Analyzing the development of complex social systems of characters in a work of literary fiction

Studying character interactions and personalities plays an important role in representing and interpreting narratives. Most research work pertaining to the analysis of characters in fictional novels disregard development and assume static relationships and roles of characters. The proposed approach centers on interpreting relationships and personalities as temporally evolving entities with the progress of the novel or narrative. The focus is to model the developing characteristics of literary works as a dynamic and ever-changing network of edges and nodes representing protagonists and their communications with fellow characters, through which we can study the significance and interactions of important characters in various literary texts. The approach also seeks to extract dialogue of characters, identify their personality traits and the personality change or development over the course of the novel. The proposed methodologies are primarily intended to be applied in the fields of literary analysis, with more practical applications to be used by writers and scriptwriters for visualisation and analysis of their work. Extraneously, the work could also be applied to learn desirable personality traits and personality development of influential people through their literary works.