@inproceedings{han-etal-2026-style,
    title = "From Style to Story: A Curriculum Learning Approach for Imitative Novel Generation",
    author = "Han, Xueran  and
      Liu, Yuhan  and
      Li, Mingzhe  and
      Liu, Wei  and
      Hu, Sen  and
      Yan, Rui  and
      xu, Zhiqiang  and
      Chen, Xiuying",
    editor = "Liakata, Maria  and
      Moreira, Viviane P.  and
      Zhang, Jiajun  and
      Jurgens, David",
    booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, California, United States",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.findings-acl.968/",
    pages = "19391--19408",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
    abstract = "Great novels create immersive worlds with rich character arcs, well-structured plots, and nuanced writing styles. However, current novel generation methods often rely on brief, simplistic story outlines and generate details using plain, generic language.To bridge this gap, we introduce the task of $\textit{Imitative Novel Generation}$, which requires the generated novels to imitate the distinctive features of the original work, including understanding character profiles and world views, predicting plausible plot developments, and writing concrete details using vivid, expressive language.To achieve this, we propose WriterAgent, a novel generation system designed to master the core aspects of literary imitative.WriterAgent is trained through a curriculum learning paradigm, progressing from low-level stylistic mastery to high-level narrative coherence. Its key tasks include language style learning, character modeling, plot planning, and stylish writing, ensuring comprehensive narrative control.To support this, WriterAgent leverages the WriterLoRA framework, an extension of LoRA with hierarchical and cumulative task-specific modules, each specializing in a different narrative aspect. We evaluate WriterAgent on multilingual classics like $\textit{Harry Potter}$ and $\textit{Dream of the Red Chamber}$, demonstrating its superiority over baselines in capturing the target author{'}s settings, character dynamics, and writing style to produce coherent, faithful narratives.We hope this work inspires literary creativity in NLP: ${WriterAgent}$."
}