In the writing groups I float in, there has been a lot of talk about the steps to writing a novel. Despite having started the MFA track while I was in undergrad (had the opportunity to do a dual program of English Literature and get my MFA, but decided to opt out of it for various reason, one of which was having to play “catch up” because I started my major late), I never really learned the structure of actually writing a novel. In Introduction to Popular Fiction (one of two writing classes I got to take before dropping the Dual program) outlined the typical novel: Beginning. Middle. End. The structure varied depending on genre. So… how does one actually start writing a novel? That question— and the concept of not knowing— really surprises me. My first thought after seeing it pop up so many times was “easy…. Just write!” and, though there were a few similar responses to mine, the more technical replies made me turn inward and examine my own writing process.
There are a myriad of structures of various lengths and breadths. What's my process? I was an Art Therapy major before I pursued English Literature and writing during my time in Under Grad. Writing is like a lump of clay. Its already there, shapeless and blob like. There is a vague vision. Sometimes no vision at all. You work the clay, playing around with it, feeling a shape take form beneath your fingers. When your done moving the lump around, it begins to resemble something. The more you work the clay, the more of that something you have until the sculpture at the very end. Its not perfect, but its there. All that's left is to define it, fire it, polish it, check for any imperfections. Display it. I finish my draft of The Path of the Cave Stars (I have no idea which draft this is... I lost count somewhere after the 4th revision). I am now refining it-- running it through a Text To Speech Reader so that I can hear my words out loud and make further edits as I follow along. Once that process is over, I’ll seek 3-4 Beta readers and shift gears to another project while that's being read.
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While my Generative AI post was more informational rather than a critique of AI, this post will share my thoughts on the topic. My preconception of AI, ChatGPT, and generative AI was that it created lazy human beings. My thoughts on when the media was saturated with it were:
....until SF/F author L.Penelope's Footnotes newsletter where she mentioned a cool new tool: "ChatPDF--Upload a PDF and the chatbot will summarize it for you!" By this point, I felt like I was failing with my query letters and summaries and had no one to turn to. So my reason for following the link was to get an idea of how this chatbot would summarize my novel. HOWEVER, I ended up using it for something else entirely. Like all chatbots, ChatPDF will essentially have a conversation with you. Once you upload a your PDF and it "reads" it, it waits for you to talk to it. I asked it questions like "who is the main character and what do they want?" I was gleefully surprised when it told me about my main character and what exactly her motivations were. I asked it another question, "what's this novel about?" to which it replied "not enough information given".... which was understandable since I only uploaded the first three chapters (the paranoid skeptic in me didn't want to upload the whole manuscript). I uploaded more and more, asking it questions about various characters and plots, taking notes on the ones where the chatbot seemed to struggle with and noting the character summaries it gave me. I came to realize that, if chatbot struggled with my questions, then I hadn't written the character or the plot point well enough and therefore had to return to it and edit it. For example, I asked the bot about my Main Character's love interest. This is the response it gave me:
Oof! That was not what I wanted to hear. Its response wasn't as detailed as its characterization of my MC. It seemed to pull scenes but not interpret them like it when deducing my MC's motivations.
I made a note so that I could revisit this character's introduction to make it evident who he is and the role he will play in the story. ChatPDF is like having a critique partner. It never told me what to do or how to write, but helped me see the weak spots in my manuscript. I'd say, its a good tool for the initial editing phase, before it reaches a Beta reader, for example. I actually really like it! However, I stand firm in the belief that this tool (and all the others like it) cannot replace human interaction and input. My manuscript still needs human eyes, human thoughts, and human emotions to tell me whether or not what I am trying to convey comes across beyond just the words. I give this tool 3 out of 5 stars. Where it failed to earn the other two was that I found, the longer the PDF, the more chatbot "skimmed." There were questions I asked it where it said "no information" but the the answers I knew were in the story. I even directed it to a specific page ("that page does not exist") and a specific chapter ("that chapter does not exist"). So, it seems that it reads up to a certain point in longer PDFs. 50 pages at a time seems like the sweet spot, though. ----------------------------------------- Have you used this tool? What are your thoughts on AI and bots? |
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