arXiv AI

Retell, Reward, Repeat: Reinforcement Learning for Narrative Theory-Informed Story Retelling

arXiv:2601. 17226v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Counterfactual story retelling exposes LLM shortcomings in constrained narrative solution spaces where they can no longer rely on recalling memorised training data.

arXiv AI
Jun 6

Narrative Knowledge Weaver: Narrative-Centric Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning for Long-Form Text Understanding

arXiv:2606. 05724v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Long-form narrative QA requires reasoning over evolving story worlds rather than isolated passages: answers may depend on earlier goals, changing character states, social relations, causal triggers, temporal position, and later consequences.

By Qiuyu Tian, Fengyi Chen, Yiding Li, Youyong Kong, Fan Guo, Yuyao Li, Jinjing Shen, Zhijing Xie, Yiyun Luo, Xin Zhang, Yingce Xia, Zequn Liu
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 7

Generating Constructive Feedback on Stories via Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces a reinforcement learning method to improve the quality of feedback generated by large language models for creative writers. By training with group relative policy optimization and a multi‑component reward that emphasizes tailored, actionable, and critical‑issue‑focused feedback, the authors demonstrate that their approach outperforms existing LLMs and baselines on three story corpora. The study shows that actionable suggestions are the key factor driving constructive feedback.

By Maja Stahl, Timon Ziegenbein, Henning Wachsmuth
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 11

Characterizing Narrative Content in Web-scale LLM Pretraining Data

The paper presents a detailed examination of narrative elements—agency, setting, and events—within the Dolma web-scale pretraining corpus. Using a framework of 11 interpretable dimensions, the authors hand‑annotated 400 passages, expanded this to a 25,000‑passage LLM‑labeled dataset, and trained NarraBERT models to predict narrative features across 13 million passages, producing the NarraDolma dataset. The study reveals that narrative structure is measurable at scale and that narrative qualities vary unevenly across different data sources, topics, and formats, highlighting gaps in current data curation practices.

By Teagan Johnson, Elliott Ash, Andrew Piper, Maria Antoniak
arXiv AI
Jul 22

PlotTwist: A Creative Plot Generation Framework with Small Language Models

arXiv:2603. 16410v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Creative plot generation presents a fundamental challenge for language models: transforming a concise premise into a coherent narrative that sustains global coherence, character development, pacing, tone consistency, and emotional progression.

By Abhinav Thorat, Ravi Kolla, Jyotin Goel, Madhav Kataria, Niranjan Pedanekar
arXiv AI
Jul 8

Narrative World Model: Narratology-Grounded Writer Memory for Long-Form Fiction

arXiv:2607. 05577v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-form fiction writers need memory that answers multi-hop questions about evolving story state: who knows a secret and when they learned it, whether an event preceded the narration that revealed it, whether a setup paid off, and how a relationship shifted.

By Mohammad Saifullah, Thomas Kornmaier, Taaha Kazi, Vasu Sharma, Aditya Sanjiv Kanade, Aanand Kumar Yadav