A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE WRITING
A Business Process Model
Peter Henderson, Nishadi De Silva
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Keywords: Collaborative writing, Business Processes, Narratives, Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), CSCW.
Abstract: Narratives have been used in the past to enhance technical documents such as research proposals by
implementing a single-user writing tool called CANS (Computer-Aided Narrative Support). This study has
now been extended to collaborative writing (CW); another area that can greatly benefit from a narrative-
based writing tool. Before implementing such an asynchronous, multi-user system, however, it was
imperative to do a concrete design for it. Therefore, after studying existing CW tools and strategies, a
concise business process (BP) model was designed to describe the process of narrative-based CW. This
paper introduces narrative-based CW for technical authors, the BP model for it and discusses the benefits of
such an implementation on particular areas of research, such as the development of Grid applications.
1 INTRODUCTION
Collaborative writing (CW) is becoming
increasingly common; often compulsory in academic
and corporate work. There are many software tools
that support CW and address the complications
inherent in most multi-user applications. However, a
common complaint with CW is the lack of
coherence between the independently-authored
sections in a document. The current practice of CW
groups writing to an agreed outline
(Alred et al., 2003) is successful but does not
address this problem. Developing a narrative instead
of an outline and agreeing to use it as a formal
structure to the document will resolve the lack of
coherence in collaboratively-authored documents.
It was shown previously (De-Silva and Henderson,
2005, De-Silva, 2005) how narratives enhance
single-author technical documents. A tool called
CANS was built based on Rhetorical Structure
Theory (RST) (Mann and Thompson, 1988) that
guides an author through a narrative-driven writing
process. This research was then extended to build a
similar tool for CW.
It is an established fact that successful applications
rely on well understood business processes
(Henderson, 2000). Therefore, after studying
existing CW strategies and tools, a business process
model was designed to describe the collaborative
processes of reading, writing and reviewing, from a
narrative perspective. This model is currently being
implemented using Web Services.
There are diagrammatic ways of presenting business
processes in UML (Maciel et al., 2005) which are
ideal for complex distributed systems. However,
since the focus is mainly on introducing narratives to
CW, the business processes remain simple and do
not warrant the use of such diagrams. Pseudocode is
used instead.
This paper has brief introductions to narratives, RST
and CW. Following this, the business process model
for narrative-based CW is described and its
implementation and uses are discussed, particularly
as an application suitable for deployment on the
Grid.
2 OVERVIEW OF NARRATIVES
A narrative is a representation of events
meaningfully connected in a temporal and causal
way (Onega and Landa, 1996, Abbott, 2002). For
the scope of this paper, it is sufficient to think of a
narrative as being analogous to a story.
A document narrative is the implicit ‘story’ a
document conveys to the reader; a fundamental
aspect of a successful document. A document
narrative clarifies the authors’ intentions and
provides a coherent structure. Narratologists and
166
Henderson P. and De Silva N. (2006).
A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE WRITING - A Business Process Model.
In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - SAIC, pages 166-173
DOI: 10.5220/0002462901660173
Copyright
c
SciTePress
linguists have developed several theories to analyse
and synthesise coherent narratives. Rhetorical
Structure Theory (RST) was chosen to produce
coherent document narratives.
2.1 Rhetorical Structure Theory
When a narrative is analysed using RST, it is
divided into text segments and relationships are
defined between them. A segment is of arbitrary
size; often a clause or sentence. The relationships
can be illustrated using diagrams (Figure 1). A text
segment assumes one of two roles in a relationship:
the nucleus (N) or the satellite (S). Nuclei express
what is more essential to the understanding of the
narrative. Satellites provide supporting information.
However, in this paper, there is no great distinction
between nuclei and satellites.
N S
Motivation
Figure 1: A motivation relationship in RST (N=Nucleus,
S=Satellite).
There is an overall effect associated with each
relation. For instance, if the nucleus in a
MOTIVATION relation presents an action, the
satellite should increase the reader’s motivation to
perform it. There are 23 relations defined in (Mann
and Thompson, 1988). The RST analyses in this
paper use just six of these relations (Table 1).
RST identifies a hierarchical structure in text.
Therefore, a coherent text is expected to produce a
tree of relations. It is possible to have multiple valid
RST trees for one narrative.
Table 1: Subset of RST relations used in this paper.
Relation Description
Background Provides background information
Elaboration Provides extra information
Justify Justifies a certain decision
Motivation Provides motivation to perform an
action
Sequence Links events that happen in
sequence
Solutionhood Provides a solution to a problem
2.2 Narrative-based Writing
To familiarize the reader with the use of RST on
document narratives, an example of writing a fable
is presented. Later, these techniques are applied to
technical documents. The document narrative below
is the structure for a set of fables that an author
wishes to write.
I want to write a short story that will contain
an implicit moral lesson.
1
I will use animal
characters with human features.
2
I believe this
will convey the wisdom in an enjoyable and
memorable way.
3
I will introduce two or three
characters with opposite human characteristics
(one righteous, one immoral).
4
These
characteristics will be revealed through brief
conversations at the start of the story.
5
Then
there will be a series of events that will be
tailored to demonstrate that the characters
with the moral attitude always win and that the
others suffer consequences for their unwise
actions.
6
Thus the reader will be gently
persuaded to take on the characteristics of the
successful characters.
7
Figure 2: RST analysis of the document narrative for a set of fables.
I want to write a
short story that will
contain an implicit
moral lesson.(1)
Thus the reader will
be gently persuaded
to take on the
characteristics of the
successful
characters.(7)
Motivation
2-6
Elaboration
Then there will be a
series of events that
will be tailored to
demonstrate that the
characters with the
moral attitude always
win and that the
others suffer
consequences for
their unwise
actions.
(
6
)
Sequence
2-3
Sequence
I will use animal
characters with
human features.(2
)
I believe this will
convey the wisdom
in an enjoyable and
memorable way.(3)
Justif
y
4-5
Sequence
I will introduce two or
three characters with
opposite human
characteristics (one
righteous, one
immo ra l). (4)
These characteristics
will be revealed
through brief
conversations at the
start of the story.(5)
Elaboration
A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE WRITING - A Business Process Model
167
RST is used as a tool to verify coherence. If the
document narrative can be placed in a RST tree, it is
assumed to be coherent. The document narrative for
the fables was analysed using RST (see Figure 2
1
).
A fable structured according to this narrative should
satisfy all the RST relationships. For instance, the
famous story of the Ant and the Grasshopper (see
Appendix) fits this document narrative. This fable
can be divided into segments (see Appendix where
the fable is divided into three segments,
corresponding to sections 4, 5 and 6 of the narrative
above) and each segment creates the expected effect
on the reader. Section 4 introduces the Ant and the
Grasshopper and section 5 elaborates their
characteristics using dialogue. Section 6 presents the
onset of winter when the hardworking Ant emerges
as the winner. These sections are placed in sequence
and convince the reader that the Ant is the better role
model. The ‘Motivation’ and ‘Justify’ relations are
satisfied too.
This process can be applied to technical documents.
See (De-Silva and Henderson, 2005) for a document
narrative for a research proposal and section 3.3 of
this paper for a generic narrative for a scientific
conference presentation.
3 COLLABORATIVE WRITING
Collaborative writing (CW) is the process of
multiple authors producing one document, by
writing together and soliciting one another’s
opinions about their writing.
Since the early 70’s there has been great interest to
provide computer support for this process (Noël and
Robert, 2004); a move made more concrete by the
formation of a specific field of research called
Computer-Supported Collaborative Working
(CSCW). The resulting groupware and the World
Wide Web have revolutionized the art of writing
together. In preparation for this paper, CW software
such as PREP (Neuwirth et al., 1990) were studied
and newer technologies such as Wikis were
experimented with (JotSpot, 2004).
1
All RST trees in this paper have been drawn using the
free software tool, RST Tool.
O’DONELL, M. (2000) RSTTool 2.4 – A markup tool for
Rhetorical Structure Theory. Proceedings, International
Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG’2000).
Mitzpe Ramon, Israel.
3.1 Collaborative Writing Strategies
A CW group usually has an agreed-upon strategy for
producing the document which defines how the co-
authors will coordinate. There are several strategies
to choose from. Two popular methods are discussed
below.
3.1.1 Sequential Writing Model
In this model, only one person writes at a given time
and once his/her task is complete, passes the
document along to the author next in line. This
model is easy to organise and improves coordination
between the authors.
However, there are several disadvantages (Lowry et
al., 2004) such as the lack of group consensus and
the difficulty in ensuring that all document sections
are addressed adequately. Also, the order of authors
greatly influences the final document. One author
can change previous contributions or significantly
bias subsequent authors.
3.1.2 Parallel Writing Model
With this strategy, a team divides the CW task into
discrete units and works in parallel. This model has
several variants. In one, each team member is
assigned roles such as ‘writer’, ‘reviewer’, ‘editor’
and so on, depending on their expertise. Members
then work on the document according to their roles.
In another variation, the document is divided into
sections and each author is assigned a section that
he/she is responsible for. The completed sections are
submitted to the team leader who assembles them
together to form the final document. This approach
is sometimes called horizontal-division writing
(Lowry et al., 2004) and is the model that this paper
concentrates on. In (Alred et al., 2003), this process
is described in more detail (reproduced below).
1. Designate one person as the team coordinator.
2. Collectively identify the audience, purpose and project
scope.
3. Create a working outline of the document.
4. Assign segments or tasks to each team member.
5. Establish a schedule: due dates for drafts, revisions,
and final documents.
6. Agree on a standard reference guide for style and
format.
7. Research and write drafts of document segments.
8. Exchange segments for team member reviews.
9. Revise segments as needed.
10. Meet your established goals.
(Source: Alred et al., 2003)
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3.2 Problems with CW
There are several known problems with CW and
three of them are discussed here.
Access control: CW groups have varying access
requirements. Most often, only authorized authors
are allowed to edit the document. Sometimes fine-
grained protection is required; for example, an
author may have edit privileges over only one
section in the document (Shen and Dewan, 1992).
Version control: If two authors check out version X
of the document and, after some period of time,
submit edited documents back to the system, there is
a chance one version could overwrite the other. Even
if both versions are saved, which of the two versions
would be the latest?
Lack of coherence: Another drawback of parallel
writing is the lack of coherence between the sections
that have been independently authored (Lowry et al.,
2004). The team leader is often burdened with the
task of collating these sections to produce a
consistent, coherent document. A narrative approach
to CW will help solve this problem.
3.3 Narrative-based CW
Instead of an outline, a CW group can decide on a
document narrative. They can also determine
narratives for each section of the document. Then
authors can craft their respective sections with full
understanding of the implicit and explicit narrative
goals that the document is expected to fulfil. This
will result in improved coherence and reduced work
for the team leader.
Authors may also be allowed to change the narrative
or RST relations during the writing process. If the
CW team agrees on the changes, they will modify
the sections to satisfy the new narrative.
As an example of a collaboratively produced
technical document, a generic document narrative
for a presentation of scientific results at a conference
is given below. Through this narrative, the scientists
involved in this presentation share and clarify their
intentions and agree on one ‘story’ that they wish to
convey.
This narrative can be divided among the team and
each scientist can construct a part of the presentation
such that it satisfies the narrative. For instance, the
Previous Work section should convince the audience
that it is absolutely necessary to solve this problem
and that no one else has been successful so far. It
should conclude with a lead to the next section by
stating that previous work has, however, helped this
team develop their experiments.
There was an unsolved problem in this scientific field and we have solved it.
1
Our research into previous work
revealed that there was no complete solution to this particular problem
2
and this lack was affecting specific
groups of people.
3
We gathered some useful ideas from these previous researchers
4
and set about designing our
own experiments to overcome the hurdles that they faced.
5
Here is the design of the experiments we conducted
6
and a list of our results.
7
These results are much better than those of our predecessors but we hope to improve
them further by conducting more experiments.
8
Thereby, we conclude that our results are currently the best in
this field and greatly help the people who were most affected by this problem.
9
2-9There was an
unsolved problem in
this scientific field
and we have solved
it.
Solutionhood
4-7
We gathered some
useful ideas from
these previous
researchers
Sequence
and set about
designing our own
experiments to
overcome the
hurdles that they
faced.
Sequence
Here is the design of
the experiments we
conducted
Sequence
and a list of our
results.
Sequence
These results are
much better than
those of our
predecessors but we
hope to improve the
m
further by conducting
more experiments.
Elaboration
Thereby, we
conclude that our
results are currently
the best in this field
and greatly help the
people who were
most affected by this
problem.
Motivation
2-3
Background
Our researc h into
previous work
revealed that there
was no complete
solution to this
particular problem
and this lack was
affecting specific
groups of people.
Elaboration
Figure 3: Document narrative and RST tree for a presentation of scientific results at a conference.
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4 BUSINESS PROCESS MODEL
Narratives are a powerful contribution to CW.
Therefore, a narrative-based tool is being developed
to support asynchronous CW. Such an application is
not easy to design and requires a way of precisely
articulating how the authors can interact with the
system. Therefore, the business process (BP) model
presented here was used to design this tool. In this
context, a BP model is an enumeration of all the
actions in which the participants can engage.
Although it may seem unusual to describe CW as a
business, it has all the characteristics of coordinated
actions inherent in any business.
To be formal about a BP, these actions, the order in
which they can be performed and the effect they
have on the shared global state must be stated. This
is non-trivial when there is more than one author
working asynchronously. Unusually, there is no
constraint on the order in which these actions can be
performed.
In the model, there is a repository which contains,
for now, one document and the corresponding
narrative. Multiple authors have access to this
repository and can perform a set of actions. These
actions are described below using pseudocode.
Every changed document or narrative submitted to
the repository is saved as a new version and assigned
the next biggest version number. Any of these
versions can be retrieved by providing its unique
version number. The version with the highest
number is assumed to be the most recent. Each
version also holds the version number of the
document it was derived from (called
parent_ver).
In the following pseudocode, ‘p’, ‘n’ and ‘d’ refer to
version numbers.
4.1 Document
Properties of a document
ver: The version number of this document.
When a document is first created, it gets version
number 0.
parent_ver: The version number of the
document that this document is based on.
checked_all: This property is TRUE when
this document satisfies all the relations in the
LATEST narrative. Each version of the
document starts with checked_all=FALSE
because it is assumed that one or more of the
sections fail to satisfy the latest narrative. After
several cycles of read, write and review, the
document should reach the ideal state where
checked_all=TRUE. Documents that do
not satisfy the latest narrative (but may have
satisfied older narratives) are not acceptable.
Therefore, when the narrative is modified, the
checked_all property of all document
versions are set to FALSE based on the
assumption that all documents no longer satisfy
the new narrative.
4.2 Narrative
Properties of a narrative
ver: The version number of this narrative.
When a narrative is first created, it gets version
number 0.
parent_ver: The version number of the
narrative that this narrative is based on.
4.3 Repository
Properties and actions relevant to the documents in
the repository are prefixed with the letter ‘d’ and
those pertaining to the narratives with ‘n’. ‘Rep’
denotes the repository.
Properties of the repository
dlatest: The version number of the latest
document
nlatest: The version number of the latest
narrative
Actions that can be performed on the repository
dget(v): Returns the document with version
number v (0 <= v <= rep.dlatest)
nget(v): Returns the narrative with version
number v (0 <= v <= rep.nlatest)
dput(doc,p): Saves the document doc
in the repository and sets the following
properties:
doc.parent_ver = p
doc.ver = rep.dlatest + 1
doc.checked_all = FALSE
rep.dlatest = doc.ver
nput(nar,p): Saves the narrative nar in
the repository and sets the following properties:
nar.parent_ver = p
nar.ver = rep.nlatest + 1
rep.nlatest = nar.ver
Set checked_all property of all
document versions to FALSE
check(doc,nar): This is a process
performed by authors/reviewers to check if the
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sections in document doc satisfy the
relationships in narrative nar (see section 2.2 for
an example of a document that satisfies its
narrative). ‘Nar’ is often the latest narrative. If
each section satisfies all the relationships
pertaining to it, then the property
checked_all of document doc is set to
TRUE.
4.4 Specification of an Author’s
Tasks
Typically, a co-author’s tasks in this model are
reading, writing and reviewing the document and,
reading and editing the narrative. These tasks are
described below.
‘Do forever’ loops mean that
an action can be repeated as many times as the
author wishes until the document is complete.
1. Read latest version of document
do forever {
Document doc;
doc = rep.dget(rep.dlatest);
~~~~ read ~~~~
}
2. Edit version v of the document and submit new
version to the repository.
do forever {
Document doc;
doc = rep.dget(v);
~~~~ edit ~~~~
doc’ = modified doc;
rep.dput(doc’, v);
}
3. Review a version of the document
An author or reviewer retrieves a version of the
document and checks it against the latest narrative.
If the narrative is satisfied,
checked_all of the
document is set to
TRUE. If any of the narrative goals
are not fulfilled, the authors need to edit the
document or the narrative so that they once again
become fulfilled.
do forever {
Document doc = rep.dget (v);
Narrative nar= rep.nget (rep.nlatest);
~~~~ review content of doc ~~~~
rep.check (doc,nar);
if all relationships are satisfied {
doc.checked_all = TRUE;
}
}
4. Read the latest version of the narrative
do forever {
Narrative nar;
nar = rep.nget(rep.nlatest);
~~~~ read ~~~~
}
5. Edit version v of the narrative and submit new
version to the repository.
do forever {
Narrative nar;
nar = rep.nget(v);
~~~~ edit ~~~~
nar’ = modified nar;
rep.nput(nar’, v);
}
4.5 Authorized Access and Version
Control
The repository can maintain a table with the author
IDs and their access rights. Before each request to
read or edit a document/narrative, this table can be
queried and only authorized authors can be allowed
to perform these operations.
Version control needs to be addressed in more detail
but is not the focus of this research. In this model,
any previous version can be used to produce a new
one. Each new version is stored with a link to the
document it was derived from (
parent_ver), thus
producing a tree of versions as shown below.
Figure 4: Tree of document versions in the repository.
According to this model, version 5 of this document
will be considered the latest. However, versions 3, 4
and 5 are at the same level in the tree and have equal
chances of being superior or the most appropriate.
Either the authors will be given the authority to
choose the latest version among themselves or the
0
1
4
2
3 5
A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE WRITING - A Business Process Model
171
model will be enhanced to reconcile the differences
between the leaves of the tree. This approach with
maximum freedom has been selected over more
restrictive methods such as ‘check-in, check-out’
version control because, in designing this creative
writing model, the aim has been to support rather
than constrain the authors.
5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE
WORK
Collaborating with other authors to write is
increasingly common. A document thus produced is
often lacking in coherence because of the
independently-authored sections. Research presented
in this and previous papers (De-Silva and
Henderson, 2005, De-Silva, 2005) has shown that
applying narratives and RST can significantly
improve coherence in single-author and
collaboratively-produced documents.
A critical factor for an effective document is a
coherent document narrative. Noticing a lack of
support for document narratives in existing writing
tools, we developed CANS (De-Silva and
Henderson, 2005): a tool that guides an author
through a narrative-based writing process (Figure 5).
Ideas from this single-user tool are now being
developed into a multi-user application that supports
asynchronous CW.
Before embarking on this, it was critical to articulate
how multiple authors will interact with the system.
This was achieved by designing a business process
model for the ‘business’ of narrative-based CW.
This model is implemented using a Web Service.
The document and all updates to it are stored in an
XML database maintained by Xindice (Xindice,
2004).
Finer details of this model are constantly being
refined. A more elaborate model will include a
record of which documents satisfied previous
versions of the narrative. Also, it is possible that
some sections in a document will remain unaffected
even after the narrative is updated. So, a document
can be tracked more closely by assigning each of its
sections a ‘
checked’ property which is true only if
the section satisfies the RST relations in the latest
narrative. After a new narrative has been submitted,
only sections with
checked=FALSE will need to be
changed.
Owing to the authors’ involvement with the Open
Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII, 2005)
collaborative working over the Grid is of particular
interest. Collaborative writing is an ideal application
for the Grid. After sufficient development and
testing, the narrative-based CW tool will be
deployed on the OMII middleware to serve as an
example.
During this process, several important lessons can be
learnt. Simple and generic ways to convert single-
author tools such as CANS to multi-user
applications deployable on the Grid will be
invaluable to the Grid community. It will also be
useful to enumerate the differences between Web-
based and Grid-based applications. One such
difference is the continuous change in resource
locations in the Grid that require location-
independent design and implementation. So,
documents/narratives in a CW application could
move or be split across multiple databases, but
authors should still have an interface which gives
them reliable access to their work.
This work builds an island amidst several strands of
parallel research and brings together many
technologies. The current CW practice of working to
an outline is adequate, but does not solve the lack of
Figure 5: Screen shot of single-author writing tool CANS (First step: Entering document narrative).
ICEIS 2006 - SOFTWARE AGENTS AND INTERNET COMPUTING
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coherence. Therefore, narratives are a novel and
better approach, providing more support for CW.
Document production from a narrative aspect will
revolutionize the way people read, write and
evaluate documents.
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APPENDIX
The Ant and the Grasshopper
In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper
was hopping about, chirping and singing
to its heart's content. An Ant passed by,
bearing along with great toil an ear of
corn he was taking to the nest.
“Why not come and chat with me,” said
the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and
moiling in that way?”
“I am helping to lay up food for the
winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend
you to do the same.”
“Why bother about winter?” said the
Grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food
at present.”
But the Ant went on its way and
continued its toil. When the winter came
the Grasshopper had no food and found
itself dying of hunger, while it saw the
ants distributing every day corn and grain
from the stores they had collected in the
summer.
Then the Grasshopper knew: It is best to
prepare for the days of necessity.
(Long, 1997)
*Segments numbered according to document
narrative in section 2.2
4
5
6
A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE WRITING - A Business Process Model
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