A ballad of the mexicas : automated lyrical narrative writing

Abstract

Recently, computational systems began approaching challenges that were previously considered to lay exclusively in the human creative domain, such as the art of storytelling and lyrics writing. In this paper, we explore combining these two art forms through the automated creation of ballads. We introduce MABLE (MexicA’s BaLlad machinE), based on the plot generation system, MEXICA. Integrating both cognitive and statistical models, MABLE is the first computational system to write narrative-based lyrics. User studies demonstrate MABLE’s success at creating emotionally-engaging lyrics with coherent plot.