting than the results, in my opinion. Too
easy and too disconnected from the human to resonate (beyond the isolated
snippets that get trotted out, like photos of parking meters that look like
faces). And that disconnection is why software like this doesn't interest me.
If you know what you want to write you don't need this. If you don't know,
there are better, richer, more fulfilling ways to come up with ideas than
randomly permuting text.

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wwwdonohue
That's fair. Part of anyone's acceptance of the method would have to do with
their acceptance of this tenet:

 _Producing a work of written art requires constant discovery and
guessing—because all works of art are works of exploration and discovery._

Thus InkWell merely seems (to me) like it would be useful as a kind of servant
--a tool to show you other plausible variants of your text, and thus spur the
creative process.

But if you already know what you're going to write and how, then godspeed--
you're in a much better situation than most writers :)

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_pmf_
Don't let Dan Brown see this
([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-
of...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-of-renowned-
Dan-Brown.html)).

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vikingcaffiene
I feel like I am missing something here. Is this a program that actually
exists or something that they are currently working on and will be available
at some later date? I don't see any way to try it out. Its a compelling idea
though.

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loteck
It takes your original text and makes it easy to execute different drafts of
that text based on stylistic templates calculated from famous authors. Kind of
like Hemingwayapp.com.

 _Creativity in writing takes a couple of ingredients: being prepared to
notice, wide ranging and non-judgmental production of drafts, and a selection
and revision process guided by aesthetics. In a sense it’s like serendipity.
With InkWell we’ve tried to explore writerly creativity in a creative way—by
letting the program emerge from a haze of half-known ideas_

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amelius
The most irritating aspect of creative writing is that one constantly needs to
find synonyms for things that one already has a perfect word for, but which
cannot be used out of fear for sounding repetitive. If this tool can solve
that, it is already a huge win.

> Some of this work was supported by DARPA

I wonder how the DoD would put such a tool to use :)

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delish
In this talk (software as creative partner, European Lisp Symposium 2014), rpg
mentions the DoD's interest. I enjoyed the talk:

[http://medias.ircam.fr/x03b42f](http://medias.ircam.fr/x03b42f)

I'll spoil it: the DoD wants natural language generation that would influence
people on social media, like Twitter.

Say the DoD doesn't want resistance fighters (like you) to meet somewhere.
They'll generate a barrage of tweets about how that's a bad idea. Those tweets
don't influence you directly, but they influence people you follow on twitter,
who do influence you (because by nature of twitter you follow those who
influence you). You don't meet, because your friends--who have your best
interests at heart (because their your friends)--told you not to.

When this works as intended, the DoD is able to influence people without being
easily traced.

It's a little horrifying, which makes it _fascinating_.

One more comment about the talk: rpg shows his humor, strong opinions, and
software wisdom in this talk. Again, I recommend it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
A cheaper wumao for the US! It is horrifyingly fascinating, like watching a
building burn.

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crb3
> With InkWell we’ve tried to explore writerly creativity in a creative way—by
> letting the program emerge from a haze of half-known ideas

The half-known ideas (templates) presented were not the author's own, instead
they were borrowed from other writers. This isn't writing, it's sampling.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
RPG is an accomplished poet himself, one of the few computer scientists with
an MFA. He presented some of these poems at a poetry workshop, and they were
retrieved well enough.

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api
This is not writing. Not in the conventional sense. It's a new art form.

~~~
loteck
When you take an original piece created by another source, and suggest
modifications for strength, clarity or other qualitative values, I believe we
simply call that editing.

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TeMPOraL
So that would make it a... text editor? :).

