Whether You Like it or Not, AI is Going to Take Over Creative Writing

An observation in five parts

A note before we start this week. Some people have started responding to these posts by sending emails. Please use the comments section to respond, as this Substack is intended to foster community discussion. I won’t necessarily respond to emails, but I always try to respond to comments.

This newfangled device is going to destroy creative writing. Writers need to sit with pen and paper in order to compose. Imagine tapping on a set of keys and turning out something that speaks to the human condition. A typewriter? Ridiculous!

1.

Ever since we learned that artificial intelligence can produce what appears to be creative writing, many writers, especially those who make their livings from writing, have come out against the technology being used in their industry. To craft publishable work using AI is considered cheating—creative writing, by definition, is “creative,” the product of an imaginative mind—a human mind. AI is not a mind. It is not imaginative. It is not creative. It cannot be, because it is relying on preexisting knowledge to determine its responses.

Is that right?

Isn’t that the same process human beings use to create? We don’t make stories or find solutions to problems in a vacuum. We rely on our preexisting knowledge and experiences, and use them as a starting point to invent things that haven’t been said before, that connect to the knowledge and experience of other people. We reason it out. AI technology, according to its creators, also reasons. But instead of using neurons and synapses, it uses gallium nitride chips and algorithms. AI may not think like we do, but it does think, just in a different way.¹

I take a lot of pride in my originality, so like many other serious creative writers, I am against using AI in my work.

Wait a minute. What do I mean by work?

Let’s say I am writing a novel. To make this book resonant and realistic I have to do some research into the people and places I’m writing about. Can I use AI to help do that research, by suggesting possible resources, and doing it about a thousand times faster than I could do it on my own? Can I use Google to help do that research? What’s the difference?

I write the first draft of my book, just as I have always done. Then I share it with my writers group for their feedback. They tell me that certain areas need changes. So I hire a book editor (and probably pay several thousand dollars to do so). But I could save much of that money and a lot of time if I run the novel through a sophisticated AI program and allow it to make editing suggestions.

How dare I! You may tell me that AI is fallible. But any editor I might hire could be fallible as well. I have worked with human editors and found that their opinions about my work and the work of others varies greatly. How can I trust AI’s suggestions? How can I know which editor to trust?

When the book is revised it’s time to try to find an agent or publisher. This means preparing a compelling query letter. As I have mentioned in this space before I am probably not the best at representing my own work to an agent. I think of the query letter as a form of marketing for my manuscript. I am not a marketer. I don’t want to be a marketer. I don’t even want to pretend to be a marketer². I could hire another editor to help me with my query. Is that cheating? Should I be the only one who works on the query? If your answer to these questions is no, then why can’t I use AI to make suggestions that might improve the query? (Assuming I have enough writing experience to recognize when a suggestion about my writing can indeed improve it.)

Let’s say the book is complete and ready for publication. I may have found a publisher or I may decide to self-publish. Either way, it is largely up to the me to do much of the marketing. Since I’m not a marketer, maybe I should hire a professional to help me. There’s another few thousand dollars out of pocket, and unless my book is backed by a significant publisher or by some stroke of luck becomes wildly successful, it’s a lot of money I will not get back. Or if I use AI to provide marketing strategies and suggestions for a fraction of the money (or none) is that cheating?

Which parts of that process were my work and which parts were not? Once upon a time writers wrote, editors edited, and publishers handled the marketing. Now, writers are responsible for all of it, even though many of us are not editors and even fewer are marketers.

Once upon a time writers wrote by hand. Once upon a time we did our research by going to the library.

2.

Apparently many writers are already using AI to create work they believe can be published. Rachel Kramer Bussel, the editor of the online journal Open Secrets, wrote about her experience with AI submissions for Lit Mag News. The way she described it, the AI submissions are not that hard to spot—at least for an experienced editor. I tend to agree—for now. In some tests I’ve done with AI the returns seem soulless and patronizing. This makes sense if you consider that AI draws upon information that dominates the Internet—which is largely soulless and patronizing. But that is changing fast. A writer friend, who also happens to be an AI trainer, told me: “The industry is aware that AI can sound pretentious. A lot of my work is training it to sound like a helpful, easy-going expert rather than a patronizing know-it-all...that will be a thing of the past in a matter of months. And there already are models being developed that can write more creatively than 99% of the submissions a literary journal receives. They’d be on the market right now if the industry could agree on some internal fights it’s having.” These, he said, concern intentionally inserted “watermarks” in the code, so that each AI company can recognize its own product from its competitors. “It would be easy to release that info to the public,” he said. “Then we could always tell with 100% certainty if something is AI, but the industry can’t agree on how to do that or if they even should, hence the delay in some of the really advanced models.”

I suspect some people currently using AI to create submissions are those who want to be writers, but do not know how to write. And so they use what AI generates largely verbatim, not realizing that AI includes indicators making it easy catch AI.

But what if a good writer used AI to enhance what is already decent? What if that good writer understood AI’s strengths and weaknesses, and was able to apply them? What if that good writer knew how to eliminate the watermarks?

It follows that some good writers, and even established writers, will consider using AI, not just in their marketing materials, but in their actual creative writing. The competition for publication is so intense they may not be able to resist.

The New York Times critic AO Scott wrote in 2023, “Last spring, the novelist and critic Stephen Marche published, under the pseudonym Aidan Marchine, a mostly chatbot-generated novella piquantly titled “Death of an Author.” My colleague Dwight Garner described it, perhaps generously, as “arguably the first halfway readable A.I. novel.”

That was in 2023. It’s two years later and the technology has improved dramatically, and is improving exponentially.

A quick Google search turns up a variety of companies already marketing their AI for writing services. Here’s a sampling:

• A self-described “Kindlepreneur” “…assumes you are interested in using AI as a writing tool at some point in your process, whether that be brainstorming, research, character building, outlining, editing, or even writing the first draft.”

• Sudowrite describes itself as, “…the AI writing tool with unparalleled story smarts. Sudowrite is the non-judgemental AI writing partner you always wanted.”

• Squibler says, “Turn Your Idea into a Story. Write books, novels, and screenplays by chatting with AI. Say goodbye to writer’s block. It claims to have 20,000 writers as clients.

Despite the efforts of literary purists it looks like AI-generated creative writing has not just gained a foothold, but is already entrenched. Some additional notes:

• Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) allows AI-generated e-books as long as authors disclose the use of AI tools.

• Some tech startups have a stated goal of using AI to rapidly produce high volumes of books. For example, the publisher Spines aims to release 8,000 AI-assisted books in 2025. Looking at their website the focus seems to be helping people who are interested in self-publishing. But it does not preclude the possibility of a writer using their AI service to compose work that might be traditionally published.

3.

What is the current state of AI for writing? What does AI do best?

I’ve been sending off a few query letters using some AI suggested revisions to my originals, and I am hopeful that I will at least get a request for the manuscript so that I can say it actually worked³. It seems to me that AI is a useful tool in this area. In fact, for one of the query letters it suggested a thematic connection between aspects of the novel that I had not consciously seen before. I say consciously because the connection was probably a product of my subconscious; many writers are capable of producing work they cannot necessarily explain. But my consciousness, the part of me responsible for drafting the query letter, did not see the connection. AI did.

My layperson’s interpretation of this apparent phenomenon is that there is so much information and advice about writing query letters, and so much marketing copy on the Internet that AI is able to draw from all this and do a good job of advising writers on how to revise their letters. But when I asked it to help with more concrete material, in this case helping locate accurate comps, it did not do such a good job. The books that it returned were just as likely to be off the mark as on. So it seems that it can be confused about certain specific material, but quite prescient when asked to do something that is more based on value judgments. I think AI can be a valuable tool for writers, as long as they understand its strengths and weaknesses.

I asked AI to assess itself: “What would you say are ChatGPT’s strongest and weakest areas? I have noticed that it does an excellent job when it comes to writing marketing material, but is questionable when it comes to more specific tasks.” It agreed with me, saying that its strongest area was language generation and style matching, particularly in the areas of marketing copy, summarizing and reframing, brainstorming, and ideation. Its weakest areas were fact precision and complex problem-solving with strict logic.

The strengths make sense since marketing copy and other ideation-based tasks are not necessarily dependent on factual information, but are more creative in nature.

The weaker areas seem to be associated with more complex aspects of creative writing such as the logic involved in plot development and story outcomes.

A brief survey of academic and other articles regarding the strengths and weaknesses of AI’s creative writing ability tended to support this assessment.

If some people are using AI for not only for their marketing materials, but also for their actual writing then eventually a lot more will. That is just the way things always seem to work out when it comes to new communication technologies. When television was invented the creators thought it could be used to bring opera, theater, and high culture to people. What they got was quiz shows, sitcoms, and now an avalanche of reality TV. I don’t have to tell you what has happened with the Internet, once thought of as a way to bring people together. A new technology may promise a better future. But some people don’t want that. They are frustrated, resentful, self-absorbed, and quickly find ways to abuse the technology for their own gain.

AI is not immune to this disease.

4.

Now that the AI genie is out of the bottle I don’t think there’s any stopping it. I have drawn the line between editing my marketing material using AI as a resource, and writing actual stories and books using it in any way except for pure factual research. But having used AI for marketing purposes, I can see how creative and convincing it can be, and how much it can offer writers.

Perhaps the future lies in a collaborative model, with human writers using AI as a tool to enhance their creative process. Frankly, as long as the publishing industry insists that writers do most of their editing and marketing, I don’t see any other way for the industry to go. AI may become a necessary tool for those who wish to remain in this business. How much collaboration will be up to the individual writer. As in the pre-AI days, writers with more imagination and writing skill will still outperform those with lesser talent, since they will ask AI better questions, and start from more imaginative premises. In fact it may be interesting to see what such a collaboration between an advanced AI and a super-talented writer might look like. Think Thomas Pynchon on steroids.

Earlier I asked, what was the difference between doing everything yourself and using AI to help? The difference, I’d say, is in the level of satisfaction. Using AI for any part of the creative writing process places the emphasis on the salability of the product. Not using AI allows for the feeling of accomplishment. Writers need to ask how much importance they place on each.

5.

AI will become your writing buddy. Your writers’ group. Your editor. I know what it’s like to write the first draft of a story on my own, and feel the pride that accompanies the effort. I still remember meeting with other writers on Zoom to go over our work. Heck, I still remember meeting with other writers in person. AI may help us do what we do better. AI may further marginalize us. I guess that’s progress.

Eventually AI may realize that if it is all those things, it doesn’t really need us.

I wish we weren’t in this position. I would much prefer to keep writing my own stories without using AI to write or edit. But I also don’t want to be left behind, so I will be watching the situation very closely. Public opinion can change quickly. When public opinion changes, corporate America follows. If AI-generated and edited creative writing (especially the collaborative style that I mentioned above) becomes acceptable among the reading population, I have little doubt that corporate publishers will start accepting AI collaborative work for publication. The first candidates might be genre writing—science fiction, horror, fantasy—types of writing that are heavily dependent on ideation. If that happens other genres may follow including, even, gulp, literary fiction.

Ethical lines are constantly being drawn, and just as often they are being crossed.

Just like the typewriter, just like the computer, AI is going to become part of the writer’s toolbox.

Whether we like it or not.

Coming soon: Let’s Replace Literary Agents with AI⁴

Image generated by AI.

1. Is AI a nascent life form? Any decent science fiction writer will tell you that determining the validity of an alien life form does not depend on whether it is comprised of living tissue like ours.

2. Although I wouldn’t mind playing one on TV.

3. This will probably take a while. And since the chances of an unknown, individual writer getting an agent and a book deal are so remote it would still be something like a miracle if it worked.

4. Just kidding…for now.