This month I rolled out a new section called Experiments. My first experiment is StoryTime.
The idea is simple: a small form where you enter a few key details — what you want the story to be about, how long it should be, and what language you want it in. When you click Generate, Scribelate looks at the words you've already been exposed to (you need at least 50) and sends them to an LLM, which writes a story on your chosen subject using vocabulary at your level.
The stories aren't literary masterpieces, but the concept is solid: a short, readable story built around words you actually know.
The first story I generated was on the subject of "A day in the office." It came back in past tense, with sentences like "Today I went to work" — or in Japanese: きょう、わたしは会社に行きました。
A few curious things came out of the process. The story spelled out きょう in hiragana rather than using the kanji form 今日 — I hadn't seen it written that way in a while, so it caught me off guard. Similarly, it used わたし instead of the kanji 私, which is usually one of the first characters you learn. That said, I had selected the easiest difficulty level, so defaulting to the most basic forms makes sense.
The rough translation of the story went something like this:
"Today I went to work. I arrived on the ShinShoKu train. I said good morning to everyone at work. I had a lot to do, but it was a good day. My friend came up to me and said they wanted to tell me about a new job at a great place. I told her I was interested. My dream is coming true. Today was a really good day."
Here is the story in Japanese:
Even at this basic level there was plenty to unpack, and I won't go into all of it here. But overall I'm really pleased with how this feature turned out. One of my goals is to improve my reading skills in Japanese, and StoryTime should help a lot with that.
-Aaron