# Towards a Linguistic Evaluation of Narratives: A Quantitative Stylistic Framework Source: [Towards a Linguistic Evaluation of Narratives: A Quantitative Stylistic Framework]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2026-04-23T05:00:05.535Z Authors: Alessandro Maisto Published: 2026-04-21T09:21:40.000Z ## Abstract The evaluation of narrative quality remains a complex challenge, as it involves subjective factors such as plot, character development, and emotional impact. This work proposes a quantitative approach to narrative assessment by focusing on the linguistic dimension as a primary indicator of quality. The paper presents a methodology for the automatic evaluation of narrative based on the extraction of a comprehensive set of 33 quantitative linguistic features categorized into lexical, syntactic, and semantic groups. To test the model, an experiment was conducted on a specialized corpus of 23 books, including canonical masterpieces and self-published works. Through a similarity matrix, the system successfully clustered the narratives, distinguishing almost perfectly between professionally edited and self-published texts. Furthermore, the methodology was validated against a human-annotated dataset; it significantly outperforms traditional story-level evaluation metrics, demonstrating the effectiveness of quantitative linguistic features in assessing narrative quality. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. - [Story Evaluation on HANNA (test)](): Story Evaluation; HANNA (test); Kendall Correlation: 0.345. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()