Re: Writing style invisible?


David Friedman wrote:
In article <44a0917a$0$717$8046368a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Dan Goodman" <dsgood@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Michelle Bottorff wrote:

Is there really such a thing as invisible prose, or is there only
"what I am used to"?

Hmm -- a magical book which for each reader is in the prose style
invisible for that reader....

Interesting thought for either future tech or science fiction.

We've discussed the idea that the book as experienced is a joint product
of author and reader. What if our software got good enough to control
for that?

I write the novel. Each reader provides the software, in some form, with
detailed information about how he translates story written into story
read. The software converts what I wrote into the text that, read by
him, will come closest to saying what I wanted to say.

For a simple example, suppose I want a character to be perceived as
speaking "normal English." Different readers have different versions of
English that they see as normal. So the software makes that character
speak in the native dialect of each reader.

More complicated versions are left for you to imagine.


I think this idea would be a great idea as a tool for creating
interactive computer software, but a terrible one for writing
computer-generated literature (for the same reasons as everyone else).
The author would have to understand the complex interaction between the
original text, the computer-processed version, and the reader, which
would make the skilful use of this thing an art in itself. Among the
many controls and inputs the author's software would require is a key
that controls when NOT to use it.

.

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