AI can write a story where each sentence flows from the next in a grammatically correct, statistically likely way, but often the plot will quickly descend into incoherence. Starting with a good ending and working backwards results in better stories
Technology
15 December 2021
A still from the film Memento, which showcased a story told backwards from the end Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy
When tasking AI with writing a story, more coherent plots can be created by prompting it to write a story backwards, starting from an ending.
In previous work, AI has been capable of taking an opening paragraph and use it to generate a whole story, sentence by sentence, by applying patterns gleaned from vast amounts of training data. But this approach can quickly wander into incoherence as the length of the story increases. Rather than …