I would like to state, first of all, that AI is not the creative boon that I’ve seen writers advocate lately. My primary opinion is that is does more harm than good, especially to beginning or inexperienced writers.
AI does not replace a lack of skill
We all start somewhere. Writing is a craft that seems easy at first glance but then is proven difficult. This is true of most crafts, but writing has a steep learning curve in multiple facets. There’s what I call the English class side — grammar and literary elements like plot, character, and style. Each of those is a discipline that has a vast amount of information available. I have writing reference books that are devoted entirely to an “emotional wound”, or how a traumatic event in a character’s past affects them on the page. This is something the reader will never read directly in the book, but if it’s missing, they’ll notice right away. Trauma is the humanity in the character. If your sentences are written with horrible grammar, readers will struggle to physically read the book, which means, of course, they will stop reading. Grammar is important. Grammar is also the least sexy thing about writing.
Having an AI that promises to fix your grammar has been around for a long time. Spellcheck was the death of spelling to my schoolteachers, after all. But spellcheck didn’t replace spelling for me, it just shows when I make an error. If I don’t have a foundation in phonics and how words are supposed to sound and look, the AI won’t be able to parse which word I am trying to write. The spellcheck AI is a tool.
The allure of AI is like ambrosia to amateur writers. It promises that all that gritty stuff, that unsexy, boring, droll learning curve, can be overcome with a prompt and a click. This brings me to my next point…
I can absolutely tell when a writer has used AI
While writing is a skill refined over one’s lifetime, I have been writing for several decades at this point. I am experienced. I know the mistakes that beginner writers make and they are not the same mistakes as an AI. It is glaringly obvious when a writer has used AI and I have never been wrong in my suspicions.
The AI knows what good writing is supposed to have. It will insert those things. It will make zero sense. Descriptions are the big tell for me. The descriptions will often have grandiose intentions without any connection to the character. Some writers I’ve spoken to have stated they use AI for help in describing things and it makes me want to scream. This is one of the hallmark tells! This is not making your writing better or more engaging!
What makes descriptions engaging? It’s not the facts. The facts help us visualize, yes. I can say “the worn gold oak table” and the reader can conjure a visual of that pretty easily. But there’s no connection to it. There’s no metaphor, simile, personification, or personality. Saying “the golden oak table still has the scratches from when they tried to cut a watermelon with a butter knife as a child” invokes the same worn feeling, but now we have an image of the character. A butter knife is horribly unsuited for cutting through thick watermelon skin, but they tried it, and persisted to the point that the scratches are there years later, when the table is worn. What a stubborn character. Why aren’t the scratches fixed? Did they have the money to do so? What were the consequences of their watermelon blunder?
If you want to be a better descriptor as a writer, you must learn how to use those literary elements to describe and connect to your character. Does that mean every description has to be like that? No. But knowing when to use a loaded description versus a plain description is another element of writing and defines you as an author. Using AI to help you write descriptions is selling yourself short. You don’t need it.
Writing exercises exist for descriptions. I’ve done my share over the years. They’re fun exercises, a chance to stretch my understanding of character. Because…
Writing is about character, not plot
You can have the most interesting premise in the world that will crumble without character. Characters are what resonate. We are humans. We crave connections. Humans pack bond with anything. It’s a funny joke, but you have to put that mindset in your writing.
The AI is not going to understand this. The AI is not human. It has no concept of pack bonding. Humans can pack bond with AI. It does not mean the AI is going to pack bond with us.
The AI is not going to understand that you are writing through the lens of your character. You are not writing about how the world is, you are writing about how your character sees the world. And your character is going to see the world differently as your story goes through the plot. What is beautiful may become unseen by the end because of lost importance. That perspective shift is part of your character arc. That perspective shift is due to descriptions. That perspective shift is not going to exist unless the writer puts the work into becoming a better descriptor.
If a reader sees a description that says “opulent 16th century apartment” then several assumptions become apparent. One, when is the 16th century? They may not have a knowledge base to know what era the writer refers to. Two, opulent means wealthy. To me, opulent carries an air of garishness. They’re the nouveau riche, who spend money to show they have money rather than letting their manners prove it. The saying, “Money talks, wealth whispers” so to speak. Three, is the character a historian? Is that why they’ve chosen to specifically mention the century?
That was an AI description.
What if I said the character was a wealthy widow? The widow would have no need to drown in opulence because she grew up having money. She would not need to prove her wealth to anyone because she’s always had it. She wouldn’t see her apartment as opulent. The 16th century should be replaced, at minimum, by the defining art style of the era to make it easier on the reader, like Gothic. That invokes a more specific and accessible image. I’d get rid of that entirely. Pick one thing in the apartment that is a representation of that era and mention it. Could the widow be a historian? Yes. Would a historian living during the 16th century refer to their belongings as being historical? No.
An inexperienced writer wouldn’t write that sort of description. Usually, they will leave it out entirely. Other times, it becomes a list. They think everything in the room needs to be described. Some genres lend themselves to that sort of detailed writing style. For instance, gothic novels take great care in ensuring you know the color of the curtains, the specific details of embroidery on their lapel, the number of swirls in a plank of wood, etc. That is a stylistic choice by the author that reflects the genre.
Can the AI make stylistic choices? No, it cannot.
Another example is a post I read on the internet once.
The author described being at the beach one day as a preteen and seeing a lady running to the water and crying. When they asked why, the lady said it was her first time seeing the ocean. It brought the woman to tears. The author said there she was, at the same beach, at the same time, but since it was a beach she saw every day of her life, it wasn’t special. Especially something that would make her cry. The woman touched the author so much that it changed their perspective on life.
Think about how you would describe the ocean from the perspective of the woman who had never seen the ocean before versus the preteen. Think about how the preteen would describe the beach after meeting the woman. Will an AI be able to write the humanity, that perspective shift? No.
Blue, Red, Gold, whatever color lines are not a bad thing
Many programs will flag an author’s writing as being incorrect or inefficient in style with multicolored lines. Red is usually spelling. Blue is usually grammar. Some programs have gold that will be “tone”.
Just because something is underlined does not mean it is wrong.
In this piece, I have used stylistic things like repetition for emphasis, alliteration for impact, and metaphor for elaboration. The AI flagged several of those choices. The AI doesn’t know what I’m trying to do. The AI is saying “this doesn’t match my dataset of what good writing is supposed to be”.
Which brings us to my conclusion:
AI is a tool that should be used only by experienced writers
An experienced writer has a strong personal image of themselves as a writer and their style. They will not take an AI’s suggestions as gospel and instead evaluate their suggestion in the grand scheme of their work. (By the way, AI tried to tell me experienced in the first sentence should have been capitalized)
I see inexperienced writers using AI to overcome their shortcomings instead of working on the skill itself. Their writing is not better for it.
If you, as a writer, know you have a weakness in an element of the craft, don’t try to take a shortcut. Learn to enhance the humanity in your characters to make your stories resonate.