So you’re a writer, and you’re burnt out on AI. Of course you are, and I don’t blame you. After all, AI writing is generally pretty bad. I mean, it’s not too bad for the average person, I suppose, but you are an honest-to-god, capital-W, card carrying WRITER, damn it, and you’re better than this! And another thing – it’ll be a cold day in hell before an AI does any writing for you!
I happen to agree, mostly. But when you come down off the rant and take a swig of your apple juice, you still have to figure out what all this AI drama means for you in your own personal writing space. It’s not going anywhere, so I think it’s best if you make your peace with it right now and figure out how you can coexist with the technology . . . and maybe even learn to love it a little bit.
Let the healing begin ❤️🩹
It’s Okay To Be Cautious
You may feel a bit uneasy or possibly even outright resistant to the idea of using AI anywhere in your creative process as a writer or a storyteller. That’s understandable – you’ve spent years honing your craft, and you’re proud of the fact that you’re able to synthesize ideas in your mind and bring them to life for others on paper and screens the world over. To you, AI has the potential to dilute the human touch that you believe is essential to all writing.
I agree with you there, too. AI does have the potential to muddy the waters of good writing. Believe me, there’s a part of my brain that wants to throw my monitor through the window every time I see the 20th AI-generated LinkedIn post of the day..
And that’s to say nothing of using it to write actual creative work within the storytelling space, where we should expect the writing to be authentically human, honest, and come from the heart. Again, I agree. Perhaps someday in the future we won’t think twice about reading a story produced by AI, but it certainly isn’t this day.
I would, however, submit to you that there is a way to utilize AI in your creative process without compromising your integrity or originality. We have to learn to treat AI as a tool like any other tool in our studio. I’m old enough to remember artists, photographers, and illustrators swearing that they would never use a piece of software like Photoshop to compromise the talent they’d developed over years of practice.
Welp.
Let’s not be those guys, shaking their fist at the oncoming tsunami of technology. Let’s elevate our thinking, get our feet under us, and get ready to ride this wave as it comes.
(Author’s note: I apologize for this hackneyed metaphor. I almost wish I could blame it on AI, but unfortunately this entire article is 100% homegrown, original Nate. Sigh.)
How AI Can Help Writers
I’ll repeat this once more for the folks in the back: if you’re striving to be an authentic, professional storyteller (novelist, video game designer, filmmaker, etc) I am not advocating for AI to do any writing for you at all. You need to do that shit yourself.
But, as someone who has spent 20+ years as a creative writer, editor, and tech developer, I want to give you some examples of a few areas where AI tools can really help in your work, without you having to feel like you’re losing a piece of yourself.
(Absolutely shameless plug: I’ve been helping people do this all year for free, and the results have been so good, with so much demand, that I’m now offering work sessions with me to go through your story together with my AI tools and help you get where you want to go.)
Idea Generation & Brainstorming
The worst thing you’ve heard about LLMs is also the best thing: they tend to hallucinate. When you’re a creative writer, that’s basically what your human meatspace brain is doing in the beginning stages anyway, right? So why not give it some help? With the proper prompting (or custom AI tools, which I’ve developed), you can give the machine some proper guardrails to take your ideation direction and let it bloom in a dozen different ways.
Quickly Explore Your World
To me, this has been the most amazing and awe-inspiring thing that AI can do for creative writers. I’ve lost countless hours to world-building sessions simply for my own pleasure. It’s why I started building these tools in the first place. You can give the AI the essentials of your story in terms of setting, characters, plot, and tone, and – when properly prompted, as always – it will take you on an absolute romp through the world you’re creating.
Break Through Writer’s Block
This is another big thing that writer friends and clients have reported back to me after doing a session. If you’re stuck on what to do next, sitting in between a pile of edits you know you need to do, or otherwise just tired of looking at your baby’s face, then here’s what I suggest: Take off the guardrails. Plug your story into the machine, free your mind, and just scamper around your world being ridiculous. Have fun, laugh, marvel at the sights you’ve created, and you may just come away with a newfound love for your story.
Research, “Research,” and Research?
This word can encompass a lot of different things in the writing space, but one of the things my tools do well is help save you a ton of time on the research phase. Whether that’s real-world information, references, fact-checking, or – my personal favorite – building scientifically plausible reasons why the things in your fictional universe work the way they do, AI can save you hours and hours of time here so you can use your brain for the more creative aspects of writing that you love. One of my clients recently said that after one session they now feel they have enough material to make their world bigger, expanding their short story into a full-length novel.
Custom Tools for Your Work Style
I’ll keep this very brief, to just two examples, but the possibilities are limitless. I’m not sure how many people are aware of this yet, but if you know what you’re doing and you pay for a professional plan with the big players, you can create your own custom AI agent to do exactly what you want it to do, with the full power of the LLM behind it.
Example 1: I built a World Builder Assistant to quickly explore and expand any universe in any direction, complete with both storyline and sketch art creation capabilities
Example 2: I built a Writer’s Prompt tool for people who want a randomly generated practice session every day. It pulls from a pool of 100+ world settings, 100+ character archetypes, and 100+ story styles, then writes a story setup from a random combination of all three, which is your starting point for the day’s prompt exercise.
These tools aren’t available to the public, but they are included in the custom tools bundle I sell, and I can also create a custom AI tool to your exact specifications if that’s something you want. You can set up a chat with me here if you have a specific request.
Finding Your Own Balance
It’s going to look different for every writer, but I believe there’s a place of harmony we can all reach with the AI tools in our lives. Each of us must decide where we want to open up a little bit and where we want to draw the line. As long as we’re all comfortable with our boundaries and know that we’re being our authentic selves, I think we can reach a healthy equilibrium where we stay in creative control as writers, while also taking advantage of AI’s strengths.
If this language sounds like a therapist talking about setting healthy relationship goals, well, now you know why I titled the piece “AI For Writers: Learning To Love Again.”
For me, that means a focus on the exploration of my world, expansion of my ideas, creativity running free, and finding the joy in the universe I’ve built. Whether I’m doing it for myself or for a client, I want us to fall in love with our stories again, and come back to the reason why we write in the first place.
A year ago I never thought I’d be saying this, but I think AI can help us get back to that place of love if we come to it with an open mind, established boundaries, and an explorer’s mindset. Isn’t that what we as writers excel at in the first place?
[[** image creation: Midjourney v6.1, August 2024
prompt: an abstract image of flowers blooming from a mix of organic and digital forms, symbolizing the growth and renewal of creativity through AI. highly stylized, beautifully colored. many digital glitch effects. heart emoji motif –chaos 20 –ar 3:2 –stylize 300 –v 6.1 **]]