Having sequestered myself for the last week, immersed in regex and InDesign, I have finished my novel for National Novel Generation Month. Code and further details available here.
The book was created algorithmically using custom software written in Python and Processing. J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1954 classic The Fellowship of the Ring was loaded word-by-word then organized into a two-dimensional grid. From a random start position in the grid, the “cursor” was moved up, down, left, or right and that word added to the new text.
The process was repeated until 50,000 words was reached, the length of an average novel.
Random commas, periods, paragraph breaks, and chapters were added along the way. Any sentence including a variation of the words “s/he said” was placed in quotes.
