Climax chapter recognition of a Chinese novel based on plot fluctuation of a chapter and sentiment changing of main character

Abstract The climax chapter of a Chinese novel is the part where the conflict develops to be tense and sharp. Such a chapter determines the fate of the main character, the development of the plot, and the end of the story, which makes it crucial to a Chinese novel. How to quickly and accurately recognize the climax chapter is important to attract readers’ interest. The climax chapter of a Chinese novel has two distinctive characteristics: dramatic development of plot fluctuation and sentiment changing of the main character. Therefore, this paper tries to propose a model to recognize the climax chapter, which both considers the plot fluctuation of a chapter and the sentiment changing of the main character on the corpus The Legend of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传), based on a series of deep learning models. The plot fluctuation of a chapter and the sentiment changing of the main character can be, respectively, depicted as plot fluctuation curve of a chapter and sentiment changing curve of the main character. The chapter difference curve can be drawn by combining the above two curves and based on which the novel climax chapter can be determined. Comparative experimental results on the experimental corpus show that, compared to existing models, the performance of the model proposed in this paper is much better, its F1 value arriving at 87.50 per cent. Ablation experiment results show that the F1 value of the model considering sentiment changing of main character is 9.41 per cent higher than that of the model considering the plot fluctuation of a chapter.