Investigating a thematic approach to narrative generation

Adaptive hypermedia aims to create a tailored experience for users and with narrative generation this dynamic content can be in the form of engaging stories. Narrative generation systems range from the automatic generation of bespoke stories to the representation of existing information as narrative. However narrative generation systems often produce bland and unvaried stories. In this paper we propose that the inclusion of themes will enrich the resulting narrative and explore how a prototype thematic system might be integrated with existing methods of narrative generation. This investigation reveals that integration at the generation of story elements is important to avoid constraints on desired themes, that the detailed characters fundamental to character centric narrative generation make integration difficult, and that integration must be done carefully to avoid damaging the resulting narrative.