AI and Why We Write in the First Place

Recently, the organization behind National Novel Writing Month (which challenges writers to write 50,000 words in the month of November) officially condoned the use of generative AI and said anyone who didn't like it was classist and ableist.

People got mad about that.

So, let's talk about AI for a bit, what it can do, what it can't do, and whether it should have any place in the writing process.

What do we mean by "AI"?

As always, let's define terms first. This post is not talking about AI that defines enemy behavior in Pac-Man nor the fictional, self-aware AIs of Terminator and I, Robot. We are specifically talking about generative AI or large language models (LLMs).

In a technical sense, generative AI is closer to Pac-Man than Skynet. In science fiction—including science fiction that I wrote!—AIs are self-aware and sentient, capable of complex and original thought. But that's not how any of our current technology works, not now nor in the foreseeable future.

What we call artificial intelligence today is not, in fact, intelligent. LLMs are very powerful, very structured predictive text generators. They are very good at putting together strings of words that sound good and are grammatically correct (i.e., modeling language), but they have no idea what any of it means. They don't even have a way to know.

This is an important point, and we can't get anywhere in discussing the topic unless we agree on it.

So.

What can AI do?

In an ideal world (not an ethical one—we'll get to that in a sec), generative AI can do a bunch of things for writers in theory, like...

• ...brainstorm a list of ideas.
• ...edit text to be grammatically correct.
• ...write a whole damn story.

And that sounds amazing, which is why the CEOs of the world have been throwing everything they have at this tech.

But there are some inherent and (because of the way LLMs fundamentally work) insurmountable problems.

What AI can't do

Remember that part about AI not understanding what anything means? Turns out, that causes some problems.

AI can't brainstorm a list of original ideas. They might sound original to you, but there is nothing AI can come up with that hasn't been thought of or remixed already. In fact, because LLMs are trained to produce something that sounds good rather than something that is unique, the list you get will be the most mediocre ideas you can pull from a quick Google search. Helpful perhaps, but never ground-breaking.

"But, Adam, didn't you say there are no ideas so original that they are unlike anything that has come before?"

I did! I also said that novelty doesn't come from original ideas but from combining them with your unique life, experience, voice, and story.

An AI doesn't have any of those things.

An AI editor can't ensure the author's voice or intended meaning is maintained. Again, this is because AI has no idea what words mean. It only knows which words statistically appear in a given sequence to be considered "correct" by humans (plus whatever extra guidelines and guardrails its programmers placed on top of it). Your text will sound correct, intelligent even, but it will also sound generic. You will no longer be in it.

(Note that if you are looking for a way to make your text great while maintaining your intended meaning and unique voice, that's exactly what I do.)

AI can write a whole damn story but not a story that's worth a damn. Sure, it'll sound smart. Statistical models (and a soupçon of plagiarism) ensure that. But it won't mean anything. Nothing connects. Nothing has a point, and nothing is being said, because the AI has nothing to say and isn't aware that "saying something" with your story is even a thing.

Should writers use AI at all then?

In a brighter timeline, I believe there are versions of us discussing how AI can be used to help with all the tedious stuff humans have to do so we can have more time to do something that matters—like make art. Or at the very least, we could discuss how AI can enhance our creativity rather than make it worse.

For example, brainstorming mediocre ideas isn't all that bad! I do that all the time with a Google search, helping me trigger new, unique ideas. And helping a poverty-stricken, non-native English speaker edit their story into passable English seems like a good thing. Even writing a whole damn story could be...

Well okay, I don't think that one's any good.

I mean, if I'm just using AI to churn out a story—even if I do the work of revising that story to sound good—at that point, what am I even doing then? I'm not making money. (Statistically speaking, publishing books is a terrible way to make money!) And I'm not even writing. At that point, I'm just editing someone else's mediocre prose at a loss.

In any case, those discussions are for a brighter timeline, one in which AI is 100% free and ethical. In our timeline, AIs have some ethical wrinkles:

• Big LLMs are trained on authors' writing without their permission.
• And they do an excellent job plagiarizing that writing without telling you it's plagiarized... because they have no idea.
• Corporations want LLMs to replace human writers and editors in order to increase profits for the already-rich.
• And as these corporations discover LLMs suck at writing, they try to rehire those human writers and editors to fix the LLMs' work at a fraction of their worth.
• By all accounts, training and using LLMs consumes a lot of power—like way more than it should considering what little we get out of it.

If we could get around those problems—if AI had consent for all the data it was trained on, if corporations used it to make creative lives better, if training and using one didn't consume as much electricity as a single Icelandic citizen uses in a year—then sure, maybe, AI might be useful for things like brainstorming or grammar checking.

But those are real problems, and personally, I can't get past them. (And AI's are only mediocre at brainstorming and grammar checking anyway.)

I've heard folks say the tech will get better, these problems are fixable, etc., etc. But coming from the computer science field myself and having studied LLMs back in the 20th century (GOOD GOD!), I'm unconvinced. The technology hasn't changed very much in that time, only the amount of data and server power available (and the billions of investment dollars to make it look like things are better).

So, I won't be using AI for the foreseeable future. Writing is hard, but not because humans are bad it. We're actually the only beings on Earth that are any good it! Making a computer write for me (and not very well) just makes me wonder: What am I buying with that time, when instead, I could be making something new?

That's me. I'm curious your thoughts (but do be kind in the comments if you want them to stay there).

Grounding the Reader in the Scene

In a first draft, we often write things as they occur to us. Maybe some dialogue first, an occasional gesture or action by one of the characters, throw in an emotion or two. The result might be something like this (for the purpose of illustration, I have hacked this passage from Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld):

"How long can we last without parts, Klopp?" Alek asked.

"Until someone lands a shell on us, young master."

"Until something breaks, you mean," Volger said.

Klopp shrugged. "A Cyklop Stormwalker is meant to be part of an army. We have no supply train, no tankers, no repair team."

Alek shifted the cans of kerosene in his grip. He felt like some vagabond carrying everything he owned.

A functional scene, but confusing for anyone other than the author. The reader only knows what you tell them, and the lines above don't say much by themselves.

Grounding a scene means imagining that you are painting a picture in the reader's head (because you basically are). Without any additional context, the reader has nothing in their mind, a white space with only the characters and objects you place in it as you name them.

By the end of the first line above, the reader knows there are two characters: Klopp and Alek. They might know something about these characters from previous scenes, but they don't know where the characters are or what they're doing now. All they have to imagine are two characters they know standing in empty space.

The third line adds another character: Volger. The reader now has to reimagine the scene, possibly even replaying the first two lines in their head to imagine Volger also being present. This slows the reader down as they have to rethink what they thought they knew.

The fourth line mentions a Cyklop Stormwalker, some kind of vehicle. Are they in this vehicle? Are they repairing it? Who knows? Not the reader, but they have to revise their mental image again. Finally, in the last paragraph, we get some visual. We know that Alek is carrying cans of kerosene, so maybe they're carrying these back to the Stormwalker, but where are they now? The author might know, but the reader doesn't

The most straightforward way to fix this is to ground the reader in the scene. Start the scene with a description that answers the questions: Who is here? Where is here? What are they doing?

For example in the passage above, we could add the following paragraph before the dialogue:

Alek, Klopp, and Volger trudged along the streambed, the kerosene sloshing with every step, its fumes burning Alek's lungs. With each of them carrying two heavy cans, the trip back to the Stormwalker already seemed much farther than the walk to town this morning.

With just a couple of sentences, we now know who is in the scene (Alek, Klopp, and Volger), where the scene is (along a streambed), and what they are doing (carrying kerosene back to the Stormwalker). This simple addition makes it far easier for the reader to visualize the scene, and they don't have to revise that mental image with each new line of dialogue.

But what if the reader stopped reading at the last chapter and hasn't picked the book back up in months? Or what if they were distracted when reading the last chapter? Or what if they just don't remember the details—or at least the important details—of what happened in the previous scene? It is often useful to drop a hint of where this scene occurs in the plot as well as in time and space, something like this:

And yet, thanks to Alek, they'd left behind most of what they needed.

This serves as a quick, clean reminder without needing to do a full recap. The reader knows something bad happened, and the line above will be enough to remind most readers what that thing was.

It also has the added benefit of implying what Alek feels in this scene, which is in some ways even more important.

Let's put it all together and add a little bit more of Alek's emotions to the scene (i.e., let me show you the full passage that I hacked apart for illustration):

Alek, Klopp, and Volger trudged along the streambed, the kerosene sloshing with every step, its fumes burning Alek's lungs. With each of them carrying two heavy cans, the trip back to the Stormwalker already seemed much farther than the walk to town this morning.

And yet, thanks to Alek, they'd left behind most of what they needed.

"How long can we last without parts, Klopp?" he asked.

"Until someone lands a shell on us, young master."

"Until something breaks, you mean," Volger said.

Klopp shrugged. "A Cyklop Stormwalker is meant to be part of an army. We have no supply train, no tankers, no repair team."

"Horses would have been better," Volger muttered.

Alek shifted the burden in his grip, the smell of kerosene mixing with the smoked sausages that hung around his neck. His pockets were stuffed with newspapers and fresh fruit. He felt like some vagabond carrying everything he owned.

"Master Klopp?" he said. "While the walker's still in fighting prime, why don't we take what we need?"

Now we have a scene that can be easily visualized, that doesn't require mental revision as the reader reads each new line, that reminds us what the characters are trying to accomplish, and that shows the character's emotions. In other words, we have a well-grounded scene.

Should this be what was written in the first draft? I mean, only if you already have a clear, clear idea of the scene from the start. For most of us, the first draft is essentially our pencil sketch of the story. Revision is where we make it read well, like I've done above.

I can't say that this is how Scott Westerfeld actually put this scene together, but it's how most of my scenes get put together and probably most of yours. Write what comes to mind first, then go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along.

And if you still need help, well, that's what editors are for.

Writing for the Market

A common question writers wrestle with is whether they should write what they love or write what will sell. This is an important question! But before I try to answer it, I need to drop an important truth:

Nobody knows what will sell.

I mean, we all make our guesses (and agents and editors are in a better position to gauge these winds than most of us), but it's not like Rowling sat down and decided that a story about a wizarding school was a gap in the market that would definitely be a hit. Heck, even publishers didn't know—the first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times!

Trying to write a bestseller is like hitting a moving target with a paper airplane on a breezy day. It can probably be done? But it's easier if you can just throw a thousand airplanes.

I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time.

Here's what you can do though:

(1) Know your market. Read books that target the same audience you want to target. Learn what's out there. Try to understand why it works.

(2) Enjoy your market. The number of authors who can find success writing for a genre they don't like are very, very few. Most of us write what we write because we were readers first—because we like our genre!

You don't have to enjoy everything in your target market of course, but the books you don't like are selling for a reason. You may not agree with it, but it will help you immensely to try and understand what your audience sees in them.

(3) Write what you want to read. There are multiple reasons for this. One is because if you don't enjoy it, neither will your readers, but another is because you're gonna be reading this book a lot.

(4) Put yourself in your work. There are no ideas so original that they are unlike anything that has ever come before, but there is no one else in the world with your life, your experience, your voice, or your story. The one thing every breakout hit has in common is novelty, and nobody can write you but you. Use that.

(5) Don't give up. Not everyone is going to be a success, but failure doesn't exist. If something doesn't work, examine why and try again.

Nobody knows what will go viral (and if you do, please explain this to me), but there are elements within your control. You just have to try stuff and see what works. Know your market, take risks, and be yourself. It's the best any of us can do.

Question for you: Is there a novel that you think shouldn't be popular but is? What do you think draws readers to it?

Sample Edits

Finding an editor for your work can be really hard. "How do I know whom to trust? What if they don't understand my work and what I'm trying to do? Do I really want to pay so much money for someone to judge my soul?"

I can't answer that last question for you, but I can help with the rest. Here are a few things to hopefully make the decision of whether to hire me less scary:

Services and rates are clearly listed. You don't have to contact me for a quote or do any guesswork. Just look at my rates, do your own calculations and comparisons, and decide if it's worth the judging of your human soul.

I offer a free sample edit. This is the best way to see whether you click with my work (or I click with yours). I'll edit your first 1,000 words for free, and you can see whether my edit sparks joy (professionally speaking). All you have to do is reach out.

And what if you don't want to reach out just yet? What if you want to know what an edit from me looks like without risking your soul? Well, I got you. Below, you can see what one of my edits looks like: a sample edit on 1,000 words of a novel (used with the author's permission).

First is an example of my Deep Edit service, where I provide developmental editing and line editing in the same package. (Alternatively, you can hire me for just a Developmental Edit [in-depth comments on how you can improve your text at a macro level] or a Line Edit [tracked changes and comments to improve your text at the sentence and paragraph level].)

Here is a quick screenshot of the sample edit, and you can view the entire Deep Edit here.

Second is an example editorial letter, which comes with most of my services. This letter provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of your work. My editorial letters are fairly detailed (even on short documents like this sample). If you want fast, cheap, but good feedback, you can even get the editorial letter by itself as one of my services.

Here is a quick screenshot of the sample edit, and you can view the entire editorial letter here.

I hope that providing these samples can help ease your mind as you look for someone to edit your work, whether it's me, someone else, or no one at all. Only you can decide what will best serve you and your goals, and if you think that might be me, e-mail me at adamheine@gmail.com to get started.

Using Dialogue Tags (or "He Said She Said")

A very common issue I come across while editing is overuse of "fancy" dialogue tags like these:

He exclaimed

She cried out

They pleaded

He growled

She retorted

They taunted

These dialogue tags all have one thing in common: they stick out.

Does that make them super bad? Of course not! Used once in a while, these dialogue tags can punctuate an emotional moment very effectively. They become an issue, however, when they are overused.

Usually, the reason they get overused is when writers follow the otherwise excellent advice to avoid repetition. If you say your protagonist has "hair as black as the dark behind the stars," that's pretty cool! But it loses its impact the second time you say it, and by the third and fourth time, many readers will be bored or annoyed.

Fancy dialogue tags are the same. Even if you manage to use a different one with each dialogue (no easy feat), readers will notice—and start to become annoyed—when you use them every single time a character speaks.

So, you don't want to repeat words, but you also don't want to use fancy dialogue tags. What can you do? Fortunately, there's a loophole:

"Said" is invisible.

           ("Replied" and "asked" are mostly invisible too.)

It sounds like magic, but it's true. These tags are so common that most readers learn early on to ignore them. They don't even realize they're doing it! It's the same way we don't notice the repetition of words like "the" or "and." They're utility words that serve their purpose and are quickly ignored.

I mean, yes, the reader will notice it if you tag every single spoken line with "said" (more on that in a future post), but you can get away with far more saids than any other dialogue tag without your reader even batting an eye.

And you can save the fancy tags for the most specialist special moments so they can do their work.

How to Approach Writer's Block

I wrote about writer's block way back in the beforebeforetimes, but wouldn't you know I actually learned new things in the fourteen years since? Not just about writing but also about myself.

In this post, I'm going to talk about some common causes of writer's block and what you can do about it.

But first, let's define terms.

What is writer's block?

Writer's block is when you are trying to write but can't.

Maybe you're staring at a blinking cursor and waiting for words that won't come. Maybe you're writing and deleting the same sentence over and over and over again. Or maybe you're scrolling Instagram or washing dishes or doing something else that, sure, maybe you want to do, but it's not what you're supposed be doing right now.

Writer's block can look like a lot of different things, but it often has common causes. The solutions below might not be easy (if they were, you wouldn't need this post!), but hopefully they can help you trust your process. And trusting yourself is the real way out.

So, what's the reason for your block? I know of three big ones:

1. You don't know what happens next.
2. You're afraid that what you write won't be good enough.
3. There is a legit physical or mental reason you can't write.

Let's take a quick look at each of these.

Reason #1: You don't know what happens next

You might think you do. You might know what happens two or three scenes—or even just two or three paragraphs—from now, but you don't know how to get from here to there. Or maybe you wrote yourself into a corner and you literally don't know where to go from here.

First off, know that this is perfectly normal. We've all heard of authors who sit down to write and the words come flowing out of them, but that's far from typical. (I'm not even sure it exists.) Every writer I know has had to, at some point, stop and figure out what happens next.

SOLUTION: Brainstorm. What this looks like depends on your story and your process, but here are some of the things I do:

• Make a list of whatever ideas pop into my head. I don't judge them. I just add them to the list.
• Outline the next chapter/scene/paragraph.
• Take a long walk or a shower or something similar. Let my mind wander.
• Imagine my story is a D&D game and my characters are the players. What crazy things would my players try next?
• Write down what each character in the scene wants. Sometimes I discover that I don't actually know!

What works one time might not work the next, so try different things and see what sticks.

But what if you do know what happens next? What if you just don't know how to write it?

Reason #2: You're afraid that what you write won't be good enough

Sometimes, you can't think of the right words. Or maybe you can't stop thinking how hard this will be to revise later. Or maybe you're worried that the story isn't what you hoped or is a waste of time to begin with.

Again, these are perfectly normal things to feel. Even the most experienced authors struggle with these feelings (while writing books that later become bestsellers). They'll often tell you the same things.

SOLUTION: Give yourself permission to write garbage. Because there are two important truths to remember here:

1. You cannot be objective about what is good or bad while you're writing it.
2. Anything you write can be made better later. Anything.

Turn off the internet and stare at the page. Make yourself write one word—any single word. Then write one more—just one. Keep going like that until you have a sentence. Then do it again. Don't delete them! You can do that tomorrow!

You might also trick yourself with "temp text"—words that you know won't be in the final draft but that convey enough of the story to move forward. [I like to put mine in square brackets. It tricks my anxiety brain into not editing it, and it's easy to search for later.]

But what if the reason you can't write goes beyond "I don't know what to say" and into "I literally cannot make myself write"?

Reason #3: There is a legit physical or mental reason you can't write

Sometimes writer's block isn't about writing. Sometimes it's caused by a physical need, like you're hungry or tired. Or there might be an emotional need instead. Even if you have no fear of bad words and know exactly what happens next in the story, depression, anxiety, and burnout (among other things) can make it impossible to write.

Whether the block is physical, emotional, or something else, the solution is the same.

SOLUTION: Take care of yourself. Eat a snack. Take a nap. Meditate. Exercise. Listen to your body and give it what it needs. And if your body's needs are ongoing—like, something a simple snack won't fix—take stronger measures:

• Change your writing schedule to a better time for your body or mind.
• Readjust your writing goals to put less pressure on yourself.
• Seek professional help.

That last item is for me, because my fear is far beyond "My words aren't good enough." It often becomes "If my words aren't good enough, then my story won't be good enough, and then I won't be good enough, and then every bad thing I believe about myself will be true."

Of course, I didn't know that until I sought counseling (not for writing, but my writing fears came up). Sometimes, we need help, and that's okay. I still struggle to make myself write, but at least now, I'm more aware of the actual problems I need to address.

Whatever the cause of your writer's block, and whatever emotions you might feel, know that those feelings are normal and okay to have. They don't make you any less of a writer.

If anything, they prove you are one.

Blogging Again in 2024? Heck yeah.

This is not a drill, folks. I hear tell blogging died a long time ago. Well, guess what? Necromancy is a thing! I have need of this space, and I refuse to let the algorithms determine my internet experience. (And anyway, if social media is meant to be a replacement, I'd like to file some complaints.)

Here's the deal. After several years of freelancing in gamedev, my long-term contracts have wrapped up, so I'm returning the thing I love the most: helping writers get better at this word-writey thing we do.

I'm gonna offer that in two forms:

1. Free tips here on the blog
2. Professional editing for hire

That's right, you can hire me for editing again! Or spread the word to your writer friends! Because rebooting a freelance business is sketchy, and I appreciate all the help I can get. (Plus, I'm really good at editing. Ask anyone.)

So I'm dusting this thing off (and BOY was it dusty!) and plugging myself back in. If you wanna be here to see what comes next, subscribe or find my socials in the sidebar.

And if you'd like to hire me for editing, you can start that process right here.

I'm glad to be back on this thing. Change is scary, but I love editing and I love helping people. I'm excited about where this is going, and I hope you'll join me.

NOTE: If you were subscribed to my blog in the beforetimes, then hi! Welcome back! How have you been?

You're probably still subscribed, but if things look different from what you remember, it's because my old subscription service is dead and I had to find a Feedburner alternative. Thankfully, some parts of the internet still do things for those of us who were here when it began—even if they tack ads onto everything.