| Novelist |
December 25, 2017
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| He was a writer. He wrote mysteries. Although he was not so famous. About 20 years ago, he started his novelist career. At that time, he once became in a slump and couldn't get any new ideas for his stories, all of his stories were very similar to each other. He needed a refreshment, and so he bought a computer application named 'Novelist,ver1.' It sounded shady, but, as the saying goes, 'A drowning man will grasp for a straw.' The application would make a story if the owner filled it in with certain information. He typed as follows: Genre: Detective story Protagonist's name: Kenji Kato His/Her nationality: Japanese His/Her sex: Man His/Her age: 34 His/Her occupation: Detective The setting of the year: 200X The setting of the place: Tokyo The number of the words (Around): 100,000 Others (Scenes or ideas that you would like to be inserted): The protagonist has a girlfriend; From a young age, he wanted to be a detective; He is funny, cool, and fashionable; Happy Ending. It took more than an hour for the computer to finish to write the story. Finally it stopped. He got excited and started to read it: 'There was a detective living in Shinagawa in Tokyo. His name was Kenji Kato. He was  34 years old and handsome. He had a beautiful girlfriend. One day a client came and said, "My husband was killed. Help me." The detective started to investigate. He didn't know it would be a chilly, spine tingling situation... 'He soon read it all the way through because the story had only 2 pages, despite setting it for 100, 000 words. The story wasn't 'chilly, spine tingling' at all. It was, in a phrase, 'a kid's composition'. He sighed and gave up using the software. He laughed at himself to depend on such software, and thought that there would never be software that could be used to write real books until after he died. 20 years had passed. He happened to learn that the 'Novelist' software still existed and was versioned up to 10th edition. Although he still didn't expect the software to be any better, he bought it out of curiosity. Genre: Detective story Protagonist's name: Kenji Kato His/Her nationality: Japanese His/Her sex: Man His/Her age: 34 His/Her occupation: Detective The setting of the year: 200X The setting of the place: Tokyo The number of the words (Around): 100,000 Others (Scenes or ideas that you would like to be inserted): The protagonist has a girlfriend; From a young age, he wanted to be a detective; He is funny, cool, and fashionable; Happy Ending. He made some coffee. When he returned to his desk, the story was already finished. He was amazed. The length of the story seemed to be as he set it for. He started to read: The story started with a crime scene. A middle aged woman was dead in her room. The police officers including the protagonist was investigating. From the appearance of the victim and their conversation, the crime seemed to have a similarity with a serial murder that the police had been investigating for a couple of years. In chapter 2, a sister and a brother characters appeared. The chapter described their relationship to the crime victim. In chapter 3, another killing happened. It was a brutal killing, but the only witness could only describe the suspect as wearing a mask and black jacket. In chapter 4, the sister's boyfriend appeared in the story. In the situation, he complained about her canceling their date the night before. Her way of commenting felt as if she was covering something up. Like this, the story continued thrillingly with some twist and turns. He was very shocked. The story itself was a little rough, some conversations might be awkward. But as a whole, the story kept logical and realistic. And moreover, the story had a power to attract the reader. But, the extraordinarily part was that the uniqueness of the story. Even a professional like him couldn't have thought up such a story. He couldn't move for a while. After a while, he started to think. "How could the computer think like this? Do computers know the love of a mother? Do computers feel the guilt of deceiving? Do computers understand the pity of betrayal?" But, at least, the computer could understand how to make him feel enjoyable. He thought about using this story. If he only changed some parts of the story, it would be great! He thought that it would be possible that some writers already used the software. Recently there was an incident that a professional shogi (chess like game) player was accused to have used a shogi application on his smartphone while he was resting. Maybe writers couldn't be held accountable legally. "But ..." He didn't have the intention to use the software. But, now, he realized that he should prepare for the era in which computers were to be his rivals. |
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*shady :インチキ臭い
*grasp :つかむ
*straw :わら
*protagonist :主人公
*spine :脊柱
*tingle :ひりひりする、ぞくぞくする
*despite :にもかかわらず
*composition :作文
*brutal :残虐な
*twists and turns :紆余曲折
*betrayal :裏切り
*be held accountable :責任を問われる