DOC: Improving Long Story Coherence With Detailed Outline Control

We propose the Detailed Outline Control (DOC) framework for improving long-range plot coherence when automatically generating several-thousand-word-long stories. DOC consists of two complementary components: a detailed outliner and a detailed controller. The detailed outliner creates a more detailed, hierarchically structured outline, shifting creative burden from the main drafting procedure to the planning stage. The detailed controller ensures the more detailed outline is still respected during generation by controlling story passages to align with outline details. In human evaluations of automatically generated stories, DOC substantially outperforms a strong Re 3 baseline (Yang et al., 2022) on plot coherence (22.5% absolute gain), outline relevance (28.2%), and interestingness (20.7%). Humans also judged DOC to be much more controllable in an interactive generation setting. 1. Daisy is a kind-hearted old woman. She has cancer. Bill is her husband. 2. Lisa is Daisy's daughter. Structured Prompt For Drafting Daisy is diagnosed with cancer. Lisa is trying to find a viable treatment. Lisa has been stressed out lately, and Daisy expresses her concern. Lisa tirelessly continues her research. Lisa finally finds a cure. Setting: Lisa's laboratory. Lisa looked back at Daisy, her eyes clear and full of determination. "I've got this, mom. Hang in there.