
How Predictable Is Fiction? - polm23
https://tedunderwood.com/2020/07/05/how-predictable-is-fiction/
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todd8
In junior high school, I started reading Doc Savage novels. Originally written
in the 1930's, the author, Lester Dent, was originally paid $500 for writing
these pulp fiction stores . Bantam Books republished these in the mid-60's.[1]
There ended up being over 180 of these Doc Savage novels.

Lester Dent used an outline for these stories to ensure that they would be
successful. The outline described when the hero should get in trouble, when
there should be a fist-fight, etc. This detailed outline is described in
"Lester Dent and the Master Fiction Plot" [2]. Even at a young age I realized
the the stories were formulaic, but I enjoyed them anyway.

I broke my ankle a few years ago and ended up with an orthopedic surgeon named
Dr. Savage.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doc_Savage_novels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doc_Savage_novels)

[2] [https://steegerbooks.com/lester-dent-and-the-master-
fiction-...](https://steegerbooks.com/lester-dent-and-the-master-fiction-
plot/)

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glaberficken
This sparked a thought:

Do you know about [https://tvtropes.org](https://tvtropes.org) ?

Wouldn't it be cool to train a model to identify the underlying tropes of any
fiction writing?

Wait, is that what Netflix does with the micro-specific genres they tag?

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dandare
That blog is barely readable on my retina display. Font color #373737 font-
weight 300, size 15px? Why?

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Aachen
Font is perfectly readable on my retinas. On mobile so I can't inspect
element, but the text looks pretty much black on white. #373737 should indeed
be nearly black so that seems to match. Or is it the 15px height that makes it
hard for you? It seems like a normal font size to me.

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greggman3
It's barely readable on my 16" MBP. Tiny font with super thin lines.

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kolla
Zooming in is quite easy.

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renewiltord
Interesting idea, but perhaps BERT "strides" too narrowly to really detect
predictability? Imprecise language is all I can muster.

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Causality1
_But an equally intuitive argument could be made that fiction entertains
readers by baffling and eluding their expectations about what, specifically,
will happen next._

That's what fiction that wins literary prizes and gets emphasized by literary
nerds and academia does. It is absolutely not reflective of fiction as a whole
or on average.

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pattusk
I would say exactly the opposite : cliffhangers and cheap thrills are the
stuff the Da Vinci Code, Tom Clancy novels and all your best selling page
turners are made of.

Literary prize winning fiction has been what you could call post narrative
since (at least) the Nouveau Roman.

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fouc
It appears you're actually both on the same page, you didn't say the opposite.

He's saying the common fiction including best sellers are generally
predictable. And literary novels being less so.

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pattusk
Not really, there is a difference of scale to consider. Best sellers are
unpredictable from one page to the next, unexpected surprises abound but the
general plot is highly predictable. Literary novels typically have very
mundane, thoroughly predictable narratives, what is unexpected is the way in
which it is delivered or the comments the narrator may make along the way.

The original author refers to _fiction [which] entertains readers by baffling
and eluding their expectations about what, specifically, will happen next._
Which I believe is closer to the way popular fiction operates than to literary
fiction.

