Artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be used in combination with composable communication goal statements to facilitate a user's ability to quickly structure story outlines in a manner usable by an NLG narrative generation system without any need for the user to directly author computer code. Narrative analytics that are linked to communication goal statements can employ a conditional outcome framework that allows the content and structure of resulting narratives to intelligently adapt as a function of the nature of the data under consideration. This AI technology permits NLG systems to determine the appropriate content for inclusion in a narrative story about a data set in a manner that will satisfy a desired communication goal.