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All possible plots by major authors (2020)

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Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#131

Post by ethbr1 »

nfw2 wrote: post #21
ethbr1 wrote: post #16

>> Dan Brown -- Award-winning author Dan Brown has written a complicated role for you with his expensive pen. You are a humanities professor at an Ivy League university, but also, somehow, in mortal peril. Your love interest is picturesque but ill-mannered and French. This is somehow worth several million dollars. Kafka seems low-effort though. I humbly substitute: You have inside you an extraordinary writer but are…

You are a humanities professor at an Ivy League university, but also, somehow, in mortal peril. Your love interest is picturesque but ill-mannered... This is also true of Indiana Jones, which everyone likes.

I got the impression that Dr. Jones was well-liked by his female students (in his younger days) and a few friends, but was generally avoided by most of his peers.

Probably for his penchant of grave robbing...

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#132

Post by swayvil »

anigbrowl wrote: post #89
HanClinto wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above was written by hand. As an experiment, I asked Claude to generate a few dozen more. Most weren't great. Here are the highlights: Michael Crichton: You're a brilliant scientist who's just created something that will revolutionize the world. Congratulations! It's now trying to eat you. Michael Crichton: You've stumbled upon a conspiracy involving [insert scientific field]. Now you're being chased by [insert g…

'I decided to imitate this outburst of human creativity with AI. Wow!' is a great way to stop getting invited to parties (with humans).

I thought it was pretty cool. Flagger is a doofus.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#133

Post by darepublic »

ethbr1 wrote: post #131
nfw2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a humanities professor at an Ivy League university, but also, somehow, in mortal peril. Your love interest is picturesque but ill-mannered... This is also true of Indiana Jones, which everyone likes.

I got the impression that Dr. Jones was well-liked by his female students (in his younger days) and a few friends, but was generally avoided by most of his peers. Probably for his penchant of grave robbing...

But he tells his students that X never marks the spot.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#135

Post by deathanatos »

ljsprague wrote: post #80
rKarpinski wrote: post #6

"thomas hardy Lies, lies, misery, lies, suicide, rape, and corn prices." So true

This also makes you think his book would be depressing to read but I've read the Mayor of Casterbridge and I would call it joyful. Odd.

…I know literature, like all art, is open to interpretation, but I am immensely curious as to how you came away from The Mayor of Casterbridge with joy, of all things.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#136

Post by ljsprague »

deathanatos wrote: post #135
ljsprague wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also makes you think his book would be depressing to read but I've read the Mayor of Casterbridge and I would call it joyful. Odd.

…I know literature, like all art, is open to interpretation, but I am immensely curious as to how you came away from The Mayor of Casterbridge with joy , of all things.

Haha, you're right, joyful isn't the right word but there's something pleasant in all the twists and turns. There's something comical about Henchard's sadness.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#137

Post by zzzmarcus »

I sent them all to ChatGPT 4o one by one and had it guess the books, this is how it did:

1. Anthony Trollope – I didn’t get this one. 2. Evelyn Waugh – Correct! 3. Henry James – Correct! 4. Graham Greene – I missed this, was thinking of the wrong tone. 5. W. Shakespeare (i) – Correct! 6. Samuel Richardson – Correct! 7. David Foster Wallace – I guessed Gaddis, but this makes perfect sense. Partial credit. 8. Marcel Proust – Correct! 9. Mrs. Gaskell – Correct! 10. Ian McEwan – Partial credit; I guessed Atonement after Henry James. 11. E. M. Forster – Correct! 12. Cormac McCarthy – Correct! 13. P. G. Wodehouse – Correct! 14. Alan Bennett – I guessed Chekhov/Osborne, so I missed this. 15. Jane Austen – Correct! 16. Dan Brown – Correct! 17. Agatha Christie – Correct! 18. Zadie Smith – Missed this one. 19. W. Shakespeare (ii) – Correct! 20. Iris Murdoch – Correct! 21. Ernest Hemingway – Correct! 22. John Banville – Correct! 23. Harold Pinter – Correct! 24. F. Scott Fitzgerald – Correct! 25. Tennessee Williams – Correct! 26. Oscar Wilde – Correct! 27. D. H. Lawrence – Correct! 28. Thomas Hardy – Correct! 29. Virginia Woolf – Missed this one, was thinking of Galsworthy. 30. Tom Stoppard – Correct!

Final score: 25/30 with a couple of partial credits. Not bad!

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#138

Post by atombender »

netcoyote wrote: post #63

William Gibson: You are an adequate but drug-addled hacker, navigating dangerous, high-tech worlds where blurred realities, conspiracies, and corporate power struggles force you to uncover hidden truths, survive against powerful forces, and ultimately question the nature of identity, technology, and control. Neal Stephenson: You are a small cog in a historical epic leading to a far-flung speculative future, where you…

I think you're giving Gibson too much credit. It's more like: Mysterious person with unlimited resources hires scrappy set of hacker types to obtain a McGuffin, which usually someone else is also seeking out. They find the McGuffin. Mysterious backer reveals themselves in some way. The end.

That's the plot of every single novel. In Neuromancer: Case & co. is hired by Armitage. In Count Zero Turner is hired to rescue a scientist out of a biolab, although the McGuffin is the scientist's daughter; there is a second hire plot involving a mysterious millionaire hiring an art curator to look for an art piece. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, Mona is hired by a mysterious group for a gig that turns out to be a way to kidnap a McGuffin. Not much else happens. In Virtual Light, Rydell is hired to recover a McGuffin stolen by another character. In Pattern Recognition, Cayce is hired by a mysterious millionaire to trace an obscuree Internet video. In The Peripheral, the main character is hired by a mysterious group to remotely patrol a building. And so on.

It's like Gibson can't invent a plot where the plot isn't about work. And the person hiring the main character is always this shady and incredibly wealthy individual, so that the main character can be supported by all their resources.

Blurred realities and questions about identity doesn't sound like any Gibson book I've read. That sounds more like Philip K. Dick.

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#139

Post by treetalker »

nfw2 wrote: post #56

To summarize Dan Brown books by describing the characters fundamentally misunderstands them. The characters are about as important as the characters in a porno. The point of a Dan Brown book is to chart the stupidest possible path through history and pop science, and he's uniquely capable of this.

Are you talking about renowned author Dan Brown? The one who walks with his feet?

Re: All possible plots by major authors (2020)

#140

Post by autoexec »

wslh wrote: post #106
tzs wrote: post #64

Jack Woodford, a decent pulp writer in the first half of the 20th century who also wrote several books on writing and on how the publishing industry works, including "Trial and Error" in 1933 which Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury both cited as a major influence in getting their writing careers started, had a nice description of how to plot: > Boy meets girl; girl gets boy into pickle; boy gets pickle into girl

Weird than "Trial and Error" is not available in Gutenberg.

It's likely still under copyright. It hasn't even been a century since the author's death.
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