What makes a writer?

[Aisling]

I do not think you can be taught to be a writer of creative fiction. Some natural ability is required. Most writer remember being ‘good’ at English back from their first days at school. Writers often have a compulsive urge to put words on paper, whether it is crafting amusing letters home, writing poetic verse, or inventing stories.

Few writers become successful authors; it is hard to stand out in a crowded field of natural talent. Still fewer writers sell enough of their work to make a living out of it, and a tiny fraction write a best seller. Most of us accept the odds against success but never give up.

Nobody with any self- respect would ask AI to write for them. For a start, what AI produces is generally crap, and devious authors who use the AI response as a sort of template and mix in their own work (which is also crap) to avoid software detection, are fooling nobody.

 

[greyblob]

what makes a writer (stroking ego and a rant)

 

[DireBadger]

I see. He has no interest in talking about writers; he is looking for a reason to rant against spellcheckers. Or maybe he's just angry that someone who uses AI for ideas, and then rewrites them to actually be good stories, is more popular, and he frames it as self-respect in order to make it look 'noble'.

interesting.

 

[Enkiari]

While there is a blury line in using AI to assist your work, I would like to point out that giving a prompt is not writing.
You are a tool operator, not a craftsperson at that point.
So no. By definition, promters are not writers.

 

[DireBadger]

While there is a blury line in using AI to assist your work, I would like to point out that giving a prompt is not writing.
You are a tool operator, not a craftsperson at that point.
So no. By definition, promters are not writers.

Except he literally stated "devious authors who use the AI response as a sort of template and mix in their own work" which means, anyone that uses AI to create story seeds, which is, in fact, a template.

so if I say, for example, "Here is chapter 9. what would be some good, devious ways to get him into the duchesses bedroom without using supernatural abilities" and I use any of the ideas, well, then by his, and apparently your, definition I am standing back and letting tools do all the work, even if every word is typed by me. Or do you think not handwriting the text first makes me an inferior writer? I am pretty sure that some ranted against typewriters destroying writer creativity too.

I suggest trying to hand-build a car without using any tools. Good luck, see you in a decade, and I doubt anyone would consider that 'morally superior' or consider the mechanic less of a craftsman for using real tools.

 

[Enkiari]

Except he literally stated "devious authors who use the AI response as a sort of template and mix in their own work" which means, anyone that uses AI to create story seeds, which is, in fact, a template.

so if I say, for example, "Here is chapter 9. what would be some good, devious ways to get him into the duchesses bedroom without using supernatural abilities" and I use any of the ideas, well, then by his, and apparently your, definition I am standing back and letting tools do all the work.

I suggest trying to hand-build a car without using any tools. Good luck, see you in a decade, and I doubt anyone would consider that 'morally superior' or consider the mechanic less of a craftsman for using real tools.

I did not make any such claims.
I said the line can be blurry and just a prompt does not make you a writer.
The rest you made up in your head.

 

[DireBadger]

*sigh* I thought 'prompters are not writers' is a pretty solid definition of where you stand.

Very serious question, though. Where do we draw the line? It's obviously not at the prompt. It probably isn't even the word count, because I have seen writers that create an interesting 6000 word chapter, and let the ai 'trim and reword' down to 2000 words so it's absolutely still their chapter but you couldn't actually point at a single word they typed personally.

I am beginning to think that attempting to define or even regulate AI writing is a task that is doomed to failure. You might want to look at quality instead, which is vastly more productive and yet difficult to define.

 

[Enkiari]

*sigh* I thought 'prompters are not writers' is a pretty solid definition of where you stand.

Very serious question, though. Where do we draw the line? It's obviously not at the prompt. It probably isn't even the word count, because I have seen writers that create an interesting 6000 word chapter, and let the ai 'trim and reword' down to 2000 words so it's absolutely still their chapter but you couldn't actually point at a single word they typed personally.

I am beginning to think that attempting to define or even regulate AI writing is a task that is doomed to failure. You might want to look at quality instead, which is vastly more productive and yet difficult to define.

Pfffff ahahahahhahaahaha... you are fighting some hallucinations.
I said - just. Promting. Does. Not. Make. You. A. Writer.
If you promt and use an... lets say an arbitrarily high percentage - 90% - and edit the rest.
At which point did you write?
As I see it, you operated a tool and edited.
Both does not qualify you as a writer.
Now. There is a blury part in all of this, of course. Some people do heavy edits to transform the results they get, but I am not talking about those.

I am saying - giving a promt is like giving an authomatic burger maker an order. You dont get to call yourself a cook once you get your meal.
Giving a commision to an artist and sketching what you need does not make you an artist.
Giving a prompt doea not make you a writer.

 

[DireBadger]

Here's an example. I loved Robert Heinlein growing up. And yet, by today's standards, his writing, even his later writing, is shallow and almost childlike. Why? Because today, we have the internet to research, we can, with just 10 bucks a month, access tens of thousands of professionally-written stories on Amazon. He was a trailblazer in an empty field. The same can be said for Harrison, Asimov, or even tolkein.


I think it's getting to the point, with copyright law lasting nearly a hundred years and the fact that with a few button pushes anyone can read tens of thousands of books, that what makes a 'good story' has exceeded raw talent by a large margin. It is simply too high a bar for evena professional author to match anymore. You can look at the bestseller list and literally pick through EVERY part of a book, and show where someone else did it better or more compellingly.

The fact is, that without serious assistance, I think that writing a competitive book in today's market is becoming impossible. I use AI assistance constantly... not for re-writing, but for editing, fact-checking (which it is abysmally bad at, by the way.) or even looking up minor 'factoids' to add to a written account. Sometimes I even let it come up with ideas to help me past 'writers block', or ask it to re-word an entire paragraph that simply isn't working right. Because without it? I am fighting an uphill battle against a saturated market.

You used to be able to count good scifi writers with your fingers. Now, you are lucky to find a database big enough to hold all the names.

Sure, it is easy to detect something 'written by ai' at the moment, but fortunately or unfortunately, it IS becoming better. Not just the ai engine, but peoples ability to USE the tool effectively and bypass it's shortcomings is dramatically improving as well. Prompt engineering is becoming as much of a science as video game design.

I just don't think it's safe to consider a hard and fast rule. Bad AI and bad writing are becoming basically the same thing. In fact, asking... say... chatgpt to write a particular style of story for you, with intelligent prompt design, is likely to produce a FAR better result than half the fanfiction on this site.

It is a very hard row to hoe now, and it is only going to get more impossible as time goes by.

 

[Aisling]

Except he literally stated "devious authors who use the AI response as a sort of template and mix in their own work" which means, anyone that uses AI to create story seeds, which is, in fact, a template.

so if I say, for example, "Here is chapter 9. what would be some good, devious ways to get him into the duchesses bedroom without using supernatural abilities" and I use any of the ideas, well, then by his, and apparently your, definition I am standing back and letting tools do all the work, even if every word is typed by me. Or do you think not handwriting the text first makes me an inferior writer? I am pretty sure that some ranted against typewriters destroying writer creativity too.

I suggest trying to hand-build a car without using any tools. Good luck, see you in a decade, and I doubt anyone would consider that 'morally superior' or consider the mechanic less of a craftsman for using real tools.

 

[Enkiari]

Here's an example. I loved Robert Heinlein growing up. And yet, by today's standards, his writing, even his later writing, is shallow and almost childlike. Why? Because today, we have the internet to research, we can, with just 10 bucks a month, access tens of thousands of professionally-written stories on Amazon. He was a trailblazer in an empty field. The same can be said for Harrison, Asimov, or even tolkein.


I think it's getting to the point, with copyright law lasting nearly a hundred years and the fact that with a few button pushes anyone can read tens of thousands of books, that what makes a 'good story' has exceeded raw talent by a large margin. It is simply too high a bar for evena professional author to match anymore. You can look at the bestseller list and literally pick through EVERY part of a book, and show where someone else did it better or more compellingly.

The fact is, that without serious assistance, I think that writing a competitive book in today's market is becoming impossible. I use AI assistance constantly... not for re-writing, but for editing, fact-checking (which it is abysmally bad at, by the way.) or even looking up minor 'factoids' to add to a written account. Sometimes I even let it come up with ideas to help me past 'writers block', or ask it to re-word an entire paragraph that simply isn't working right. Because without it? I am fighting an uphill battle against a saturated market.

You used to be able to count good scifi writers with your fingers. Now, you are lucky to find a database big enough to hold all the names.

Sure, it is easy to detect something 'written by ai' at the moment, but fortunately or unfortunately, it IS becoming better. Not just the ai engine, but peoples ability to USE the tool effectively and bypass it's shortcomings is dramatically improving as well. Prompt engineering is becoming as much of a science as video game design.

I just don't think it's safe to consider a hard and fast rule. Bad AI and bad writing are becoming basically the same thing. In fact, asking... say... chatgpt to write a particular style of story for you, with intelligent prompt design, is likely to produce a FAR better result than half the fanfiction on this site.

It is a very hard row to hoe now, and it is only going to get more impossible as time goes by.

Neat.
Your argument is - you can't tell the difference, so why should we make a distinction, not that there is no distinction.
Which is not the same.
Honestly, if you spent some time and thought about it, you would realise that people who operates machinery that fabricates things are not called 'craftspeople'. On paper, they are 'operators'. Machinists. Whatever.
Does the consumer knows about the difference? Do they care? Nope.

But that doesn't mean the difference in the process of creating is not there.
Honestly, people calling AI Art 'Art' does it only because it sounds better than any of the alternatives and they average person doesn't give a fuck.
Are they artists? Nope.
It's just simpler for simple minds to parse info if you use more generic terms.

In the end. What are you on about?
None of the things you are talking about were in my arguments. It feels like you are fighting some kind of shadow.

 

[Aisling]

Shelbie

in your post. you have misinterpreted my use of the word 'devious' in the sentence, "devious authors who use the AI response as a sort of template and mix in their own work."

I employ the adjective 'devious' in the sense of an author, intending it to mean to wilfully deceive or misrepresent his story as his own work, by plagiarising the ideas of others (in this case, AI) and attempting to disguise the deception by mixing in some words of his own.
Before the advent of AI, some students used to use a similar tactic of changing a few words of an idea or quote they had found in a textbook or novel, in the hope that the marker of their essay would not spot it.

You use the word ‘devious ' to mean clever or imaginative plot ideas to improve your fiction provided by AI, which is not what I meant at all.

I would say that the use of AI in this form is something of a grey area when attributing ownership, but I agree that if the idea inspires you to create a scene of your own, and it is just the idea, and not the adaptation or copy of a full scene produced by AI, then it is probably acceptable.

If, after reading ‘Oliver Twist,’ you were inspired to write, say, a fictional but fact-based original novel on the mistreatment of children in Victorian times and the hypocrisy of the church going establishment, then nobody would dispute that the novel belongs to you.

 

[DireBadger]

sometimes Englits is hard.

 

[Deleted member 206441]

I dont know... instead of spending so much time thinking about a.i., maybe use that time to write more, flesh out your ideas, or test different narrative structures, or try new linguistics techniques or edit your book or something.

Or if a.i. already do those things for you, go pick up a new hobby, like drawing or something.

Or if a.i. already do that for you, go pick up a new hobby, like painting or something.

Or if a.i. already do that for you, go pick up a new hobby, like learn an instrument and do music or something.

Or if a.i. already do that for you, go pick up a new hobby, like learn coding and make a video game or something.

Or if a.i. already do that for you, go pick up a new hobby, like go hiking or something.


Uh~~~ got there in the end...

 

[Cookiez_N_Potionz]

I don't think I'm cut out to be a writer but I like being creative. Whether it's drawing, writing or photography. I did drawing first but I was falling behind in school, so I switched to writing. Thought it was a good compromise at the time.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

Possibly an unpopular opinion,

I think the moment you allow AI to touch any of your writing outside of maybe a translator/spelling/grammar checker, you are no longer a writer/authour. You gave your creative licence over to a computer, and even if you touch it up afterwards, it no longer becomes yours alone, but a work created by the AI.

It is the same idea as if you get AI to draw something and you try and call yourself an artist. I had AI make my avatar, so does that make me an artist? No, I had a tool generate a picture for me.

You could call yourself the 'Idea Guy', or maybe a 'Visionary' of sorts, but if you are letting the AI do the creation process for you, you shouldn't really consider yourself a writer.

That said, if you want to read a story with an idea that you came up with, and you get the AI to flesh out a story with that idea, go for it. Just don't try and claim it as your own writing, because it is not.

 

[HisDivineShadow]

Escape from reality

 

[lambenttyto]

I think a writer is a person who writes. If you're using AI to produce pose, you're not writing, you're prompting. For me, the most important thing about writing is maintaining the fact that it is "art," and what makes it art is your unique style through voice. Even rough prose with author voice is better than clean prose with the authorial voice polished out of it.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Imagination and/or delusion.

 

[3guanoff]

Time and a writing instrument - I prefer a pen.