Predicting Plot Holes Isn’t So Easy
April 10, 2015
According to The Paris Review’s blog post “Man In Hole II: Man In Deeper Hole” Mathew Jockers created an analysis tool to predict archetypal book plots:
A rough primer: Jockers uses a tool called “sentiment analysis” to gauge “the relationship between sentiment and plot shape in fiction”; algorithms assign every word in a novel a positive or negative emotional value, and in compiling these values he’s able to graph the shifts in a story’s narrative. A lot of negative words mean something bad is happening, a lot of positive words mean something good is happening. Ultimately, he derived six archetypal plot shapes.”
Academics, however, found some problems with Jockers’s tool, such as is it possible to assign all words an emotional variance and can all plots really take basic forms? The problem is that words are as nuanced as human emotion, perspectives change in an instant, and sentiments are subjective. How would the tool rate sarcasm?
All stories have been broken down into seven basic plots, so why can it not be possible to do the same for book plots? Jockers already identified six basic book plots and there are some who are curiously optimistic about his analysis tool. It does beg the question if will staunch author’s creativity or if it will make English professors derive even more subjective meaning from Ulysses?
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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