GraphStory: Collaborative Story Writing through Event-Based Narrative Editing

Abstract

Story writing is a popular yet complex creative activity that requires organization of ideas and iterative exploration, particularly during early-stage ideation. While many AI-based writing assistants have been developed, existing approaches primarily focus on generating long-form coherent text and improving user controllability during text production, providing limited support for brainstorming, connecting ideas, and validating alternative narrative flows. We present GraphStory, an interactive writing support system that leverages a graph-based representation to provide a comprehensive view of narrative structure and facilitate ideation. The system enables users to organize and connect plot points, explore alternative branches, and validate evolving narratives through an integrated story generation workflow. It further provides a structured interface to support efficient iteration over multiple story paths. Results from a user study with professional and semi-professional writers show that GraphStory reduces the effort of organizing narrative structures and better supports creativity and exploration compared to normal AI-based writing workflows.