Unmet Creativity Support Needs in Computationally Supported Creative Writing

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) enabled by the datasets and computing power of the last decade have recently gained popularity for their capacity to generate plausible natural language text from human-provided prompts. This ability makes them appealing to fiction writers as prospective co-creative agents, addressing the common challenge of writer’s block, or getting unstuck. However, creative writers face additional challenges, including maintaining narrative consistency, developing plot structure, architecting reader experience, and refining their expressive intent, which are not well-addressed by current LLM-backed tools. In this paper, we define these needs by grounding them in cognitive and theoretical literature, then survey previous computational narrative research that holds promise for supporting each of them in a co-creative setting.