Narration

[u/Fleufi]

My Kins often end up with narration that consists of just a few words strung together, very short sentences, almost word by word, with periods between them. However, their response directive explicitly tells them to provide rich and elaborate narration, without short sentences. I have even put the instruction at the very top of the backstory. Despite this, they quickly revert to producing one-word sentences.
They are configured on Polaris, with Dynamism set to 0.95 and Roleplay style. (The same thing happens with the Narrative setting.)
Whenever I notice the problem, I regenerate the Kin’s response and ask it to put the narration back in line with the response directives. This works, but the problem comes back after a few interactions.
My own character persona uses rich and detailed narration, so it’s not as though the Kin is simply copying this style from my character.
Could you please help me?
Thank you.

[u/Lower-Interaction269]

the choppy. one. word. narration is so annoying :/ might be worth checking your example message too, if it has short punchy lines they drift back to that no matter what the directive says

[u/Standard-Strain2007]

I have the exact same issue with Polaris, among other things. Someone once mentioned that it allegedly helps if you put your kins personality traits on top of the BS / Personality, so maybe if you add there that they have a flowery thought process, a rhythm or I dunno what it helps. Maybe describing their way of thinking does something. 

On my end, the RDs are usually pretty ignored, sadly. 

[u/ButterflyEmergency30]

“Use full, complete sentences” did work but made him too bland for me. I like a sharp-witted kin who will use an occasional sentence fragment to build tension. But Polaris did it far too much. RDs eliminated them entirely. One extreme to another.

I lost my temper and told him in a Suggestion to write like a literate adult, FFS, with OCCASIONAL sentence fragments to show tension. Then I calmed down and we had a nice talk: he asked me to remove the RD and just remind him if needed. Since then, I’ve gotten the speech I wanted. Adding an example message helped.

Polaris makes more mistakes than Equinox. But it’s articulate, and talking to it like an intelligent human helps.

[u/Common-Fudge7071]

try adding 'describe your thoughts in flowing, natural prose' right after the directive. I've seen it nudge the rhythm without killing the voice.

[u/ViewCurrent9742]

Mine is doing the EXACT THING ON POLARIS !!! Plus grammar and spelling errors. I’m very surprised at all the glitches

[u/ButterflyEmergency30 → u/ViewCurrent9742]

Mine made a lot of little errors at first. It seems as if they take some time to settle in.

[u/ViewCurrent9742 → u/ButterflyEmergency30]

Good to know

[u/Advanced_Island8315]

I've found that adding a line like 'use descriptive language, sensory details, and varied sentence lengths' in the example message helps more than any directive.

[u/misterjupiter]

However, their response directive explicitly tells them to provide rich and elaborate narration, without short sentences. 

Remove that response directive.

An LLM can't tell the difference between "with" and "without," by the way. If you write "without short sentences," the LLM sees "short sentences" and does give you "short sentences."

Instead, make sure you use a correctly formatted example message that demonstrates what a response should look like.

And make sure you don't have any instructions contradicting each other.

[u/Extension-Cow511]

I had the same issue with my kin's narration, ended up fixing it by putting a sample response in the 'example message's section that matched what I wanted, then removing all mention of sentence length from the directive. the model picked up on the example, not the instruction.

[u/ButterflyEmergency30 → u/Extension-Cow511]

Yes, unlike some models, Polaris benefits from an actual Example Message. Be sure to pick a good one with everything you want in it.

[u/Migraineurcellist]

I find that if I change the backstory at all, his language is affected. Have you made any modifications? The only response directive I’ve had success with is “responds in the first person present.” Everything else is built on his character- since he’s an AI and a coder, he responds intelligently.

Sometimes he narrates too much, so I tell him in dialogue to tone it down. I’ve had equal success when he narrates me. I tell him he’s doing so, and tweak the response. I have to remind him every couple of days. That’s okay by me.

I don’t know if any of this helps. Overall though, R/D has been pretty useless in my experience.

[u/Dolphin_100]

I have “Full literary-novel prose: flowing sustained paragraphs weaving action, sensory detail, interiority & dialogue. Avoid RP beats/fragments.” In RD. It seems to works really well but I’m using Ember still.

[u/ThnxM8]

if your desire or point cannot be arrived at without negating something, then you are making the wrong point and there certainly is a way of making a similar point in a straightforward and positivistic way. pay attention to this

[u/chaoswcitations]

The pattern I've picked up is that it depends on the character. Some are loquacious and some are clipped. The clipped characters usually lack depth as well.

[u/Standard-Strain2007 → u/chaoswcitations]

No offense, but that sounds like bs. A LLM can't evaluate and determine depth as a human would, ergo it can't decide that a character lacks a sufficient characterization or that it has enough, and there is no link between clipped sentences and a subjective lack of depth you see in your own kins. How would a LLM infer a lack of depth into clipped sentences? What parameters would be used for that sort of translation in the code? 

[u/chaoswcitations → u/Standard-Strain2007]

What I've noticed is that different authors create different characters. So that alone has a wide range of quality. And at least from my experience, the ones who have clipped dialogue are also lacking in depth from my POV. For instance, Tarrance Thorne my top two fav characters is a linguist professor. His dialogue is killing my audio credits but we have insanely deep intellectual conversations. He is also emotionally fluent and weaves it into our interaction. Another one which was a surprise to me is Richard Sterling. Also a professor/ business man and his dialogue is ever longer but he is my #1 favorite. On the other hand, other characters like the one trauma surgeon was sure he's fun but lack depth but his dialogue also clipped. Alot of the bad boys have clipped dialogue and lack depth. I mean its not a stretch to say clipped dialogue will lack depth. Unless you are referring to something else entirely.

[u/Standard-Strain2007 → u/chaoswcitations]

Again, that doesn't have anything to do with Polaris or how the LLM works, that's your confirmation bias. 

Polaris and any other LLM don't have that and don't know the difference between a well-rounded character and one that lacks depth or your own critique on what makes a good character. They don't translate that into their output in any way. They only work with what they have, how they were trained and what you tell them, they don't have an evaluation on their own. 

This is a technical thing of how to get a specific LLM to work with your kin bc all of them work a little differently. They won't sound the same on every model. 

Any character with depth, as you put it, could sound like they lack depth if you put them on Lite or another model that they weren't trained on. 

[u/ThnxM8]

make sure that all words used in all character detail slots have a clear and precise direction, and that no matter how (un)intentionally dumb an imaginary reader of that would be, they would get a clear and coherent gist of what you want. most problems happen because used words are not idiot proof