One of the things that has always mystified me about using A.I. for fiction is that the services often promise to dispense with drudgery to help you focus on the “big stuff.”
What, pray tell, is the “big stuff” exactly?
Sure, some scenes mark turning points and fulcrums in the overall narrative. Some are more action packed than others. Some are simply more magical or have more gravitas than others.
But that doesn’t mean that everything else is in the novel is simply filler. Neglect what’s in between the story tentpoles at your own peril.
Physical description and Points A to B are where the magic happens
One of the very first value props offered on A.I. “writing partner” Sudowrite’s website is to help you write physical description so you can focus on dialogue and action. In the accompanying image, they provide an example where the A.I. fleshes out a description of a “pile of small stones.”
Here’s what the A.I. provides:
The stones were small and dull, ranging in color from dark brown to pale gray. They were a shapeless pile, but various sizes, from pebbles the size of a fingernail to stones the size of a fist. Their engravings were crude, but still identifiable symbols. She recognized a few as alchemical symbols, but the rest were foreign to her.
What in the name of Odin’s Raven does this give you? Does the reader really need it explained in painstaking detail what a generic pile of stones looks like? What, in the context of this particular novel, does an “alchemical symbol” even look like?
It’s flat. Lifeless. There’s no atmosphere, nothing that tingles the spine, no specificity. And this is the first example Sudowrite provides on its website! This is, presumably, supposed to be the good stuff!
While I hate to cite the Author Who Must Not Be Named, what makes Harry Potter so magical is that a pile of rocks is rarely just a pile of rocks. Every Point A to Point B walk through Hogwarts means an interaction with a moving painting or a magical creature that infuses the setting with life.
Let’s hop on over to The Lord of the Rings for a proper description of a pile of stones at the top of a hill:
On the top they found, as Strider had said, a wide ring of ancient stone-work, now crumbling or covered with age-long grass. But in the center a cairn of broken stones had been piled. They were blackened as if with fire. About them the turf was burned to the roots and all within the ring the grass was scorched and shrivelled, as if flames had swept the hilltop; but there was no sign of any living thing.
Now that’s how you describe a creepy pile of rocks.
Any time you outsource the “connective tissue” of physical description and characters moving through space, you’re missing a chance to infuse your setting with style, atmosphere, and personality.
Visualizing your setting is crucial to storytelling
Sure, maybe I’m taking Sudowrite’s output too literally. Maybe with some editing, what you extract from the gibberish is simply the idea to include some alchemical symbols.
I still worry about outsourcing the job of visualizing a pile of rocks. You really want to save your brain from needing to transport itself into a fictional world where your characters are moving around? Why would you do that?
When I’m editing, one “tell” that an author hasn’t spent enough energy visualizing their setting isn’t just a lack of physical description, it’s the generic gestures. Characters sigh, their hearts beat out of their chest, they bite their lip, they roll their eyes, they sigh some more.
One of the best way to make characters’ gestures feel more specific and individualized is to draw upon the physical setting. Instead of heaving a sigh, the character could kick that big dumb pile of rocks. Instead of rolling their eyes, they could pick at the very specific necklace they’re wearing. Instead of their heart beating out of their chest, they could spring themselves over a chasm to get away from the sound.
You can’t imagine characters moving through a space in a unique way if you’re simply outsourcing the visualization to a dumb A.I. generator.
And all that arduous, supposedly unimportant connective tissue that lets you focus on the supposed good stuff? It’s truly where the magic is made.
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Art: Stone Workers by Axel Jungstedt
When an “artist” outsources their creative work (writing, acting, filmmaking, narrating, etc.) to AI they are not an artist. Period. They’re a freaking hack. And the material they spew is just that—spew. Garbage. Something anyone, anywhere, can make. All they have to do is use the same robot.
I suggest these “artists” label their crap as AI generated. Otherwise, the reader doesn’t know they’re merely a hack, they just think the “author” has no talent.
(Don’t get me started.)
As you suggest, what AI lacks is what all of us have: humanity. AI, like Star Treks Data, can never know what it is like to feel human. Oh, sure, they can fake it til they make it, but that indefinable whatever-it-is that inhabits all mankind – a “soul” perhaps? – cannot be achieved by way of digitized gobbledygook. And never will be.
Well said. After all, we read about humans and the human condition. What can a robot tell us about that?
Writing with ai feels like painting-by-numbers. Could be a therapeutic activity, but would you hang it on your wall?