Novel-Writing Chatbots Are Scary, But They Have One Lesson to Teach Human Writers Now by Andromeda Romano-Lax

One area where I believe it would be unwise to rely solely on AI-generated text is in the field of creative writing, particularly in the writing of novels. Writing a novel is a complex and nuanced process that requires not only the ability to produce coherent text but also a deep understanding of human emotions, psychology, and the human experience.

If that paragraph seems stilted and bland, it’s because it was written by ChatGPT after I fed it a prompt to write a skeptical blogpost about why we don’t want AI writing novels.

Still, it’s comprehensible.

Of course, the AI was just trying to please me by saying what I wanted to hear. While I clicked over to a fresh page to start this blogpost, it continued generating text in an open browser window, explaining how it didn’t have the same depth of insight as a human and that if I left it to ChatGPT to write novels, literature might suffer from homogenization.

(I could almost picture the AI mind behind this generation exercise, chuckling as it typed, “You just wait and see, dummy. One more year and you won’t be able to tell the difference between me and Stephen King.”)

Meanwhile, ChatGPT is already producing novels, including several hundred for sale on Amazon.

Does this give you the same feeling of dread it gives me?

I published a 2018 novel, PLUM RAINS, in which a robot named Hiro is able to show more empathy and attention to his elder client than a distracted human nurse.

The day is coming, friends. But let’s return to the subject of creative writing.

On Twitter the other day, I read this tweet by a suspense novelist:

TEXT: I asked ChatGPT to write a short story “in the style of author Andrea Bartz” and now I’m EXTREMELY CREEPED OUT. It’s not a perfect mimic, but on a sentence level, it sounds like another writer impersonating me.

Of course I had to open up ChatGPT for the first time and give it a try myself.

The result unnerved me, but I also recognized that ChatGPT has a tendency to default to hackneyed language and plot.

ChatGPT excels at cliches. We—the human writers of the world—shouldn’t.

For now—because very soon AI will be much smarter—we could play around with ChatGPT not as a way to generate story or voice, as some articles seem to be suggesting, but as a way to remind us how not to write.

Let’s see how ChatGPT responds when asked: “write a scene from a memoir set in Alaska.”

I remember the cold biting into my bones as I stepped out of the plane onto the snowy tarmac in Anchorage, Alaska. The wind howled around me, blowing my hair into my face and causing my eyes to water. I had never experienced anything like it before.

I had come to Alaska on a whim, seeking adventure and a change of scenery. I had always been drawn to the rugged beauty of the state, with its towering mountains, sprawling glaciers, and untamed wilderness. And now, here I was, standing in the midst of it all, feeling both exhilarated and terrified at the same time.

Groan. Recognize any of those phrases? I do. And I promise never to use the phrases “rugged beauty” or “untamed wilderness” again, or to open a script or novel with someone stepping out onto the tarmac. (Guilty!)

Given the prompt “write a thriller set in rural Alaska,” ChatGPT provided a novel-like opening, but it was dry, written in summary mode.

I told it: use that same prompt but include more scene, description and dialogue. Don’t use summary.

The next response was better. Frighteningly better. Following a few lines of summary, ChatGPT wrote:

She walked into the local diner, where the locals gathered for breakfast every morning. The small restaurant was dimly lit, and the scent of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. Kate took a seat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee from the friendly waitress, who was happy to chat with her.

“Have you heard about the fisherman who was found dead?” the waitress asked, her voice hushed.

I tried to retune the prompt several times by telling the AI to avoid all cliches and omit common words. If anything, the story opening became more cliched (my emphasis, below).

Kate stepped gingerly through the snow-carpeted streets of Eagle, an isolated hamlet nestled deep in the heart of Alaska’s untamed wilderness. Her keen senses picked up the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafting from a quaint eatery that beckoned invitingly to her.

Even when I specifically told the AI to avoid so many adjectives, it piled them on, almost as if it were in a panic.

For now, our jobs are safe, writer friends.

But maybe not for long, especially as chatbots continue to use mass data to imitate specific writers, becoming more intelligent in the realm of voice as versus content.

Even if you have no desire to play around with ChatGPT, consider this. You’re working on a scene in your story, novel, or memoir. What’s the most obvious way this would open? Don’t do it. What is the most obvious gesture or metaphor you should employ next? Avoid it! Where should your plot go next? If readers—or ChatGPT—can guess, then keep thinking!

Are there particular genres that are more cliché-ridden than other genres? Maybe we should sacrifice those to the robots first, and specialize in that which can’t be so easily mimicked. The future of humanity depends on it!

 

Andromeda Romano-Lax’s sixth novel, forthcoming in 2024, is The Deepest Lake. Meanwhile, she is trying to write her next thriller as fast as possible, hoping to finish it before the robots take over. She is also a book coach who enjoys helping clients avoid cliches whenever possible.