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Book Title Generator: A JavaScript Program with a Creative Lesson

August 15, 2022

book title, creativity, fiction, literature, programming, writing

One morning, I was staring at the screen a bit bored, trying to find something productive to do. Browsing through the blog, I saw an old post on how to select a title for your novel. I immediately had a flash of inspiration: What I should make is a book title generator!

The truth is, I wasn’t super serious about it, it was mostly meant as something productive to pass the time with. I mean, as I explain in the post linked above, picking a title for your novel cannot be a random process. More still, it cannot be a spur-of-the-moment thing, either. Conversely, it has to be a result of deliberation. It involves patience.

So, how does a book title generator fit in all that?

Honestly, I didn’t trouble myself with it. I just began coding – as I said, for the fun of it. But I was thoroughly surprised with the result, as it revealed to me several important things about creativity, including in terms of coming up with book titles. The book title generator… generated ideas.

In this post I’ll offer you all the details of my thought process behind making this JavaScript book title generator. I’ll also offer you the code and the program to try for free. However, above all, I’ll talk about the important lessons on creativity this silly little program had to offer.

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Behind the Scenes of Writing a Short Story

July 25, 2022

Criticism, Writing

creativity, criticism, fiction, literature, writing

With this post, I’ll do something pretty different. I’ll offer you a “behind the scenes” look, focusing on the intricacies behind writing a short story. But there’s more: In order to do that, I will use one of my short stories – indeed, one that I’ve posted on the blog before.

I’m of course referring to “1992”, which I shared with you some time ago – here are part I and part II. I’m offering this look into “what goes on in an author’s mind” from the unique perspective of being the author as well as someone with the academic expertise to use it as teaching material.

How did I come up with the idea? What does it mean on a personal level? Who is the protagonist? Why? What? How? Plenty of literary lessons awaiting!

Short stories are often minimalist. The behind the scenes, then, of writing a short story is about revealing some details that are **inherently** not to be disclosed – I’m doing it for teaching purposes, obviously

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Structuring Language for Automatic Text

July 18, 2022

Programming, Writing

creativity, imagination, language, programming, writing

If you’ve used Planet Generator, you must’ve noticed how it offers, among other things, what I refer to as “civilizational data”. These also include trivia for the imaginary cultures of the program, in the style of “Arranging a visit to Orphne? Avoid Flöchixäwu — and its rather ferocious beasts”. Such phrases are examples of automatic text.

To be clear, these examples are not entirely automatic – in the sense, they’re not made out of thin air, perhaps using AI or at least combining texts from other sources. Rather, they’re based on syntactic patterns I’ve offered the program, together with sets of words to choose from.

But it’s precisely this simplicity that makes this strategy attractive. It’s trivial to use, and the possible combinations it can come up with is staggeringly high.

So, in this post, I’m offering you a look under the hood of Planet Generator, showing you how it generates its automatic text. It’s easy, educating (in terms of teaching us how language operates), and revealing.

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