Illiterature

Meanwhile the plot line was resolving itself masterfully. At that very moment, unbeknown to Laurence, his wife, Lucretia, was flying to Zurich with $312 million of assets she had stolen from him, but the plane was crashing into a mountain and Lucretia's body was being reduced to pieces as small and bloody as your pinky toenail after it gets caught on a sweat sock as you are yanking it on. Since the money was not in cash but in redeemable unsecured certificates of deposit, Laurence would get to keep the babe and the bucks.

The End

So, I took my manuscript to Zirdland.

Arc Angel turns out to be a hugely complex electronic tool, developed over 20 years by inventor Lawrence Au. It analyzes stories word by word, using hundreds of criteria, instantly evaluating how well characters are developed, how dynamically they interact, how effectively their plights resonate, how the plot is resolved, etc.

Au and his partner, Joel Ratner, are hoping that this interactive tool will become a Web site to which aspiring authors will flock to improve their prose. Plus, theoretically, if book publishers trust it, they will show more interest in a manuscript that the computer has anointed as worthy.

Au fed "Jasmine and Laurence" into Arc Angel, which decided within 10 seconds that the story was ... great!

"Yes, it's showing emotional depth," Au said, interpreting the elaborate color-coded spreadsheet feedback. "There is a lot of motivational punch that propels characters along. There is a lot of resonance. The tool says you'd have a lot to gain by continuing the story."

Uh.

I asked him if he had noticed, personally, as a human, that my story was dreadful.

"Yeah, that's a good question. What you wrote was florid and colorful, which Arc Angel saw as a good thing. The problem is we haven't yet developed in it the ability to detect cheesy writing. We are definitely working on it."

Gene Weingarten can be reached at weingarten@washpost.com. Chat with him online Tuesdays at noon.