The Fruit of Smells and Dreams

[telophase]

Hey! I need your help! So I'm working on a fantasy book title generator because why not, and I've got a prelim version up and running. Right now it's overloaded with title patterns (ex: The $Noun $Verbs at $Time, or The $Role of $Adjective $Nouns) and words.

If you can run through it a few times and let me know which patterns and words don't produce anything worthwhile*, that would be most excellent. Mind you, they *all* break down at some point; I'm just looking for the ones that consistently break down. All the patterns are numbered, so you can easily tell which is which. Well, as far as 89 patterns are "easy."

https://www.magatsu.net/generators/fantasy-title/index.php


31. Briar of the Faun

50. Avatar of Dust

55. Champion's Lie

29. Apocalypses of Summer

31. Fall of the Orphan

42. Test of Enduring Markets

16. City of Sands

41. Crow of Ferns

83. Over a Longhouse

15. Blood Alchemy

35. Mist Grant

21. The Ally

24. Fell Illusions

76. The Crow's Cage

69. The Resurrected Bee

54. Ruler's Writer

32. Crows Rove

4. A Perfect Fern of Heists

69. The Idle Deceit

36. Time Elves

27. Complete Dreaming

15. Blood Sidearm

56. Fighters's Record

74. The Tree of Beautiful Tree

71. The Complete Fern of Thorns

63. Fallring

73. The Wyvern of Bargains


So far, my absolute favorite title is "Bargain Martyr."

--
* "Funny" is also worthwhile. For example, you will not convince me to remove "Odor" or "Shaft" from the word lists because "The Halfling's Shrouded Shaft" and "The Diplomat's Odor" are hilarious.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Rules 88 and 28 seem like they should be generating some winners, but I'm seeing stuff like "Beginningpaper" ("Alchemywill," "Idlechallenge," e.g.). I think compounding words for something evocative or even half-meaningful is hard.

This is churning out depressingly plausible titles...

So is there a way to hook it into the fantasy plot generator, so that at least one element in the plot is referenced in the title...? No, don't do that. That would be terrifying.

[telophase]

Yeah, I was hoping that 88 and 28 would produce things like "Stormsword" or "Greenwood" but I've got too many words that don't work for that sort of construction in the source lists, alas.

Don't tempt me! Actually, my long-term goal is a project brief generator that I can use to produce ideas for premade covers, which will have a title, a synopsis from the Cool Bits generator or somewhere else, some random names and random (brief) character descriptions, a few random objects and locations (ostensibly relevant to the plot), and a random genre. It'll probably never happen, but hey.

[movingfinger]

Maybe a class of only "fantasy" words like storm, sword, queen, mage rather than scattering them around? And a class of mundane objects they can't combine with, like chair. I have no idea what the lists look like and I admire you vastly for doing this, because it's both fun and, cringingly, a critique of... everything.

(Just looked again and got The War of Comets, which I would not be surprised to find was a thing that happened somewhere.)

[telophase]

Right now I've got a set of patterns and these lists. Plurals are separate lists because the rules of pluralization in English are so wonky.

Adjective
Role (basically, things a character can be, like Queen or Orc) and RolePlural
Noun and NounPlural
Location and LocationPlural (ranging from Country to Bridge)
Verb Verbs Verbed and Verbing for the various tenses/what-have-you (again, easier to have separate lists)
Time (ranging from Era to Day to Period, of which the latter gives rather WTF results)
Preposition

The code is basically Mad Libs, picking a random number, pulling the pattern associated with that number, then looking up the word types that need to plug into it, randomly picking one from a text file of that word type, and if necessary doing another function to pick A or An* or to add a possessive 's or ' to plural nouns.**

* Which doesn't work for "Adept" and the occasional other A word for some bizarre reason
** Which fails to work, so I need to look at it again

Toby is going to sit down with me tonight to see how we can streamline the code that plugs the words into the pattern because right now it's a giant switch -- I've got a separate code block for each and every pattern -- and I'd really love to instead put all the patterns into one textfile, and have one block of code that grabs a pattern, parses it, and plugs stuff in. I could come up with something reasonably simple, except that the A/An and possessive bits are a bit more difficult.

On the bright side, if we get that done, I can use the exact same code to do ANY type of generator that requires me to plug words into sentence patterns, so I can easily do a science fiction title generator, or come up with more prompt generators, etc., by just making out word lists.

[rachelmanija]

A lot of these are strangely actually good. I would pick up Time Elves, Bargain Martyr, The Wyvern of Bargains, The Resurrected Bee... lots of them really!

[rachelmanija]

30. Splinters of the Countesses

79. Marvels Shall Pass

46. Through the Marsh of Breaks

52. Priestess of Falling Fall

35. Dance Betray

72. The Justice for Cages

28. Bluegryphon

84. Under a Town of Winds

42. Worth of Folding Tigers

21. The Privateer

Under a Town of Winds is a great title.

ETA: 28 and 63 consistently jam two words together into something like Springlingering.

[indywind]

I'm pretty sure Dance Betray is the prequel to Dance Dance Revolution.

And I'd like to option Bargain Martyr for the title of my mom's biography.

[telophase]

Thanks!

I was hoping to get a lot more like "Dawnsword" and "Greenwood" out of 28 and 63, but that's failing most of the time. :/

[telophase]

46. Within the Castle of Colleges

I would absolutely pick that up to read the back.

OTOH, "88. Hatinjustice" had me reading it as "Hating Justice" until I realized it was "Hat Injustice", which made me laugh.

[loligo]

The Resurrected Bee is a lovely title!

[telophase]

I'd read it!

[indywind]

I'm seeing so many inspiring, evocative titles thatI would love to read (or write) the stories to, so I kinda feel bad for the ones that... aren't.

Made up categories for consolation prizes:

Hard to pronounce:
56. Twins's Psalm
35. Wine Unname

More of a commentary on the creative process than a title:
26. Sleeping Dinner of Writing
35. Hell Toll
13. At the Mine of Worth
49. Girl of Strange Hints
39. A Beginning Doesn't Roam

I don't envy the cover artist who's gotta design this:
47. With the Stand and the Fall
81. Births Always Roam
27. Decayed Prophesying
4. A Reluctant Cloud of Bolts
65. Smelled at Duration


Maybe already taken:
57. Afternoon of Prey, 36. Crown Prey (by John Sandford)
89. The Doctor (by BBC)
7. A Ring of Blue Sunlight (A Ring of Bright Water retold from the otter's POV)


We have reached peak fantasy:
75. The Haunting of Sunlight and Charms
22. The Prophet's Sorcerous Cage

Some other genre:
75. The Masquerade of Fractures and Rots (zombie/horror)
22. The Regent's Low Touch (erotic romance)
22. The Hostage's Awakened Desire (erotic romance)
56. Diplomats's Annal (nonfiction: political/history)
24. Odd Honey (lesbian romance)
20. The Deep Avatar (essays on the Nickelodeon animated series or James Cameron movie)
84. Over a Circus of Feuds (documentary about reality TV)
49. Marshal of Reluctant Marigolds (gardening)
32. Mules Slash


Begging for snark:
79. Mules Shall Forget (but the elephants shall remember)
4. A Ragged Oath of Swarms ("Augh, goddamn bees!")
27. Forgotten Igniting (Oops, left the stove on.)
34. Touch Baroness (Baroness says no!)
40. A Dove Never Delivers (That's why proper wizards use owls.)
39. A Moon Doesn't Draw (Because it doesn't have pencils. Or hands.)
65. Amazed at Day (Lost track of time playing computer games last night.)
65. Hid at Period (Was grouchy and bloated. Ate chocolate and Midol.)


Suggests a tweak to rules or database:
8. A Light of Thrones and Thrones
74. The Touch of Dark Touch 74. The Fate of Arcane Fate
74. The Rainbow of Haunted Rainbow 74. The Throne of Fading Throne
(Can it be instructed not to repeat a word in multiple pattern positions? Is pattern #74 supposed to do that?)
85. Over a Mission and a Dinner (dinner? doesn't seem very fantasy, but no super funny either)

88, 63, 28? -- the rules that create compound words -- seem to produce a high ratio of "huh?" or "meh" to useful or amusing results. I think some kind of tweak is needed but not sure what.

Gotta say though,

88. Mouthmouth

[telophase]

Will answer longer later as I’m on mobile due to my work comp undergoing upgrades at the moment, but 74 isn’t supposed to be repeating that often. I probably messed up the code. I haven’t put anything in to stop repeats like that, but the word lists are 200-300 items long so shouldn’t repeat that often.

Mouthmouth is obviously a winner.

(I don’t even recall putting “dinner” in there!)