Narrative Flattening: How Post-Training Compresses Thematic, Affective, and Stylistic Variation in LLM Fiction

arXiv:2605.27878 · cs.CL · Submitted 2026-05-27 · Read on arXiv

cs.CL

Submitted: 2026-05-27

Updated: 2026-09-07

Comments: Accepted by EMNLP 2026, Main Conference

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Embeddings — 28× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Robustness — 15× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Alignment — 8× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Adaptation — 5× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Aggregation — 5× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Homogenization — 5× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Regularization — 5× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Trace — 5× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accuracy — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Fine-Tuning — 4× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• T ELL M E A S TORY — 4× in this paper
• Calibration — 3× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Consistency — 3× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Reinforcement Learning — 3× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Verifiability — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• AUC — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Alternation — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Generalization — 2× in this paper · explained in 13 episodes
• Instruction Tuning — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Mode Collapse — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• AI Alignment — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Commentary — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Distillation — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Foundation Model — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Foundation Models — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Homogeneity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Lexical Diversity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Maximum Mean Discrepancy — 1× in this paper
• Pragmatics — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Reinforcement Learning (RL) — 1× in this paper · explained in 25 episodes
• Residualization — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) — 1× in this paper · explained in 8 episodes

Sources

• Tulu 3: Pushing Frontiers in Open Language Model Post-Training
• Agents' Room: Narrative Generation through Multi-step Collaboration
• Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers
• Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model
• LLMs Exhibit Significantly Lower Uncertainty in Creative Writing Than Professional Writers
• Spoiler Alert: Narrative Forecasting as a Metric for Tension in LLM Storytelling
• 2 OLMo 2 Furious

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