Don't Let AI Rot Your Brain (Why You Should Never Use ChatGPT As A Writing Tool)

When you first start a workout regimen, it can be equal parts hard but invigorating. You're moving your muscles in new ways, you're getting used to new poses, new lifts, new everything. You might even be changing your diet, if you're going really hard. But pretty soon, you'll feel that shiny new exterior start to wear thin. You'll start dragging yourself to the gym, and grumbling under your breath between sets that you wish you didn't have to do this. You wished there was some other way... some magic shortcut you could take to just get trim, strong, and firm without all this sweating and straining.

And there are a thousand and one scams promising to give you that. A special diet that will melt away pounds of fat without any extra work. A little device that will shock your stomach into a six pack. A simple routine found only among a secret sect of monks who are all absolutely ripped. A little pill that will give you the get-up-and-go you need to make your gains.

This isn't about crash diets and exercise scams. This is about ChatGPT.

It's like fake diet pills, but for your writing.

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The Only Person You're Cheating Is Yourself

We've all seen companies and individuals jamming generative AI programs into everything. They've infected our search engines, they're all over social media, and they're infesting the marketplace as scammers offer entire novels "written" by these programs in hopes of making a quick buck. And if you're the sort of writer who wants to skip the hard work and fast-forward to the story being done, these plagiarism programs offer you the siren's song you want to hear. They promise you complete stories, unique stories, and then you'll be done in a record amount of time. They swear they're just going to take the work out of writing, handling the grunt work that's dragging you down.

They're promising that you'll get rippling, six-pack abs while laying on the couch and pounding chips by the family-sized bag. All the results, and none of the fuss.

Don't you want those gains already, bruh?

If you've ever been on a crash diet, or used a fitness gimmick, then you already know what the problem is. Because sure, it might get you some short-term losses around your waist, or give you some temporary feelings of health, but if you use these things long-term they're going to do serious harm to your body.

And that's what ChatGPT does to your brain.

Because for all the hype around this program and what it can supposedly do to mimic human thought and speech, there are stories out there of people who used it as a mental crutch until their academic legs atrophied under them. There are stories of high school and college students who had it write their papers, but then found that when it came time to take their final exams they have no actual knowledge or learned skill to call upon. There have been people who tried to use it to write legal briefs, and found that it was quoting cases that never happened, attempting to sound smart when the machine is just guessing. There are people who've used it to try to get ahead at work, and people who've used it for regular socialization who suddenly flounder when they no longer have a program telling them what to say or do.

It's the equivalent of sending a robot to the gym to lift weights and run on the treadmill for you. Yeah, the work is technically being done, but you aren't getting any stronger from doing it. In fact, if all you do is sit at home on the couch, you're getting weaker while letting the robot go through your routine for you.

That's what generative AI is doing to you. Because it's hard putting words on the page day after day, honing your skills, and finding just the right turns of phrase. But if the Internet goes down and someone hands you a pen, you can still write a story... and probably a pretty good story, if you've been putting in the work to really build your skills. But if you've been letting the computer do all the heavy lifting for you, and someone asks you to pick up the 250 lbs. you keep saying you're capable of bench pressing, it's going to crush you.

Git Gud... You Won't Regret It!

Writing is not just about putting together a short story, a novella, or a novel. It's also about honing the craft, finding your voice, and becoming more accomplished as a creator. For this reason, it's important to remember that even failed attempts are worthwhile. There is something to be learned with every assignment, every story, and every experiment... but you have to do it yourself. Otherwise you're never going to make any progress as a writer.

So yes, it's going to suck. You're going to tear out notebook paper, wad it up, and toss it in the garbage. You're going to reread something, sigh, and hold down the Delete key until it's all gone. And you're going to have those moments where you know something is wrong with your narrative, but you just can't quite put your finger on it.

Stick with it. It's going to be valuable when you realize you can shred your way through stories that once would have given you serious trouble, or that even on days where you're phoning it in you turn in Grade A work by most people's standards.

Don't take the easy way out... it's a lie. It's always been a lie.

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If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

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Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

The Point of Writing is Doing The Work (Giving The Middle Finger To A.I.)

I remember several years ago I was sitting in a stylist's chair getting my hair trimmed. As folks in this profession so often do, she started making small talk with me. When she found out I was a professional writer, though, it was like I'd opened a floodgate. Apparently she'd had this idea rolling around in her head for years that she thought would make a really good book. I can't remember most of it now, but it somehow involved a cartel drug dealer who got romantically entangled with his stylist, and the two of them had to go on the run from both gangsters and the ATF, trying to find some way to cut a deal so they could live happily ever after.

Could I have made that into a decent action romantic comedy? Sure... but what stuck with me even more than the idea was the serious tone in her voice when she looked in the mirror and said, "If you want to go in on this with me, we can split the take 50/50."

And this, I think, is what really gets to the heart of why so many people have fallen down the generative A.I. rabbit hole.

Chuck really puts it into simple words.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

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The Writing Is The Point

Before we get lost in the weeds, I want to make a clear distinction. "Generative A.I." refers to software programs that are trained off of data that are fed into them until they can recognize patterns, and produce something similar to what they've seen before. They also allow users to enter prompts, such as telling it to paint a portrait of a barbarian king holding an ax in the style of Frank Frazetta. Or telling it to write a short story about a secret, cannibal family in the style of H.P. Lovecraft. The main problem with these softwares is that they're thieves; the data they are fed is based on stolen work, taken from people who did not consent for their work to be used in training the software, so everything it creates is fruit from the poisoned tree. It doesn't matter how amazing the thing it made it, it's all tainted by that initial plagiarism.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that someone produced an "ethical" generative A.I. program for writers. Let's say that it was trained only on work that was given freely by writers, or that it used only works in the public domain. So you could just push a button and get a private detective story in the style of Agatha Christie, or perhaps a war story in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle (we'll assume his estate went along with this in the scenario I'm painting). You could do that.

But what's the point?

As Mr. Wendig said in the picture in the introduction, and as I said a while ago on my show Tabletop Mercenary over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, ideas are barely worth a weak piss in a stiff breeze. The idea isn't what's worth something... it's the execution of that idea that is worth something. It's the skill it takes to realize that idea, and to turn it into something that actually exists.

Consider any invention throughout history. From the telephone, to the automobile, to the locomotive, the ideas of those things aren't valuable. The execution of those things is. Saying, "It would be jolly convenient to be able to have a conversation with my friend on the other coast whenever I wished!" is not an inherently valuable thing. That idea is, on its own, worthless. The people who built the telegraph lines, and then the telephone lines, and the machinery that allowed voices to travel instantaneously over long distances are the ones that created something of value.

This is where the disconnect happens with so many people. Because we have this stereotype of The Visionary (TM) whose ideas are so powerful they can change the world. But as we've seen with Thomas Edison (who was only responsible for a fraction of the things he claimed credit for) and Elon Musk (who is responsible for nothing he's claimed credit for), vision is worthless. Vision is nothing without an engine to drive it, and to create actual momentum to make it into a reality... and if you aren't the one creating that momentum, then you weren't a meaningful part of the process.

Consider, for example, works of art that the church commissioned from the artist Michaelangelo. Sure, the church might have told him what they wanted the art to be (which figures from the bible it should feature, the general vibe the piece should give off, and so on), but when we study those art pieces, is the particular clergyman mentioned as anything other than a patron or sponsor? No, because the person who made the art is what matters. They are the one who turned vision into reality, not the patron who fed them the prompts. As such, they're the ones who deserve the credit.

If you want to be an artist, you have to make art. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If you turned to a writer, gave them the basic pitch of a book idea, and then they wrote the book, you are not an author. The same is true if you type a bunch of prompts into an engine, and then see what it spits out.

What I Am (And Am Not) Saying

That was a lot to take in, so I want to reiterate some points for folks who made it this far.

First of all, yes, there are tools you can use as a writer that involve you just pushing a button. From character name generators to automatic writing prompts, we have had access to generative tools for decades now. Hell, when I was in high school and just starting my journey as a writer, there was a website that held weekly contest for short stories written using the automated short story prompt generator.

However, before claiming something is a tool, you need to ask yourself several questions:

- Does it use stolen material to create what you are using?

- How much of the finished project does it create for you?

If something just creates a prompt, or gives you a character name, or even throws out a theme or plot synopsis for you, and it wasn't made using stolen text, that is a tool you can use as a writer. If you just feed in some prompts, and the thing in question writes a short story or a book for you, that is not a tool; that is an artificially-written story. You didn't make that happen any more than the clergyman who told the Renaissance artists what characters to sculpt or what scenes to paint is the artist of those works.

The whole point of writing is that we're telling a story. The point of reading is because we want to be told a story. Yes, writing is hard. Yes there will be stumbling blocks along the way, and things that give you trouble, and lessons you have to learn. But the work is not some obstacle to be overcome by outsourcing it to a machine. The work is the point.

Put another way, if you had a robot go to the gym for you, and do an entire fitness routine, it wouldn't make you any faster, stronger, or better. You're just wasting time and electricity avoiding the work you need to do to actually get good.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

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- My Weekly Newsletter

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- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Learning To Weave Your Story Threads Together Takes Practice

There's an old phrase by a talented artist that (paraphrased) goes, "Painting is very easy when you have no idea what you're doing, and very difficult when you do." This also applies to writing. Especially because "writing" isn't just the act of putting letters in the proper order, and putting together complete sentences. Writers need to be able to choose the proper word to convey the right feeling and action in a scene. Writers need to be able to create compelling, interesting characters. We need to figure out conflicts, how to convey someone's personality through their speech, we have to build entire worlds...

And perhaps most importantly, we need to be able to tie it all together with a pretty bow on top.

That last part, though, is also a skill in and of itself. And like any skill, it's something you will get better at with time and practice... but you need to train your brain to recognize, and create, patterns in your work to make sure everything hangs together.

It only looks easy if you don't see all the learning that went into this.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Pulling Disparate Elements Together (As If You Meant To)

As an example of what I'm talking about this week, I want to share a story from last year when I was running a live action game for Changeling: The Lost. For those who aren't familiar with the game, it's a modern fantasy roleplaying game where you all play changelings; humans stolen by interdimensional, god-like beings known as the True Fae. They tore out your souls, replaced them with magic, and altered you on a fundamental level. You escaped from their realm of Arcadia, and now you are trying to exist in the real, modern world. Your magic hides your supernatural nature, but you always have an eye over your shoulder, watching for your old Keeper to come back to reclaim you.

Anyway, I had between 11-20 some odd players in this game... that's 11-20 odd main characters whose goals and aspirations are what shapes the plot of the story we're all telling. So I had to balance out trying to make everyone's actions matter, giving them freedom and agency, and then making it seem like everything was part of one, cohesive whole.

In short, I was co-authoring a novel with nearly two-dozen people, and I had to make all of them feel like their contributions were seamlessly woven into the whole. Piece of cake, right?

In the first session of this game, I pulled several, random incidents out of my game supplement 100 Strange Sights To See In The Hedge. These incidents are totally random, and are simply meant to be filler for your story. But based on how players reacted to them, several of these incidents became canon to the unfolding story. The threads I wove together include:

- A small, fantastical bird alighting on a branch and croaking, "The Ashen Lord Will Devour Your Soul!" which startled one of the players.

- A hobgoblin is crucified on a tree bearing a sign that says Ironmonger, identified as a victim of The Ashen Lady

- A penguin in a Hawaiian shirt wanders down the forest path, roasting alive a fearsome briar wolf who tries to attack it. The penguin then begins eating the roasted wolf.

These three threads, for some reason, are what players decided to latch onto, and follow-up on, so they became the story threads. Worse, I actually misspoke when I said the Ashen Lady instead of the Ashen Lord in the second thread. So now I had a fresh element added into the mix.

That was when I got out my loom, and I started trying to pull all these disparate elements together into a singular whole.

The Ashen Lord and the Ashen Lady were True Fae who appeared to be contesting their shared title. There could be only one victor, and whoever wrenched it away would be the one who would walk away with the power. This created a political struggle between god-like creatures going on right at the doorstep of all the other players. Some wanted to ignore it, and some wants to join in. Some wanted to try to sabotage it so that both of them lost. But as they researched, delved deeper, and sought more knowledge about them, they uncovered more story.

The Ashen Lady was a recent upstart, and it's said she had stolen her part of the title from the Ashen Lord. More importantly, they found that the Ashen Lord had once been the Lord of Night, and that he had ruled alongside the Lord of The Sun. In an act of betrayal he had tried to slay the Sun King, throwing his realm into chaos as he usurped his power. Of course, True Fae are difficult things to kill, so it was likely that the King of The Sun was not dead, but merely hidden, or banished, and would remain so until his title was returned to him, or the conditions of the Ashen Lord's binding were broken.

What they found in the end of this plot arc was that the King of The Sun had, the entire time, been the penguin wandering the local Hedge! He had steadily been regaining his sentience, and some semblence of his power (hence his ability to breathe fire), but he could not speak or communicate who he was until his title was once again bestowed upon him... something the Ashen Lady had been attempting to do by stealing power away from the Ashen Lord.

Again, grab a copy if you're interested!

This is the kind of exercise that can help you, as a writer, weave together seemingly unconnected plot threads. Even if you don't finish an idea, the exercise of taking 2-3 different elements and pulling them all together into a cohesive whole is a way to train your mind into spotting and identifying patterns. Because even if a story has a twist ending, or a plot that seems to turn circles upon itself, pattern recognition helps us identify the structure of a well-told story.

This isn't the only time reaching out to earlier elements and building off of them in unexpected ways has featured in my work. I have a new upcoming addition to the Warhammer 40K fan series Gav and Bob (check out Part Four, The Emperor's Hand, and Part Five, Faith and Martyrs if you haven't yet) where I tie the whole plot up to this point together into a neat little package, for example. I also have an entire third novel for my hardboiled cat series which is all about tying up the loose end I left dangling in the original short story Leo debuted in.

When you start weaving something as complicated as a season of an audio drama, or a plot of a novel (or novels), this is an extremely useful skill to have... because you never know when that old, dangling plot thread is going to come in handy for you to tie up the current plot nice and tidy, or when Chekov's Gun is finally going to go off!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!