I'm not a writer. I've had ideas for stories but never attempted to write them down. After recently watching one of your videos. I've decided to give it a go. Following one off your video tutorials. I've managed to put down the basic story line. I'm now in the process off adding in more details to the story. Found it all very enjoyable. I know I'm never going to be a writer. But I'm having fun doing something I would never off been able to do if it wasnt for AI. Thanks for making your you tube videos.
I think you might be the first person to bring up the fact that AI isn’t always a timesaver. I spend about the same amount of time on chapters as I always did, but the mind-saving benefits have been so beneficial. The stories are still mine, but not having to start with a totally blank page has been so nice.
@Jerri.Blank.9674 - I Jerri. I've Almost completed a Novel Trilogy in just a few days. Read my comment. Because AI can be a time saver. But at this stage of development, there are things you need to make sure your not doing
@strpg9938 AutoCrit and Deep L. Human Editor are more important than human writers. Strpg9938. I beg you make more laughing emojis, seeing as I like to prevail over the needy ignorant.
I've never found the argument about it needing to be hard to have value. Pretty sure every time I've found a hundred dollar bill on the ground it's value wasn't diminished by me finding it.
I've been more productive over the last month since getting into AI writing tools than I have been in years with my writing. I agree, it doesn't necessarily save time but it does help me remain consistent and productive by helping me get through writer's block or other various humps that might have stymied me before. Those roadblocks would ultimately lead to me just not writing at all. Now I'm able to work through those and remain productive. It's fantastic.
I love your channel. I have been working on my first novel for the past 3 years. After I found your channel and AI to help me, I'm once again inspired. I use it to help with sentence structure and editing. I'm a better creator than I am a writer, and I don't want that to stop me, so this has been amazing to work with and has inspired me to move forward with my book. I like the fact that when I described a scene about Scotland 810 AD and referred to the bluebells in bloom, I accidently wrote "bluebonnets" and it corrected me and said "bluebonnets are an American Southern flower not found in Scotland, you might mean bluebells" I love it. So I named my GPT "Annie" And Annie is helping me keep my historical fiction novel on the right path for details. I'll probably need to give her some recognition in the book, but I don't mind a bit.
I'm glad that writing this book using AI was therapeutic for you. That said, why would I spend money on a text I know is AI generated when so many other, more authentically written novels exist? Your book loses something with AI. It becomes nothing more than a product and you, rather than being a writer, become nothing but an editor. AI wrote Sherlock Holmes better than you could, which says to me that you as a writer were unable to capture the character's intelligence on your own. That speaks poorly to your skills as a writer and, again, makes me think that the investment of my time and my money would be better spent on another writer's work. Thank you for your transparency though and good luck selling the book!
On its own this is true. And this is definitely not a replacement for hard work. But imagine what can happen if AI can get you 50% of the way there, then you work just as hard as you would have without AI. With the AI helping as a productivity assistant, your hard work ends up getting you farther than the same amount of hard work could do without AI. Will there be people trying to make it easy? Of course. But poor quality books will never sell so you don’t really need to worry about it. All you have to do is worry about those who write quality books, regardless of the tools they use.
When you publish the book on Amazon will you be acknowledging that you used AI? Does doing that create any problems in terms of getting the book on Amazon?
Claude 2, Toppy M7 B, And Minstral are my go-to for novel writing. But If I'm being honest, the community needs a Writers-Only AI that knows the anatomy of every great story known to man
It didn't save time? Most novelists take six to twelve months to complete a novel. Your videos show that you finished your novel on day 30. That is amazingly fast. If, without the help of AI, you're capable of taking the writing of a novel from start to finish in around a month, you're cranking them out. I heard you mention many times that you edited what the AI wrote. It really sounds like the AI was the author and you were the editor of the book, which is fine, but other than creating outlines and editing the AI actually was the author. That's my biggest issue with using AI for creative projects. It's the AI that does the creating. People merely tell the AI what they want it to create, granted some do that in greater detail than others. There are people who have little to no art skills but call themselves AI Artists. The same goes for song writing and writing books. Good for you for taking the time to edit and finetune the AI's creation. Many don't even put in that much effort, but I really think that is the opposite of what the process should be. I think AI could be a very useful tool to an author who writes their books and uses AI as their personal editor. The same goes for artists. I think AI is a great tool for them. It can provide lots of reference material, help them with view angles and perspective, and much more. Ai is a great tool that can help creative people achieve their goal. I just hope it doesn't replace creative people with people who are really good at telling AI what they want it to create.
I could have easily written it the normal way in the same amount of time. I write 1500 words an hour. If I write for two hours five days a week that’s 60,000 words in a month. Which is actually more than I wrote for this book. And I still wouldn’t call AI the author. At best it was the coauthor. Remember it wouldn’t even exist without my promoting. Plus writing is a multi process event, not just the actual mechanical process of writing down of words, which is just one small part of the writing process. Given that I wrote down all the beats myself to tell it what to write (which makes the story completely mine), I still consider myself the author. Plus the “edit” that I mentioned was really closer to a first draft. Because it involved a LOT of editing. And I know authors who completely rewrite what the AI gives them. I come close to that given my edits. But the AI will helps keep us from getting stuck on what should happen next.
@@TheNerdyNovelist I'm extremely impressed. Creating an original story at 25 wpm is no small feat. I know I'm a bit old fashioned, but I do disagree with you on your opinion of AI, at least in the way you used it for the book you were talking about. If a patron commissions an artist to create a painting, and is very descriptive in what they want, I mean to the point of telling the artist exactly what they want the painting to look like, that doesn't make the patron an artist. That said, I agreed with the process one of your commenters posted, when they described how they use AI. They said that they write the chapter, then run it through AI. Then they rewrite the chapter. In my opinion, this is using AI more as an editor, and the author is using its suggestions to improve what they have already written. AI can be a crutch, or a valuable tool for authors, depending on how they choose to use it. For me, AI would be very useful in checking punctuation (I'm a serial comma abuser), and sentence structure. I just think there is a big difference between editing a story that was created by AI and letting AI edit and make suggestions for a story you've written. Again, just my opinion.
I am so glad that RU-vid suggested your channel because, at nearly 60 years old, I believe I will finally be able to write a book. I have always wanted to write a book and I have so many books on style and grammar and how to write, but I was never able to get past writing out just a few lines before giving up. I can't remember where I read this, but somebody used the phrase that some authors bleed over every line and that was me. So many people said to just write and go back later and edit what you wrote, but that was impossible for me. I simply could not stop myself from rereading everything I wrote right after I wrote it and bleeding over it and yeah, it was painful. So painful I gave up writing altogether and became a photographer instead. But now, with AI, I can get chapter outlines, which will help me develop a more complete story rather than just having a few ideas in my head about who the main character was and what their actual story really was. I can also let the AI give me ideas about how each chapter should be laid out in terms of events and dialog and character growth. I knew all of this stuff before and it only added to my panic so that, on top of bleeding over every line, made it mentally impossible to even come close to writing a whole book. I am not hoping that AI will help me save time. I am believing it will help me write my first book and I am so excited about that! Thank you!
Nope, give up. I started writing when I was 56 years old, and today I am 63 and I have written several books...fiction and non-fiction. Prepare yourself and don't give up. You will learn to write by writing, not by reading books on how to write. Those books are very valuable, I have many, but start writing.....
Even though AI can help you save the "effort", but the so called effort capasity is what makes you a writer... Atleast really big part of being and becoming a good writer. It seems that there can be a really big possibility to "dumb" yourself down, and not creating the capasity to write long texts. It is actually ironically possible, that AI text is going to be so mainstream that "craft" becomes scarce and only human written texts become more valuable. But we shall see.
Do keep in mind that AI text is not copyrightable. The parts you edited or wrote are, but the work will be a mashup of copyrightable and non-copyrightable material, which for all practical purposes cannot be determined. AI-written books might spawn an army of book thieves who can't be prosecuted because of the current legal system. That's not to mention the potential liabilities of plagiarism, depending on the AI tool you use and the origin of its training data.
That, in my opinion, is the correct way to use AI. You're actually writing the story, not just giving it an outline. Then you're letting the AI go over it and strengthen those chapters. Then you use that to rewrite the chapter based on the AI's input. The story is yours. AI was your assistant/editor.
Here is the thing to know about writing in AI. If you are a good storyteller, AI will make you are better writer. It can't really make you a better storyteller. If you are good storyteller and you can convey piece by piece that story to it, it will turn that story into well crafted prose and will do it while maintaining flow and rhythm. I will tell you though, at least in Gemini Advance, it has been trained on everything and sometimes it is a battle of wills as to whose vision of my scene is going to win. Sometimes I let it win because my way of handling it was amateurish and short sighted, and sometimes I win because the scene is based on visceral human interactions which it has only seen in fiction with a lot of that fiction not being the most realistic it can be. Overall, you will spend the same amount of time writing, but all that time will be spent on the quality of the work rather than sitting around trying to find the best words or phrases. The place where I would be careful is it always tends to add exposition to the end of everything as if it is trying to convey the moral of the story to the reader. 95% of the time, i cut that out. Oh, before you start each chat session, you need to have it read the whole manuscript up to that point. If you just have it start a new scene, you will get exactly that, a brand new scene separated in time and space from everything else. Also if you have character profiles built, let it see those, but only the ones you are dealing with in the immediate scene. If you feed too many different things, it will get confused as to what you want. Also, always keep of working copy of that last version you like and double check what you are seeing from the AI. Without telling you, it will cut out paragraphs which may integral to the entire scene. It will not know that it did it. ps. I can help with why your manuscript was short. I like my chapters to be a bit longer. I am generally shooting for 5k depending on what's happening. In order to get full length chapters from AI, you will need to break down each chapter into scenes and each scene into parts. I always have 5 scenes and 5 parts per scene. Working on each part and fully flushing it out, in one really important chapter, got me to 12k words (two protagonists and multiple other characters), but most are between 5k and 7k. That way you will not have to have to come back after writing the whole novel to flush it out and everything will fit much better. AI has its own idea on the length of any particular immediate section of work. It basically has built-in Strunk and White and will condense more than needed by default. On the flip side, there is far less editing.
Hey! I agree completely about your notion about how writing is a process and AI can help supplement different parts for different people. There are a lot of haters, and I’m sure you’ve attracted your fair share-I’m not a hater, those are probably pretty boring to argue with-but I do want to challenge you: Based on how these tools work, how do you feel about the notion that there is likely someone else, some other author, who wrote Sherlock Holmes in this really impressive way? How do you feel about the notion that (while it’s of course a composite of SO many works) these language models are untethered, and it’s someone else’s Sherlock Holmes tone and dialogue that you are taking and using? Again, this is not rhetorical. When I asked you how you feel about it, I’m genuinely not asking you in a way that’s meant to say, “shame on you.” I genuinely want your answer. For example, I’m terrible at metaphors. Especially when the metaphor needs to be the appropriate, or technologically, appropriate for the setting, etc. But if I wrote a really excellent metaphor, and then that metaphor, got stolen by a language, model, and inserted into somebody else’s book, I’d be pretty upset. How do you feel about that notion of all this?
Consider the other arts. Some, like painting, playing guitar, playing basketball, and dance can be done on three levels: newbie, commercially viable, and master. Maybe those writers who criticized you for using AI have as their only satisfactory goal becoming a master. The story they are telling themselves is they are worthy of their adventure because they have battled giants and survived...even won a few. But, you're right, this story is not the only one in the tropes of being a writer. Your solution was very effective. And somehow your assumption that others must be having a similar experience, so you could share how you got your butt back in the chair every day. Congrats.
Issue with using ai is simple, lack of creativity and consistency. You have to do the mental effort anyways, someone has to make up a good story, otherwise what you end up with is a work that you're not really vested in, filled with filler content.
Thanks you for making this video! I've watched a lot of your (and other RU-vidr) videos and wondered how much time it's saving (especially the 5,000 word superprompt that's as long as my average short story). I recently started using NovelCrafter with Claude and have had the same experiences you mention. The time-per-1000 words I spend in front of the computer is equivalent to doing all the writing myself. The life-changing difference is I'm spending more hours each day at the computer 'in the flow' instead of walking away frustrated. After the planning is done and Codex populated, writing and generating one scene beat at a time in NovelCrafter with Claude generates amazingly good prose. Claude generates many of the little details that I'm weak at and have to layer in over multiple edits. Tweaking the generated scene beat before doing the next one gradually turns Claude into a clairvoyant writing partner. This weekend, AI and I wrote a short story that normally takes me 2 or 3 weeks. Congratulations on your novel! Keep writing and sharing your knowledge and experiences with us.
I've been trying to write a novel with the help of GPT off and on for about a year and I've found that it does some things extremely well like filling in minor details and researching topics i don't know anything about (accuracy isn't super important for fiction) but otherwise it seems like it is only providing the illusion of help. The quality of it's writing is not good enough so i have to rewrite more than 90% of what it says, but more importantly, it's not helping me fix a fatal flaw with the premise so I can't get the first chapter written.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 📚 *Writing an Entire Book with AI* - Using AI for writing didn't save a significant amount of time. - AI can be a valuable tool for reducing mental effort in writing. - Many people with various challenges find AI to be a helpful aid in writing. 03:25 🤖 *Choosing the Right AI Model* - Claude 2.0 is currently the best AI model for writing fiction. - Experimenting with writing sections manually and letting AI continue. - Considering using tools like Novel Crafter for a better writing process. 05:42 🧩 *AI's Role in Strengthening Weaknesses* - AI can enhance weaker aspects of writing while allowing focus on strengths. - Example: AI helped write Sherlock Holmes dialogue effectively. - AI assists in raising the baseline quality of the entire manuscript. 07:47 📏 *Unexpected Manuscript Length* - The final book was shorter than expected, around 50,000 words. - Considering whether to add scenes to flesh out the story further. - Length variation in novels, influenced by the number of viewpoint characters. 09:09 🎉 *Emotional Impact of Finishing with AI* - The emotional significance of completing a novel after a long hiatus. - AI reduced the dread of starting from a blank page. - A celebration of finishing a book with AI assistance. Made with HARPA AI
I’ve never been a reddit-er because I think that platform is toxic, I went on there just to see what the general public’s reaction is to ai and just made me so discouraged to write my book because I’m afraid I’ll be shunned because of the use of AI but one thing I noticed while reading the comments is that they think writing with ai mean entering a prompt, clicking a button and chat GPT will spit out a 90k fiction novel, when it actually doesn’t work like that! Watching your videos and seeing the process you go through to write your novel using ai has given me more hope that I’m the original creator but used a tool to help me complete my work… I’m just hoping that when I start marketing my book and openly admit I used ai to help me write my book I won’t get all this immediate hate, I know I’ll get some and that unavoidable but I just hope people understand I still have this story my whole heart and soul to create and ai made being a writer accessible to me!
Just found your channel tonight. I just got over a huge peroid of my life where i was struggling with depression, anxiety, and i just got diagnosed with ADHD so I was dealing with that (on top of being legally blind). I've always found myself to be a creative thinker but never had the knowledge or skills to make stories. A.I. and your content give me a sense of relief that handicapped individuals like myself can create stuff if we use the right tools. So thank you. You've earned this sub.
Hey, as long as you've proven that AI can be used as the free/low-cost ghostwriter that most writers (aspiring and otherwise) have always wanted, I'm all for it.
I feel like you tore a page from my diary. Everything you said has been my experience. The burnout, the ADHD, the depression I’ve been struggling to finish a book again and I’m going to do in 2024 and get going again! Thank you for your videos!!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 📚 *Writing Entire Book with AI* - Using AI to write a book didn't save much time; the process was similar to manual writing. - AI's primary benefit lies in saving mental effort, making the writing process more accessible for those facing challenges like burnout, ADHD, or depression. 02:02 🤖 *Choosing AI Models for Fiction Writing* - Claude 2.0 is considered the best AI model for writing fiction. - Testing a new approach for the next book: writing the initial part manually (500 words) and then allowing AI to continue, aiming for a more seamless match of styles. - Exploring tools like Novel Crafter for a section-by-section writing approach. 05:42 🔄 *AI Filling Weaknesses and Enhancing Strengths* - AI excels at filling in weaknesses, especially evident in dialogue writing for distinctive characters like Sherlock Holmes. - Allows authors to focus on strengths during editing, raising the overall baseline of the prose. 07:47 📏 *Unexpected Shorter Word Count* - The AI-written story turned out shorter than expected (50,000 words vs. expected 75,000). - Considering the impact on pacing and whether additional scenes are needed for a more balanced narrative. 09:09 🎉 *Emotional Impact of Finishing a Novel* - Celebrating the emotional significance of finishing a novel after a long hiatus. - AI didn't save significant time but spared the author from the struggles of starting from a blank page, contributing to the accomplishment. Made with HARPA AI
Congrats sir. Take a victory lap. Out of curiosity, why did you commission the art instead of generating it? Given the entire point was to use AI to help write it, wouldn't it have been more fitting to use AI art for the art?
the great thing about AI, it's the low cost effort to explore new ideas. Problem, it's easy to be lost creating new things you will not use. It's like you start digging a hole to plant a tree, and you end up excavating an underground dungeon. When you finaly get out, you're not where you started.
I was all in on AI-- and it's still great for other things-- but the whole Claude 2.0 to 2.1 thing showed me that AI is too unreliable-- is changing too quickly-- to be used as part of a drafting workflow. It's a waste of time to reinvent the wheel in the middle of a project. All we're ever doing is: this is how you do this new thing. Not this is how you work with AI on a practical, day-to-day level.
This is exactly what has me so interested in writing the half a dozen books that have been floating around in my head forma decade or so. The mental work part was the hump, and AI lifts that load well.
Can AI help me to write a full novel?? I'm not a writer, but then I always have story ideas on many genre, but developing it into full novel is what I don't know, so can AI help??
Great video, lots of great perspective. It brings a good question, when is a person creating a book from desperation to pay bills or tell themselves they can write for ego, and when is a person writing because they can actually write.
Thanks for sharing and congratulations. I'm not a writer, I'm great at telling stories and I have a great book idea, but I hate writing, with the help of AI I am going to attempt to write that book and tell that story :)
I agree with most of what you have said. The only one I have differing views on is the time savings. In my case, I spent several years wasting time trying to determine what came next for what I needed to write, then rewriting because I would not work with what I developed. Then I discovered outlining, not simple outlining, but very detailed outlining. I suddenly could scream through a lot of my books once the outline was written, 8k to 10k a day was not unusual when I have a good outline. However, I was now spending horrendous amounts of time outlining, for much the same reason. Being someone with ADHD, I have tons of ideas and find it hard to distill them down to something coherent. AI helps me get those outlines done faster, not because it writes it all 100%, but I can throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Then, I edit the outline heavily. Next, I generate the beats and go to editing. Simply put, I can get some structure and an idea of the path I can follow to get everything done in a rather quick fashion, which saves me so much time. I had a novel I had been working on the outline for over a year. It is very special to me for several reasons, so I wanted it perfect. For NANOWRIMO I decided to start from scratch and rewrite what I had all over again from scratch. By the 16th of November, the book was done and I believe it is better than it would have been because I came up with so many new elements to the book using AI. Things that were lost in the ADHD fog before, came to light with much more clarity. One little plot point that was going to be a small part of one chapter turned into a chapter of its own during the process. Thanks for everything you do Jason.
If you have to do all this then just write the damn thing yourself with a little thing called human imagination. A.I should be a editor not the creator
People use AI for all kinds of purposes. There’s no one right way to do it. It’s different for everyone. For some it might be editing. For others it might be a different part of the process. It’s all creative work.
Thank you for the video very much, So what it be your recommendation to not use things like chat GPT and Jasper? And particularly interested on how Jasper would help with writing a novel... I heard the one you mentioned Claude I think it's called and then there was another one... What do you recommend?😊
I made the same experience. Nevertheless, my question is: with the use of AI productivity will skyrocket, because, as you point out, more people will write books. As the number of readers will not increase, who will buy all this stuff?
Great video! I just recently started using AI to help me write a children's novel, and it's been a HUGE help! My biggest hurdle has always been drafting and worrying about the draft being "perfect". AI - Sudowrite, in my case - has been helping me create a proto draft that is definitely imperfect. Everything else is still mine (although the AI has also helped me with character names and plot elements), and I intend to do some heavy editing. Thank you for making this, and for supporting AI for what it is: A TOOL.
I love your explanation. I'm an idea man. I CAN do the writing, but I feel more productive when I'm improving the AI-generated product... turning it from random generated, into "my original idea, realized"
ADHD here. Depression, anxiety, the whole bit. Ive hit burnout big time. AI is helping to organize my unwieldy plots. 😊 Thank you for legitimizing the use of tools.
I'm very interested in AI. I've been a professional screenwriter for nearly 30 years and I'm completely burned out by the process. I want to start writing some novels but the whole Idea of sitting down and "grinding" it out keeps holding me back.
I was able to start a story I had in mind since my teenage age, I had tried many time, but I’m not a writer, I have a clear idea of the general concept I want to dig (sci-fi context exploring societal transformations).Ai helped me getting that story peu à peu out, I am writing épisode after episode (like a série) and I make a lot of iterations, developing some parts, rewriting bits, getting better I think episode after episode. I now cut a lot, re-organize and give the whole context again and again to keep some consistency. It’s not as easy as one can think whithout trying, lot of work but so rewarding to see the story coming to life after so many years….cheers from France.
I've found AI does save me time in research. I write fantasy and sci/fi and used to spend HOURS of my writing time trying to find information on some obscure thing that would get two lines of a mention in my book but I couldn't move on until I got it down for little details it might affect. AI being at least surface-level interpretive allowed me to ask very specific questions (rather than searching hoping someone had written something tangentially related to what I wanted to know) and get specific answers. I haven't found much benefit in it generating the actual text, and choose not to use it for that, but research ... the research time saved is a game changer (always have to remember to check sources and not just take it at face value).
Just want to share my alignment with your takeaways. I made a series of video essays lately, all done in co-operative with AI systems on text, image, video and sound. My experience is precisely the same: 1. not a time saver, but pain-reducer, 2. the quality of co-operative effort with AI is better than what I would be capable of by myself alone, 3. Coming back to the process is much more fun than painful, I find a pleasure in it due to surprises and curiosity that co-operation with AI brings (just another consequence of point1. And last but not least it requires your constant effort and focus on what is truly aligned with you and what is not and reworking parts that are not, which at the end make it completely yours, because it is like talking with someone about ideas and shaping them at end your way. And also I observed the same issue: the final result is rushed too much. It stems from the fact that some sentences seem to be on-point so much that they seem to not require any adjustment, yet on the large scale the time factor of leading to some dramatic or narrative points requires some proper pacing to be digestible and that tends to slip out our attention during the process because we already have this narrative in our heads, so some shortcuts are imperceivable in the process and only at the end you can notice you get to some stuff to quickly. Anyway: thanks for summing your effort up and I'm happy to share similar insights from my experience.
This is something I noticed as well, concerning things feeling rushed. It's not a bad thing either, I just noticed I was being more concise and being detailed without wasting so many words. It's an interesting feeling, but I'm not complaining. AI feels like it's helping me do what I've been capable of to begin with and I love using it.
I believe as you do, that ai CAN be a useful tool, much like a collaborator or as you stated, a ghost writer... to help generate flow. There's no shame in enlisting the help of a friend to write a book. Ai can be that friend. Good for you! I hope you and ai can write many more books together. I would give him a "name" and credit him.
I have been stuck on plotting and writing my story for over 4 years. Never could execute how to write it how I wanted or even start the plot, With Claude I was able to write 40 minutes worth of reading and chapters of my story. I made more progress in a few minutes than I did in over four years.
I have douzens of first scenes..even one or two first chapters... but I always loose the plot. AI allowed me to actually get a full plot line worked out to keep me on track. Now, when I get lost, I know where to continue. I can confidently leave scenes to work on later because I know what other scenes I have comming. Discovery writing and pantsing flows a lot easier, but the moment it stops flowing, it dies. Using AI to help plotting gives me hope that I might one day actually finish the second chapter of a story.
I'm a dictation-style writer, and so far I've found using full-blown AI that it does save more mental energy than time. To me, after about 4 days of effort, have gotten a few hundred more words a day than I normally do, and through a few techniques, I've been able to do it in less time. The experiment continues. I do edit the AI out quite a bit, but I've managed to quickly find the decent parts and "write up" to them.
The only reason something matters in life is because a human made it, which is because it was difficult to perfect. I understand your thoughts on why does something have to be hard, and how people who say something shouldn’t be easy are wrong. Buddy that’s gonna be ok for like a few decades maybe. But eventually, when anyone can do anything, it won’t matter what any of us do. But to all who see Ai as an excuse to stop making human art, that’s an excuse and the people using the Ai to make their art really are on the right side of history.
Ah, how fondly I remember a little while ago when you kind of apologized for a title that was a bit click-baity... I know the received wisdom says the ridiculously surprised thumbnails get views, but I just can't do it - and I can't help the algorithm make that true by watching videos that use them. It's a silly line in the sand, I guess, but everyone has to have one.
After spending 6 months playing with AI as an Author, I think i came to the same conclusion. 5 Years from now, maybe it will be able to generate acceptable prose, but for now, it really doesn't. BUT... it does some very clever things with plots, characters, scenes, and settings that, if you prompt it correctly, will make the whole process more enjoyable. It ranges from having a writing coach available 24-7 to having an actual writing partner that you can bounce ideas off of. So, no, it doesn't create prose right out of the box, but it does move you past all those pinch points that might have kept you from getting to the actually writing partner. Remember, most these were trained on millions upon millions of word in fiction, etc... so at a structure level, it is spot on.
Thanks for the video. As a writer who is getting into Novelcrafter as a way of helping me outline and draft this was very helpful. I was wondering about how can you use Novelcrafter to write a sequel? I've looked around but can't find anything on this yet. I assume it would involve put an outline, characters, etc.. from the previous book into the Codex?
I agree with the general sentiment that folks shouldn't have to struggle or toil to write a book, but I don't consider AI-assisted writing or art any easier. It's still cognitively intensive. It's just a different kind of mental work, and if that lowers the barrier of entry or makes it easier for someone to get through the stages of a project that are more challenging for them, then I think it's great. I finally cancelled my Claude subscription and if I use it at all, I'm using it in Novelcrafter. For now I'm still keeping my ChatGPT pro sub, mostly to be able to use my custom GPTs. I haven't found much of a "style" improvement from letting the AI continue a section I already started, but YMMV. My style is pretty much the polar opposite of AI's default fiction style, so I do *a lot* of editing after the fact even with an extensive style guide. It is what it is.
Just found your channel yesterday and am loving it, thanks. Would love to see more on how to come up with all the ideas and details for the novel. I’ve found ai creates these outlines with lots of potential but haven’t found the best step by step way to confirm which ideas I like best for things like “clues” or “artifacts” or “mid story twists”. Would you still do all your brainstorming in ChatGPT? Or would it work in Novel Crafter just as well?
I'd also add that it is a time-saving investment, as you will be able to duplicate this process more efficiently, if not now than soon in the future. What takes you two weeks today will take you two hours tomorrow.
I love your videos and I follow you however, I’m not fond of you, saying the word “entire” six times in the first two minutes in this video and then, when you say “to be completely honest”, makes me think that you’re not normally honest,
IA aided my progress to write my first two novels. One fantasy and one sci-fi thriller. I'm not letting AI write the whole story, I want everything written in a way that resembles my way of story telling. So whatever I do with AI it will be rewritten so that it will be an original book.
Without a doubt, there is a lot of "do it faster with AI" hype but "saving time" is an interesting metric for a guy who admits not having completed a novel in several years due to burnout. Many folks completed a novel in the NaNoWriMo challenge, so 30 days is a worthy goal. Completing a novel in that time with less mental stress and to a point where it can be edited into something that can be published is outstanding. Kudos! The speed boost I see, as a first-time writer, is that AI (and Grammarly) gets me to the point of learning how to write and edit prose and compose scenes much faster. The two things I've learned in just four months are how much fun this process can be and how easy it gets my inner creative mind to come alive.
Congrats on finishing the book! I've been sort of in a burnout myself. I was on a roll in November with writing but with Christmas, wroking extra at the day job and lots of stress, I've done no writing in about 6 weeks. I could have written the last few days but there's this dread inside that I can't explain. I plan to do some writing tomorrow now. Your video has inspired me because I was finding the exact same thing when using AI. It did so much better than me at the parts I dislike writing but made it fun to edit the parts I love to write and make it 'mine'. Btw, I read a scene that was part AI, part me (all intermingled) to my writer's group. They have heard a lot of my stuff before and they didn't notice a difference. I didn't tell them that part was AI.
I agree with ai solving the blank paper problem in all areas. From writing a document to coding even though I will most times rewrite and it probably takes longer it is mind fresher. Coding for instance I stopped for years but do more now with gpts.
hello Jason, I really love your videos. please can you do a video telling us all the free LLM' s that are good and available to write fiction. this would help a lot of us that currently don't have cash to invest in a paid subscription. thanks.
Thank you for sharing! I think this may be the first time I have heard a writer admit that using AI does not save them much time, if any at all. But I am not surprised. Collaborations are also unlikely to multiply the speed of writing by the number of writers involved, but can improve the quality by drawing on each writer's strengths. This strikes me as more similar to that, rather than an automation or industrialization of writing as some seem to aim for. I would rather read one well-written book than five poorly written ones made over the same time period, so your approach makes more sense to me.
Great video. I got really into AI over the past year, through your video and others, but I decided to step back a bit because it was just taking me longer. Now I just type into Novel AI and hit the Generate button everytime I get stuck to come up with ideas, and that works for me.
Happy New Year! AI’s has made my approach to writing more structured, though Sudowrite has gone from game-changer to ill-fitting suit. Your prompts have been very useful, particularly as examples of the art of prompting - many thanks. At the moment I’m big on Novelcrafter, fallen in and then out of love with Claude and started to give ChatGPT more credence, particularly 4 turbo. Probably all change in a month or so. All the best for the next twelve months.
