Fabula: Building a Narrative Storytelling Sidekick with the Writers' Community

2026-06-12

AI Summary

This work proposes an interactive writing assistance approach for fiction and scriptwriting that integrates narrative theory with generative AI. The authors developed the Fabula system, which supports generation and iterative refinement at both the story script and fine-grained narrative planning levels through a hierarchical structure of scenes and beats. For the first time, they combine a language model–based automatic evaluator trained on human expert preferences with participatory AI strategies—including adversarial design and cultural probes—to co-optimize the tool with 42 professional writers. Findings indicate that interface designs explicitly visualizing narrative plans are widely favored by users, that convergent plan iteration effectively stimulates creativity, and that the applicability boundaries of classical narrative theories become evident across diverse creative traditions.

Abstract

We design and evaluate Fabula, an interactive app for fiction writers. Fabula uses detailed narrative plans informed by general narratological theory. Stories are structured hierarchically into scenes and beats that can be (re)generated and revised at script and story plan level. Using participatory AI, we critically evaluate and improve Fabula with casual and published writers, via design interviews and writing sessions with 42 experts, and large-scale internal and external testing. We interrogate our design choices: (1) whether a language model-based auto-evaluator, optimized on human experts' preferences, can improve story quality, (2) whether users want UI that exposes the detailed narrative plan alongside the story script, (3) to what extent our narratology assumptions fit localised storytelling traditions and serve screenwriters or playwrights, and (4) whether convergent iteration over the story plan supports writers' creativity. Building on critical feedback and concerns, we use Fabula as a cultural probe in adversarial design, and identify potentials for writing feedback and for interactive storytelling.

Problem

• narrative storytelling
• interactive writing tool
• participatory AI
• narratology
• creative writing support

Innovation

• Participatory AI
• Narrative Planning
• Language Model-based Auto-evaluator
• Hierarchical Story Generation
• Adversarial Design