The Problem with AI and Fiction Writing

I’ve been able to write again. I finished a short story, and I’ve been going over Superhero Vs. Superhero to refresh my memory. I’m finding little things that need correcting, like having the character enter a restaurant and then a few paragraphs down enter the restaurant. Oops. I also took out something that may have been causing me to be stuck. If something is in the story that shouldn’t be, it’s like the river gets dammed up by an evil beaver.

This post was inspired by a survey ProWritingAid sent for their future changes. The questions were quite alarming; it felt trending towards giving the AI more control over your writing. One question was on AI giving you sensory detail, and another on motivation to write.

The problem with AI, as the book The AI Dilemma notes, is that it encroaches on human agency.

For writers, that’s our agency to create stories.

Writers have always had a problem with that. When you’re new, you don’t get feedback on what you’re doing wrong from a magazine or agent. They send you a form rejection. If you’re lucky, you get a short comment like an editor’s pithy comment on one of my stories: “No wonder.”

Usually we’re looking for something actionable, and often we don’t have enough knowledge to ask intelligent questions.

So writers landed in critique groups. Critiques are challenging because you’re often critiqued by people at the same level, and possibly with no knowledge of your genre. You also get hit by the feeling of “Wow. I had no idea there was so much wrong in my story.” So you see everything as a call for action, even something as ridiculous as cutting out all the description in your fantasy or removing all the dialogue (yes! Actual critiques!). Instead of improving the story, it jettisons the writer’s voice.

This is AI, except it’s on extra strength steroids. It can pull from all over the internet to assemble a suggestion for a description. But it cannot create.

For curiosity, I ran ProWritingAid’s Inspiration reports on the short story I’d written. I picked Atmosphere and Emotional Resonance Reports.

For context, the story started with a to-do list to meet with the requirement of epistolary. The last item on the list hung a lantern on the theme and would have been obvious to the reader why there was a problem. The bolded portion is what AI pulled out to change.

My sentence: I glowered at the last entry on my to-do list, scrubbing my hands through my tangled morning hair. (The last part was to establish time of day, which many writers forget to do.)

AI recommendation for emotional resonance: I scowled with frustration at the final entry of my never-ending to-do list. (Ironically, when I ran a check for typos, the same tool wanted to correct “final” to the word I used.)

Obviously, it mined the internet, since that’s a productivity cliché. But AI sure couldn’t tell that it had nothing to do with the story. The sentence is also surprisingly dull and lacking personality.

Prior to this next example, I described some setting with specific details. Following the sentence below were more details. The story is set in Washington State. Bolded portion is what AI pulled out.

My sentence: Our house had a generous backyard set against a slope of Douglas firs and yews.

AI recommendation for emotional resonance: Our house boasted a sprawling backyard, stretching out like a secret oasis.

AI recommendation from Atmosphere: The backyard was a lush oasis, with vibrant green grass stretching out towards the hill of towering telephone pole trees.

“Lush oasis” probably came from real estate descriptions. Again, AI ignored the other sentences around it that pulled in the mood.

Curiously, the AI took my first person and flipped it to third. It was smart enough to find the two places I mentioned the character’s name, but not smart enough to figure out first person. I wonder what it would have done if the character’s name hadn’t been mentioned.

I also researched names of common birds in Washington State, including listening to one. The bird’s voice wasn’t particularly pleasing, so I had to find a word to describe what the character thought of it (clamant).

This is what AI gave me instead: The melodic songs of finches and sparrows filled the air, creating a symphony of nature’s music.

Finches and sparrows were not on the common bird list for Washington State. So AI changed a significant detail that would kick the reader out of the story if they were familiar with Washington State.

Also, AI doesn’t appear to have an actual sense of mood like a human wood. First, it talks about the frustration of never-ending to-do lists, then an oasis and cheery birds. Rather discordant. But read on. There’s more.

From Superhero Vs. Superhero:

In Scene 1 (in a hotel lobby): I penguin-stepped through, emerging into a gold and white lobby scented with bergamot and rose. A massive chandelier dripped golden lights and a verdant waterfall burbled into a pond of koi. (Scene 2 is in a bathroom following the same color and smells.)

In Scene 3 (in a restaurant): The cavern in my stomach opened up at the smell of steak cooking.

AI version: The aroma of sizzling steaks filled the air, mingling with the scent of bergamot and rose, creating a tantalizing olfactory experience.

AI merged two settings into one for the description. Clearly, it can’t figure out that the only smell in a restaurant should be the food. Dice’s suit also gives her a never-ending appetite, so food is not a “tantalizing olfactory experience” to her. It’s “I smell food. I’m starving. I ate five minutes ago.”—no matter the food. All in context in the paragraphs around. Which AI ignored.

AI also does some telling, rather than showing: The restaurant, adorned with lush greenery and elegant drapes, exuded an atmosphere of sophistication and luxury.

Mine: My sandals whispered on the carpet as I followed Joule’s brisk walk. Deeper golds, with luxurious seating and a lush forest of plants draped artistically in boxes behind the seats. More peacock oils in ornate frames bedecked the walls. If I didn’t have an irritated alien waiting for me, I’d have cruised the room to sightsee.

Dean Wesley Smith uses the term “fake details.” I think the AI version is filled with them. What is sophistication? What is luxury? What is elegant? They don’t tell us anything.

This is the heart of Depth, which AI doesn’t comprehend. It just puts together words based on whatever it runs across the internet. This includes marketing phrases to sell people stuff, which is often studied so it offends no one, resulting in blandness.

AI can mechanically pick senses, but it can’t determine if smells should go together. AI also can’t give opinions about the setting because opinions are a very human thing.

So why are the tools trying to take on more and more of writing?

Because writers are demanding it.

Why are they demanding it?

I’m thinking it’s for several reasons:

The biggest culprit is short-term thinking. Humans default to short-term thinking, likely because of the days when they foraged food. They would have lived day to day, not knowing if they would catch their next meal. Technology has made this default even shorter.

We see that with companies focused on short-term profits, jumping on trends to make money. Then they run into trouble when the trend fizzles out. Training courses now come in thirty minute online classes with videos of 5 minutes each. That’s pretty superficial.

Writers, even before AI, would jump on the internet and say things like “Tell me what’s wrong with this so I can be a best seller.” They wanted to get rich quick, with an unrealistic expectation effort.

Tying into that is the problem of most of the teaching of writing is beginner level. Anything beginner level is very basic. When a writer looks around to figure out how to show a character being angry (beyond waving a fist), they’ve run head on into the problem of this skill not being taught. Other writers say to add the five senses, but often give little detail or—horrors—“don’t add too much.”

It hit me as I was reading through old issues of The Writer Magazine. No one really explained Depth well, anywhere. I grew into writing reading The Writer Magazine and Writer’s Digest. Writers mentioned doing the five senses. They didn’t explain that it’s the backbone of characterization and emotion. They didn’t explain how much you need to put into a story. Most of the references I’ve found have been mentioned in passing. Dean Wesley Smith’s Depth class was the first place I saw a good explanation of it, and how important it was. I got my first personal rejection from a professional paying magazine after getting better at it.

But it took me two years just to get comfortable putting setting into the story. Two years is a long time in a world focused on short term. So the writers are headed to AI to add the five senses, something they should be learning, but don’t have the patience to and aren’t being taught. I’ve read indie authors with multiple book series—but no depth.

Word count and production goals further reinforce the use of AI to take shortcuts. I think the insane level of word counts might have started with one writer who used to blog his daily word count. He was a full-time writer and a writing machine. Seeing his word count, it was inspiring. We all thought we could do it. Except everyone ignored the fact that writing a certain number of words takes a certain amount of time. You might be able to touch type 80 words a minute, but you can’t create any faster than you can create. Add an intellection strength, and it may slow down further.

Compounding this is the Apex predator aspect, also discussed in AI Dilemma. Businesses self-regulate AI, but when finance is included, they are more likely to follow minimal rules and treat it like a checkbox. Smaller companies following the rules see what the others are doing and see there’s no consequence and this rule thing is takes longer/costs more… We see that with writers talking with other writers online. They might be pantsers, and they convert to outlining because they see other writers (apparently) getting more done because they outline. How many people read 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love? to find out how to do it? Hand up. If memory serves, it started with outlining your scenes.

So if we change our basic writing process, what’s stopping someone from taking the next step to produce more words?

John Coon says, “Creative writing requires a soul to live.”

AI has no soul. It’s a program that puts random words together, hopefully coherently. Description, using depth, is where ours comes out in the words.