Writing Advice - Automation can be helpful · 2:15am Mar 8th, 2019
I took a little time this last week to code a specific piece of software which does one very simple thing. You click a button, and it shuffles thousands of lines of descriptive text I wrote to create a unique and thoroughly detailed pony appropriate for Fallout Equestria's setting.
Why did I spend ~70 hours writing such a thing? Well, I realised that I was going to have to make 8 or so characters to fill the background of a scene and because that is the first moment our main character will get to see the Wastland's culture in detail without having any real pressing matters at hoof, it should leave as much impact on her and the reader as possible.
Here's the problem... I tend to gloss over minor characters and describe them like this:
A short brown earth pony sat at the bar, nursing a glass of something yellow.
That lacks a lot of emotion. Sure, since I only wanted 8 or so, I didn't need to program anything. But then I realized something. I could make a program that creates text descriptions of characters in the same way I do for main characters so that every single time I need ANY character, minor, major, or even main, I can have a short blurb to work from, greatly increasing story quality.
Of course, such a program isn't available for purchase. It may not even exist. So I wrote one. The results speak for themselves.
You see a earth pony mare. Her name is Pudding Count. She has Salmon eyes and her coat is Cerise. Her mane is red with a thin light red stripe and has been cut to a medium length and styled into waves using oil and a comb. Her tail matches her mane's style. Pudding Count is somewhat obese. She taller than average and of average weight for her build. She appears to be in good health. She has a few small scars here and there but has managed to keep all of her body parts.
Pudding Count is wearing a heavily armored vest and shinguards bearing the Talon insignia and a single rank stripe on the shoulder guards. The most notable part of their outfit is a MoI ID badge. Pudding Count is armed with a hatchet and a kickdagger.
You see a pegasus mare. Her name is Armorfly Jazz. She has light pink eyes and her coat is light Pink. Her mane is light Pear and is long and straight, hanging down to just below her shoulders with the bangs cut straight then parted to either side of her head. Her tail matches her mane's style. Armorfly Jazz is somewhat athletically built. She of average height and heavier than average for her build. She appears to be recovering from a serious injury. She has a cybernetic left wing.
Armorfly Jazz is wearing a battered armored vest once worn by a pre-war security guard. The most notable part of their outfit is a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Armorfly Jazz is armed with a caravan shotgun and a light crossbow.
You see a zebra stallion. His name is Zula. He has dark Red-brown eyes and his coat is black with thin white stripes covering his shoulders, back, flanks, and legs. His mane has been braided into many strands which have been interwoven to form an artful pattern with a single lengthy braid hanging from the back. Zula is extremely muscular, as if he lifts heavy things just to pass the time. He of average height and lighter than average for his build. He is suffering from either a cold or the flue. He walks with a limp in his left foreleg which obviously broke then healed poorly.
Zula is wearing the outer hull of a suit of Steel Rangers power armor. Its been gutted, transforming it into an extra heavy suit of plate armor. Many crude repairs have been made to its plates over the years. The most notable part of their outfit is a saddlebag full of books. Zula is wearing a battle saddle with a XWN MKIII Recharger Pistol on the left flank and a light flamer on the right flank.
You see a earth pony stallion. His name is Hunting Charm. He has Raspberry eyes and his coat is Desert sand. His mane is very long and has been cut into a feathery series of layers, to make a voluminously glorious set of flowing locks, and is Orchid with a broad stripe of light Orchid running through it. His tail matches his mane's style. Hunting Charm is noticeably underweight. He of average height and extremely light for his build. He appears to be in good health. He is missing part of his left ear.
Hunting Charm is wearing an odd, clearly foreign, suit of magically strengthened silk and polymer armor which one might describe as a battle dress in spite of the thin protective plates sewn into it. The most notable part of their outfit is a glass pipe. Hunting Charm is armed with a dagger and a S-n-G Model HM-3 10mm autopistol.
I think the closest I can think of for description generators would be DnD and other heavy RPG scenario generators, starting with name generators etc. The main problem is getting the descriptions coherent, with colours forms, builds etc.
Difficult to get a 2 foot Pixie handling a 4 foot Greatsword, even ifthe Dex combat ability lets her swing it extremely deadly in maths.
5024769
Need we remind you of Lord Bearington?
Mighty
That is a contradiction if I ever saw one.
5024780 It's not, actually. If this was for external use, I would have used different wording but what I am saying there is she's no more fat than most fat people are. Her build is "obese mare" and she's average in size for that build. Get it?
5024784
Now I do thanks for clarifying.
It's like Pony fortress!
Which reminds me, have you considered sharing this with the crazies responsible for the pony dwarf fortress mod? I Can't guarantee they'll like or use it, but I suspect you'll at least inspire a few secondary ideas.
Now if it can just assign stats, feats, and ranks, and calculate THACO...
5024823 It totally could. I did that for a character maker for After the Bomb about 2 years ago. Hell, I could recycle code in in about 5 minutes add in a Myer's Briggs personality profile.
Terminal
Press
(A) to Activate
Scrawny
File: That green witch
Name: Rhodonite.
Description: Green fur and blue mane that looks like a flame. Is an Earth Pony and is wearing a black light armour.
Eye color: </(\#%+> [Haunting Yellow]
Weapons of choice: Seven Modded knives (Three which are throwing knives)
Current Location: Near the school's playground
Reasons to be there: Searching for the foals
There I gave ya the description of that monster prowling the playgrounds that has been wiping our bases out. I told you it was a bad idea to take those foals and sell them away to some slavers. Sedge the rumors were true! The Witch of the Wastes has arrived in town and is looking for the damned foals and I'm ain't staying here any longer cause screw it I'm not about to become someone's pincushion. You and Potshot can take care of her on your own and deal with it. I'll be long gone before she evehdkisdb!-;?rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I might do a bio another time
So now you can have entire chapters of nothing but describing secondary characters -- LUS but for background characters too now. Automation at it's finest.
5026255 Haha, see that's the Automation Fallacy. The idea that if something can be automated, it should. It's clearly not true.
All I've done is make a little tool that re-arranges my own descriptive writing to give me a way to quickly and easily add more variety to bit part characters. YOu dont use the *entire* result it spits out, no no no. What you do is generate the blurb, then pick the features that stand out the most to you, and reshuffle those into a sentence long description.
For example, a mare in a bar that gets one line and hands Gears a beer. Her generated descritption is:
But what goes into the story is:
And that's how you use something like this.
Have we been playing Dwarf Fortress lately? But in all seriousness, that's quite a task you just completed. Those are hard to build, and I too can really see the reasoning. Descriptions are a pain.
5027325 Actualy, I have no idea how to play DF. I dont know what the ASCII art is. I don't know the controlls... XD All I know is that people insist that my programs are a lot like it and I think that's because they both use a CLI window and realy old language.
5027407
It's actually the descriptions themselves. Observe: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Planepacked#The_description
There are a few other games that have this exact sort of description generator, but they all have this unique flavor and DF is the most well-known. Well, it sticks with people best, anyway.
5027485 Ahhh! I understand :3
5026296
Shh, let me be deluded and only believe the most direct result is the only result I suspected the whole thing was not to be used