Circle, Triangle, Square

I used Ai and I liked it … (to the tune of Katy Perry, obvs). 

Some caveats - I know this is a very touchy subject for a lot of my friends. The ethics of where GenAI and specifically LLMs got their source inputs is murky at best and downright immoral at … well, a few steps away from best and not that many. But I teach AI as a practical tool in some usecases and wanted to explore a bit. 

So I started with a story. I’ve had a very vague plot in my head for a long while. A young adult story about the “chosen one” who has to save the kingdom but who eventually finds out that literally anyone in the right place would have been enough. Some themes about masks (in many way hoiked from Pratchett’s Invisible Witches Hat) and that’s about that. Basically an argument against chosen blood lines, hereditary gifts etc. 

That’s as far as I’ve got and as far as I will ever get. Novels are not my natural method for telling stories. So I asked ChatGPT what I would need to turn it into a novel. Again, for clarity - I have no intention of turning this into a novel. 

I’ll be damned but it was a useful and interesting conversation. We developed themes, thoughts about magic, the nature of the “chosen one” and the foe that the kingdom kept facing. We developed the protagonist, an antagonist, and a story where no one was at fault, but the unwillingness to change was the true enemy. 

In about 40 minutes I ended up with a story structure and the sea that I could easily write, if I wanted to. Which I don’t. 

So I asked ChatGPT to write the first chapter. 

Dear reader, it was dire. No. Beyond dire. It was that particular shade of beige pap that wouldn’t even approach feeling nourishing. 

There’s no depth, no empathy, no wordsmithing skill. There’s no emotion or resonance.

So - the result of this brief experiment? It’s a great tool - I guess the conversation I had would be the sort of thing I’d have had with an okay editor, or a good writers workshop. But I wouldn’t have gone to either of those with what I had. And the ability to have that conversation - even if for many people it’s one step above Rubber Duck programming … that’s valuable. 

If you’re interested in seeing the output including the truly dire story at the end, I’ve uploaded it as a word document here. I feel no moral right to the work, so I’ve released it as public domain - I don’t know if that makes a blind bit of difference, but it’s there to express that I feel no sense of ownership.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zm5k1imfpi3bxnch3frox/Book-Structure-ChatGPT.docx