Part 3: Declaring Nouns

Previous: Overview of the Editor

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let's take a look at our story:

Seems pretty straightforward, no? We have actions and nouns. Let's get started on the first sentence. What are the nouns? The crow, the branch, the tree, the cheese, the beak, the fox... well, let's get started. Each of these are fairly fast to set up once you're familiar with the process.

Let's start with the crow. On the editor, go to Story Elements  --> Characters. You'll see a panel like this:

This is divided into two smaller panels:

• • Defined Characters is where you'll see a list of characters already declared in your story.

    • Individual characters include discrete individuals like the Crow in our story, as in "I found a crow at the pet store."

    • Abstract characters are classes that you want to refer to in your story, as in "I think I'll go adopt a crow." The phrasing looks remarkably similar to that of an individual character, but if you squint one eye and look very close, it carries a different meaning in our semantic encoding.

  • Define New Character is a worksheet where you can do just that. This is your first experience with a form. Forms are used throughout Scheherazade to set up various kinds of instances. In this case, we are going to define an instance of a character type. Every time we set up a form, we'll see two smaller panels:

    • On the right will be a hierarchy of types -- in this case types of characters -- and a search box.

    • On the left will be a place to configure the instance and finalize it. We'll see how in a moment.

Let's try it out. We want to define "a crow" as an individual instance character in our story.

• • Note that there is a label "Select character type" with a red arrow pointing to the search box.

  • Type in "crow". You'll see results like these:

NOTE: Search results will appear as you type, kind of like Google Instant. Sometimes the search function can be a little buggy, in that if you type too fast, it will lose track and not show results consistent with your query. If this happens, just delete and retype the last character in your query. The search function will retrigger and display the correct results.

• You'll see all search results that contain the string "crow", arranged hierarchically where appropriate. For each choice, the "genus" (category) is shown in italics. You can click any of these results, even if it has sub-results. So let's click on the closest match, "crow (corvine bird)".

  • Here, as in any form situation, when you select a type, the sub-panel on the left will show the slots that need filling for that type, as well as an accept button on top that will allow you to complete the definition.

• • In this case there are two slots that need filling:

    • Name, which is optional (you can leave it blank)

    • Gender, which is used to determine which pronoun to use in retelling the story (he, she or it)

  • The accept button reads out the result of the form in natural language for you to approve. In this case, it's asking if you are happy with defining "A crow."

  • If you want, you can select a different type from the search results panel. The slot-filling panel will update with the new slots for the new type. But in this case, let's be happy with a crow.

  • The crow in the story is female. Select "Female" from the dropdown menu.

  • Click the accept button.

When you hit the accept button, the "Define New Character" panel resets to its blank state, but the "Defined Characters" panel now includes one item underneath "Individual characters":

Now the defined crow is here. The informational panel at the bottom shows you a few things:

• • The type (in this case, "crow" was the type you selected from the search results panel)

  • An Add Attribute button, which we'll leave until later

  • An Edit Definition button, which will cause the "Define New Character" form panel to trigger into an edit mode where you can change anything about the defined crow, such as its type, its gender, or its name, and then approve your changes withe the accept button

  • An Undefine button to delete this character definition, removing the crow from your encoding

Any questions so far? Yes? ... Ah, I see. Well, maybe in a future version. Other questions? ... Okay, great.

Let's make another character, a male Fox. Just go back to the "Define New Character" panel and type "fox" in the search box. Be sure to define a fox in the sense of canine, not any of the other types of foxes.

Now let's tackle the "branch of a tree" that the Crow needs to sit on. Head over to the "Props" panel, two across from "Characters" on the row of buttons.

The tricky thing about "branch of a tree" is that it is a compound noun. We can't just say "branch" (well, we can, but we can do better) and we can't just say "tree" (likewise, we can do better). There is actually a "tree branch" prop, but let's ignore that for purposes of instruction. What we want is the special noun type for meronymously defined nouns. There are several special noun types that are available for all noun classes (characters, locations and so on):

• 1. New group of nouns (in this case, "New group of props") is a special type for defining groups. You can define an anonymous group ("a group of foxes") or assign particular members to the group.

  2. All members of a type. Use this to refer to all individuals of a type collectively ("every fox").

  3. An abstract type. Remember, above, where the list of defined characters included both abstract characters and individual characters, which looked remarkably similar even after you squinted? Use this special type to define an abstract noun, such as an abstract prop ("he decided to buy a computer").

  4. Part of something. Use this to refer to a meronymous relationship, in which the whole can have more than one instance of the part ("a branch of a tree").

  5. Part of something, unique. Use this to refer to a meronymous relationship in which the whole can only have one instance of the part. (We want "the beak of the crow", not "a beak of the crow").

In all five of these cases, when we create the noun, we have to do more work than just giving a name and a gender. In the case of the branch of the tree, let's start by defining the tree itself. Just make an ordinary tree:

Now let's make the branch of the tree. Select the special prop type, "part of something":

It's going to take a little more work to complete this noun definition. Now, we have four things in the slot panel:

• 1. The accept button. You've seen this before. Note, though, that unlike the first time, now the button isn't raised and isn't clickable. This is the form panel telling you that you haven't filled out enough slots to finish the definition. Once you fill in the minimum of slots, the rectangle will pop up and become clickable, and the subtitle "(click to accept)" will also appear. For now, it gives a partial name: "A prop of something." The word "prop" should cue you that you need to fill in some missing information, and the word "something" should also cue you that you need to fill in some different information.

  2. The "enter a name" field. If you want to name your tree branch Ziggy, for some reason, you can do it here; the "reconstructed story" panel will eventually have text about "a branch of a tree named Ziggy." Isn't this like filling in the world's biggest Mad Lib?

  3. Here is where things get interesting. There is a big red button that represents the first questions you have to answer: What is the part? We have to click the button to begin to answer the question. (Don't do it yet.) Note that there is a blue box around that question. This is an inner nested form panel for an inner nested noun definition. We can make crazy compound nouns, like "the top of the left side of the branch of the tree of a forest of a planet named Endor." This is a location nested inside a location nested inside a prop nested inside a prop.

  4. Another big red button, "Click to select: Part of what?" When clicked, this will allow you to specify the whole that, well, the part is part of.

With me? Good. Click the first red button, "What type of part?" You'll see this:

What happened? Well, inside the blue box, the red "Click to select" button disappeared, and was replaced by the question itself, "What type of part?" But notice that the big red arrow jumped down from the top. This is crucial. I mentioned just now that the blue box represents a nested form panel. This is only half true. It represents the slot half (the left half) of the nested form panel. The search half (the right half) isn't duplicated inside the blue box; rather, the big, main search box is re-appropriated. All the nested forms share the same search panel and the arrow tells you which form is currently using the search panel to let you select its type.

In this case, before you clicked the "Click to select: What type of part?" button, the search panel on the right was letting you select the main prop type, i.e., "a part-of relationship" as opposed to "a cucumber". After you clicked the "Click to select: What type of part?" button, the part-of relationship is locked in, and now you are choosing the category for the "part" as opposed to the "whole", i.e., a "branch of something" as opposed to a "cucumber of something" or a "beak of something".

Try it -- Search for "cucumber" and you'll get this:

Well, that's silly. Let's clear out the search field and put in "branch":

That's better. Note how there is also a new red "Reselect" button on the main slot-filler panel. We can click that if we want to forget about ever choosing "part-of" as a main prop type, and instead choose something else.

Now we're close: "A branch of something". A branch of what? Right, the tree we made earlier. Click, now, the other red prompt button, "Click to select: Part of what?" You'll see that the search panel is replaced in this case by a picker. 

The red arrow jumps down to the bottom to let you know that the former search panel -- what's now a picker -- is now associated with answering the "Part of what?" question. There is also a new "Reselect" button in the "branch" slot area if you want to go back to answering the "Part of what?" question. Also, quickly, here's a tip: Because of all the nesting, the slot panel can get pretty crowded; you can "minimize" a form box by clicking on the banner that would normally be the accept button. In this case, clicking "A branch." minimizes the blue area to this:

OK, that saves a little space. (You can click again on the blue banner to restore the nested form area.)

Now, let's talk about this picker. We are reminded of the "Defined characters" list, except here, we see individual and abstract nouns of all five classes: props, qualities, characters, locations and behaviors. Only three are available: the tree we earlier defined, the fox we earlier defined, and the crow we earlier defined. Note that there are some semantics going on under the hood; the "part-of" relationship knows what kinds of nouns are suitable for the "part" and the "whole", and lets you only pick elements that satisfy those selectional restrictions. Of course, it's still easy to make a nonsense prop, like "a branch of a crow". Scheherazade won't stop you from speaking such ill-devised gibberish... it's up to you to make your story encoding make sense to real human readers. Actually, for fun I once turned Scheherazade around into a story generator that picked types and slot-fillers at random, not only for nouns, but actions and all the rest, and then put the results online so that people could vote up the random stories that made the most sense. I hoped that over time, people would provide enough votes that Scheherazade could integrate that feedback to adjust the probability mass and create more sensical stories for the next day, and then repeat the process until it started making real stories. In reality, though, no one ever visited the site. What I would have given for a marketing budget and an audience of bored, easily amused visitors...

Back to the task at hand. Select "the tree" from the picker and the form will finally be complete; the main accept button will rise up and offer the prop we wanted, "a branch of a tree":

Select that, and bingo, you have your meronymous noun.

Now, let's make a few more props:

• • For the cheese, just select "cheese" as a prop type. You'll define "some cheese".

  • For the crow's beak, you'll need another part-of noun. This time, choose the prop "Part of something (unique)" and for the part, select "beak (mouth)". (Don't forget that you have to click the prompt button "Click to select: What type of part?" before you use the search panel to look for "beak"!) For the whole, select the crow.

Great! Now we have all the nouns we'll need for the first sentence of the fable. Click ahead to see how we can make our first action in the story timeline.

But first: Now would be a great time to save your progress. Just hit the Control Panel on the bottom right, then click Save and give a filename. If for some reason Scheherazade crashes (alas, it has been known to happen), you can relaunch it and load up your story from the splash screen.

Next: Declaring Actions and Properties