Why Would Anyone Use AI to Write Fiction?

AI seems to be the big topic at the moment. Everyone has an opinion about it, so I thought maybe I should throw my two cents into the ring.

First off, not only do I love romance, but I’m also a big sci-fi nerd. I have seen and read those stories where AI tries and/or does take over humanity. In my way of thinking, that should be EVERYONE’S warning signal right there. Meaning, we shouldn’t be messing with this shit. Period. End of story. Because it will not work out well for us in the end. Sci-fi stories have prophesied this for decades.

I say this, then next thing I know, I’m watching AI animated cat videos on social media channels. I’m sorry, but those are just too damn cute for words. Maybe this is early proof that cats will run AI in the same way they run the internet? 😸 But I digress.

AI and Fiction

The real topic of this post is AI and the writing of fiction.

There are ethical issues that have come around, which are namely that AI companies blatantly stole copyrighted works to ‘train’ their language-learning models. They should have given compensation to the copyright holders. Several lawsuits have been brought against the AI companies because of this. Whether the copyright holders will ever get compensation remains to be seen.

The other issue I noticed is that people are lighting their torches and grabbing their pitchforks, going on AI witch hunts for people who wrote fiction using AI. A good example of this is the Shy Girl controversy. If you haven’t heard about this, a quick internet search will bring you plenty of results. In short, there is reader pushback on fiction being written with AI. Which can be both good and bad. Good, because it’s saying that we humans don’t want to waste our time reading something written by a machine. Bad because if these AI witch hunts pick up speed, there will be innocent authors who will get caught in the crossfire and lose their careers.

Which is part of the reason I’m writing this post and making my stance about the whole AI thing for writing fiction clear. So I will state it now. . .

I WILL NOT USE AI TO CONCEIVE, WRITE, OR EDIT ANY OF MY STORIES. PERIOD.

The only thing that comes close to me using AI is I use ProWritingAid when I do my final edit and polish. But even with that, I don’t use their dedicated AI features for this. I use their grammar checker, which has been around before AI became a thing.

ProWritingAid has AI rephrasing, which I sometimes click on. Usually, the results it gives me are stupid at best. When I’ve been working on edits for several hours straight, the AI rephrase makes me laugh hysterically. I’ve gotten to where I realize their AI rephrase tool is worthless, and I rarely click on it. Unless I need a good laugh. Once in a blue moon, it gives me an idea of how to rephrase a sentence, but I do it in my own words, not its.

Even though I use ProWritingAid for polishing and finding/fixing typos or boneheaded grammar errors, I don’t follow it blindly. I read through all of its suggestion fixing things manually. So in the end, I mainly use it to point things out to myself and nothing more.

Why I Will Not Use AI to Write Fiction

Okay, first off, I don’t see any need to use it or why anyone would for writing fiction. Why?

Writing fiction is fun!

Let’s look at the typical steps most writers, not all, go through when writing a story.

Brainstorming ideas for things to write about is loads of fun. So I certainly wouldn’t let AI do this for me. Seriously, it’s one of the many reasons I keep writing. That first spark of an idea is like the first kiss of a new partner. It’s thrilling, exciting, and full of possibilities. Who the hell would want to eliminate that from their process?

Then, as you’re getting deeper into your story and find connections, or things you didn’t see before and story parts come together that give you Aha! moments. I get a huge rush from all of this.

Therefore, I find no use for AI in story conception, planning, pre-writing, outlining or any of those aspects of creation.

As for the writing itself? Nope. Wouldn’t let it near any of that. I mean, seriously, why would you? We are freaking artists. Not that I consider what I write as art, but still. . .

When I write, I’m almost guaranteed to get into the flow state. That state where time no longer exists. My surrounding disappear. It’s just me and the story, and nothing else in the world matters at that moment. (That is, until a cat jumps on my keyboard. Cats matter.🐱)

This is why writers write. We become addicted to this state of being because there is nothing better. There are times when we look back at what we’ve written and become totally amazed that such great things could have ever come from our little gray matter. It’s the best feeling ever.

So why in the hell would you want AI to take that from you?

Let’s move on to the rewriting, revising, and editing.

When I do a full read-through of my story, looking for what’s wrong, trying to find ways I think will fix it, is like trying to solve a puzzle. Again, time often flies when I’m doing this. I have this determination to see it through to the end. To solve the puzzle of why something might not be working, or why my prose sounds like poo.

If I let AI do this, what would I do? Work on a Sudoku puzzle? While those are fun, Sudoku can’t hold a raging fire against the fun of fixing what might be wrong in a story.

The above process varies from writer to writer. Some writers sit down without an idea of what to write and just start writing. The thrill of finding out what things are about as they go along can be addicting. These writers may cycle back during the writing, fixing, adding, subtracting, and moving forward again until they reach the end of the story. Because they have cycled back many times, when they are finished, by gum, it’s finished. Still, the same thing applies in this situation. All of that is fun for the writer.

I guess the most perplexing thing for me and writers who use AI is why they’d want to take all this fun of creation, and refining of a story away from themselves? I’m serious. Why would you do that?

Ways AI Could Help?

One writer mentioned that AI helped them to save time on research. For example, say I have a Hero who is a billionaire but don’t know how he became one. Maybe I would ask AI how people become billionaires. Which it would come back with some answers. Honestly, I don’t think this is so bad. Me personally, I’d still want to do further research outside of AI if it gave me an idea of how one becomes a billionaire.

Something like this example, I could probably get on board with. It would be a starting point for my research. There is no way I’d let AI do all the research on a topic because AI has been notoriously wrong on several occasions.

Outside of this example, I can’t see myself using AI for any other aspect of the writing process. And even the above example would be a quick search on a rare occasion, then on to the real research. Even this would be a last-ditch effort for me.

The Siren Song of AI

I’ve seen all of those books out there about writing fiction with AI. I even borrowed one through Kindle Unlimited once, but never finished it.

The reasons I even considered such a thing are that I’m often not happy with my prose, or there is the lure of hoping to write stories faster. Or maybe it could come up with better ideas than I could. Or. . .

I realized these were all the wrong reasons to use it. I know my prose needs work, but people read stories for, well, the stories. Many readers are forgiving if there is an awkward sentence here or there. Or if the grammar isn’t just so. As a reader, I know I am forgiving. Not to mention there are a lot of mega best-selling books out there that are horribly written.

No story is perfect. None. If you find a piece of writing that you deem perfect, I bet there is someone out there that can point out a flaw in it. I often try to remind myself of this. If I didn’t, I’d get nothing written, let alone published. Perfectionism is the killer of creativity.

This is me saying that if you read one of my stories and think that it was written with AI because of how bad it is, it wasn’t. It’s just all my own bad writing.

People claim they can tell that something was written with AI because of the use of em dashes. Like most writers, I’m in the camp of ‘you can pry those em dashes out of my cold dead hands.’ I’ll not stop using them because AI uses them. Did you ever think why AI uses them in the first place? Because it was trained on polished, published writing by authors who know the power of an em dash. Writers use em dashes. AI companies stole from writers.

In Conclusion

I will state this one last time - I will never use AI to conceive, write, and edit my stories. Period.

All in all, I’m not entirely against AI because, like it or not, it is sadly here to stay. At least for now. None of us know for sure what the future may hold. Which means that if AI takes over humans, all of us who read/watched those sci-fi works about AI taking over can say, “I told you so!”

In the meantime, I have AI animated cat videos to watch. And if AI dominates us one day, it would not surprise me that cats are behind it all.🙀