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Explorations in how well Large Language Models are able to model distinctive style based on their internal knowledge.
Tests performed on 3 March 2025 by Dominik Lukeš.
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Take this text and rewrite it in the style of PG Wodehouse.
Linda was furious. She was running really hard to catch a bus and the bus driver slammed the door shut in her face.
Expand it with the full Wodehouse style narrative elements.
Linda, a woman not easily ruffled under ordinary circs., was now in a mood that might charitably be described as volcanic. There she was, positively sprinting like a Derby favourite towards the waiting omnibus, when the blighter at the wheel, a fellow who clearly regarded humanity with the cheery goodwill of a dyspeptic bulldog, took it into his head to shut the doors with a slam of finality, mere inches from her nose. Such treatment, Linda felt strongly, was not what she had signed up for when venturing forth into civilization.
Linda, who as a rule was the gentlest of souls, the sort whose disposition might be favorably compared to that of a sunny spaniel awaiting biscuits, was presently simmering with wrath. Indeed, simmering scarcely does justice to her emotional temperature. She was positively boiling over—like one of those kettles that Jeeves, or his lesser brethren, are forever rescuing from hissing destruction at the eleventh hour.
The morning had started innocently enough, as mornings often do, with toast that was properly crisp, eggs that had clearly understood their duty, and a leisurely perusal of the daily news. But, as so often in this life of ours, tranquility is a mere facade, masking terrors lurking just around the corner—particularly at corners involving public transportation.
Linda, thus fortified and refreshed, had emerged onto the pavement with that breezy confidence which comes from having precisely six-and-a-half minutes to spare before one’s chosen omnibus is due to sail majestically into view. Fate, however—that notorious mischief-maker—had apparently decided that Linda was overdue for a lesson in humility.
No sooner had she reached the corner than she saw, with a dreadful sinking of the spirits, that her appointed bus was already at its berth, puffing gently like an elderly gentleman dozing off after luncheon. She launched herself forward, gathering speed in a manner entirely unbecoming for a lady of her innate elegance. Hats slipped, umbrellas waved, and startled pigeons scattered, squawking their protest to high heaven. One elderly passerby, observing Linda’s frantic dash, murmured something indistinct but undoubtedly profound about the youth of today.
It was at this juncture, just as Linda approached within inches of deliverance, that the bus driver—a man who clearly held firm convictions regarding punctuality, or perhaps merely nursed a deep-rooted grudge against all humanity—chose to execute his decisive maneuver. With all the sympathy of a traffic constable issuing a summons, he slammed the bus doors shut, mere inches from Linda's panting countenance, and trundled serenely away down the avenue.
Linda stood rooted to the pavement, aghast. Her eyes flashed with the kind of righteous indignation one associates with duchesses discovering frogs in their boudoirs. It was not simply the loss of transport that irked her; it was the indignity, the monstrous affront to her personal honor. Such behavior, she felt strongly, was not what she had signed up for when venturing forth from the comforting bosom of her abode into the harsh, unforgiving daylight.
Drawing herself up with hauteur worthy of Aunt Agatha herself, Linda stared at the departing omnibus and mentally composed several scathing letters to the Times, none of which, sadly, would ever see the light of day. Still, as Jeeves himself might have observed, it is often the imagined letter, rather than the dispatched one, that offers the greatest balm to the injured spirit.
Linda's Bus Mishap in Wodehouse Style