After scraping about 5000 articles from tvtropes.org to retrieve descriptions for characters and settings, Sam Lavigne suggested I scrape erowid.org to dig up some exposition material. I proceeded to scrape 18,324 drug trip reports from the site, and integrated that material into the generator.

While this project remains unfinished—I’m considering adding more material from many other websites, which is why I’m calling it a “collective consciousness fiction generator”—it is now generating full-length “novels” (300+ pages, 8.5×11, 12pt font). I polled my fellow ITP students to insert themselves into novels, and they responded with over 50 suggestions for novel titles. The generated PDFs are available for viewing/download on Google Drive.

I decided to create covers for 3 of my favorite novels the software has generated. Click on the covers below to see those PDFs:

Here is the current state of the code that’s generating these novels:

latex_special_char_1 = ['&', '%', '$', '#', '_', '{', '}']
latex_special_char_2 = ['~', '^', '\\']

outputFile = open("output/"+outputFileName+".tex", 'w')

openingTexLines = ["\\documentclass[12pt]{book}",
				   "\\usepackage{ucs}",
				   "\\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}",
				   "\\usepackage{hyperref}",
				   "\\title{"+outputFileName+"}",
				   "\\author{collective consciousness fiction generator\\\\http://rossgoodwin.com/ficgen}",
				   "\\date{\\today}",
				   "\\begin{document}",
				   "\\maketitle"]

closingTexLine = "\\end{document}"

for line in openingTexLines:
	outputFile.write(line+"\n\r")
outputFile.write("\n\r\n\r")

intros = char_match()

for x, y in intros.iteritems():

	outputFile.write("\\chapter{"+x+"}\n\r")

	chapter_type = random.randint(0, 4)
	bonus_drug_trip = random.randint(0, 1)
	trip_count = random.randint(1,4)


	# BLOCK ONE

	if chapter_type in [0, 3]:

		for char in y[0]:
			if char == "`":
				outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
			elif char in latex_special_char_1:
				outputFile.write("\\"+char)
			elif char in latex_special_char_2:
				if char == '~':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '^':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '\\':
					outputFile.write("-")
				else:
					pass
			else:
				outputFile.write(char)

	elif chapter_type in [1, 4]:

		for char in y[2]:
			if char == "`":
				outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
			elif char in latex_special_char_1:
				outputFile.write("\\"+char)
			elif char in latex_special_char_2:
				if char == '~':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '^':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '\\':
					outputFile.write("-")
				else:
					pass
			else:
				outputFile.write(char)

	elif chapter_type == 2:

		for char in y[1][0]:
			if char == "`":
				outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
			else:
				outputFile.write(char)

	outputFile.write("\n\r\n\r\n\r")

	
	# BLOCK TWO

	if chapter_type == 0:

		for char in y[2]:
			if char == "`":
				outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
			elif char in latex_special_char_1:
				outputFile.write("\\"+char)
			elif char in latex_special_char_2:
				if char == '~':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '^':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '\\':
					outputFile.write("-")
				else:
					pass
			else:
				outputFile.write(char)

	elif chapter_type == 1:

		for char in y[0]:
			if char == "`":
				outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
			elif char in latex_special_char_1:
				outputFile.write("\\"+char)
			elif char in latex_special_char_2:
				if char == '~':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '^':
					outputFile.write("")
				elif char == '\\':
					outputFile.write("-")
				else:
					pass
			else:
				outputFile.write(char)

	elif chapter_type in [3, 4]:

		for char in y[1][0]:
			if char == "`":
				outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
			else:
				outputFile.write(char)

	elif chapter_type == 2 and bonus_drug_trip:

		for tripIndex in range(trip_count):

			for char in y[1][tripIndex+1]:
				if char == "`":
					outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
				else:
					outputFile.write(char)

	else:
		pass

	outputFile.write("\n\r\n\r\n\r")


	# BLOCK THREE

	if chapter_type in [0, 1, 3, 4] and bonus_drug_trip:

		for tripIndex in range(trip_count):

			for char in y[1][tripIndex+1]:
				if char == "`":
					outputFile.seek(-1, 1)
				else:
					outputFile.write(char)

		outputFile.write("\n\r\n\r\n\r")

	else:
		pass


outputFile.write("\n\r\n\r")
outputFile.write(closingTexLine)


outputFile.close()


print '\"output/'+outputFileName+'.tex\"'

UPDATE: Part III