My A.I. Experience (So Far)

Note: this post has been heavily edited/updated. I no longer feel comfortable having any advice/how-to info about this topic with my name on it. I've kept the rest of the post up for the sake of transparency. I did experience this at this point in time, but I will not be using any AI in my work. The story mentioned in this post has been scrapped. See this blog post for a full explanation.



I get it now.

For weeks (months? what does time mean anymore?) I'd been hearing first about the wonder/novelty of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, followed on relatively quickly by other authors saying 'you have to learn how to use this stuff or you're screwed.' 'Learn to work with the robots, not against them.' But AI tools were either little more than a super Google to some, while others were already worried about Skynet or whatever, and I didn't know what to think. It was too big and changing too fast, it felt like.

Putting my cards on the table: I was never against it, I just didn't get it. I couldn't wrap my head around what people were actually doing with it in a concrete, actionable way. 'Oh, it can help you outline.' 'Oh, it can come up with plot elements.'

Oh, okay. WTF does that mean? Can HAL 9000 write a kissing book or not?

I was intrigued, but still confused. So I watched a few YouTube videos of writers actually interacting with these tools, and it finally clicked. Seeing the actual process made everything so much clearer, but beyond that, I understood what I could do with it. And what I couldn't (and won't).

One of the problems I have as a writer is coming up with the things that happen in my stories. Characters, prose, emotions, themes, I think I might be okay with that stuff, but sometimes I get stuck answering simple questions like 'What do they do now?' Adding complications and setbacks doesn't come easy to me when I just want my characters to lay around and talk about their feelings.

So I logged in to ChatGPT* and asked it for help.

EDIT: Removed the entire how-to/what I did section.

And one thing I will not do is ask it to generate actual prose. F*ck that. I write because I like writing. I don't want to reach the day where I call myself a prompter.

But asking it for help? It truly is a breakthrough.

EDIT: Removed advice

Overall, I would say my experience was very positive, and I am genuinely looking forward to using these tools more in the future. And that's what they are: tools. They won't be writing my books, they're just another layer of feedback and some extra help I didn't have before.

For now, I got what I needed for the story I'm working on, and I'm super eager to get to the next ones like I haven't been in a while. I may come back to this topic once the book is out to go over the specifics, but really I didn't do a whole lot more than break through the block I'd been having.

And for that, I told it thank you.

Bleep-blorp. All hail our new robot overlords!


Footnotes:

EDIT: Removed link to YouTube video

*The free, open version. I understand GPT4 is even better, but that's subscription-only as of this writing. I haven't tried Sudowrite or any of the others. Free is free!