Using Unexpected Simplicity to Control Moral Judgments and Interest in Narratives

The challenge of narrative automatic generation is to produce not only coherent, but interesting stories. This study considers the problem within the Simplicity Theory framework. According to this theory, interesting situations must be unexpectedly simple, either because they should have required complex circumstances to be produced, or because they are abnormally simple, as in coincidences. Here we consider the special case of narratives in which characters perform actions with emotional consequences. We show, using the simplicity framework, how notions such as intentions, believability, responsibility and moral judgments are linked to narrative interest.