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.

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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.

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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!

 

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You're Never Going To Get Better as a Writer If You Never Start

Going to the gym intimidates a lot of people. They know that establishing a routine is important to getting in shape, and they want to do it, but all they can think about is how everyone must be judging them. Whether it's because they're lifting tiny weights, or their stamina is too low, or they clearly don't know what they're doing, the idea of being new where other people can see them paralyzes them with indecision. When that happens, a lot of folks prefer to just stay home, and not take the risk.

One more chapter... come on...

The same thing happens to a lot of writers out there. And, unfortunately, that inability to start is what stops you from getting any better.

There's Only One Way To Get Better

The only way to get better at something is to do it, and the same is true for writing. I talked about this way back when in If You Want Your Art To Improve, You Need To Invest In It, but it's one of the hardest steps for a lot of people to take.

Because no matter how naturally talented you are, and no matter how many years you've been reading books, or how much advice you've read on the subject, chances are good that your early efforts are not going to win you any prizes. In fact, no beating around the bush, they're probably going to suck. Just like how your form is going to be terrible your first time lifting weights, your stamina is going to be lackluster on your first long run, and your early paintings are probably going to be awful.

But if you want to be Bob Ross, Stephen King, etc., then you've got to go through that learning period.

It was a lie, there are mistakes. A shit load of them.

I'm not saying this is an easy thing to do. Far from it, I'd argue that buckling down to become a writer takes grit, determination, and the willingness to be bad. But if you don't have that willingness then you're never going to get any better.

So if you're worried about writing a story with plot holes you could put a fist through, a main character with glaring flaws, a timeline that doesn't make sense, or a hackneyed plot, you have my permission to do it. Right now. I release you from the responsibility of the flawless, because perfect is the enemy of done.

Take Your Ego Out of The Equation

One of the biggest problems for creators of all sorts of that we get our egos caught up in our work. We treat it like an extension of ourselves, and when criticism hits, it splashes back onto us. Sadly, there's no getting around this. They say that the master has failed more times than the student has even attempted, but the thing is that you don't see those failed attempts when you're looking up to a creator. You see the successes they put on display, but not the mountains of bad prose, awful poetry, cringe-worthy plot devices, and the armies of beheaded characters who did not serve a role within the story.

What he said.

You need to be able to hold your work at arm's length and see it for what it is. You should still love it, and enjoy it, but you also need to learn to recognize its flaws, and to see where things went wrong. That's part of the creative process, and while it might hurt to admit our mistakes, it's the only way we get better. And as I said in Want To Be A Better Writer? Make Lots of Pots, the experience of completing a project is far more useful than taking years and years to make one, perfect thing. Practice makes permanent, and it's only by writing that you build up the muscles and the mental reflexes to spin ideas out of the ether, and to see problems at a glance.

Just like there's no way to get 6-pack abs while sitting on the couch eating potato chips, there's also no way to become the best writer you can be if you never sit down and write. So go do that... now. Don't worry about not being bad, like I said, you've got a permission slip.

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 sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

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!

Fiction Creates Empathy (Yet Another Reason Inclusion and Diversity Matter)

How many times has a book or a movie brought you to tears? Probably more times than you're willing to admit in mixed company, but from Bambi to Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 chances are good you've had some tearjerker moments in your life. And if you tried to stem those tears with logic, you might have asked yourself why you were so upset? After all, these characters aren't real. They couldn't have died, learned deeper lessons about themselves, or reconciled with their parental figures and estranged family because they never lived... they aren't real.

The problem, of course, is that for the couple of pounds of jelly housed in your skull that makes all of your decisions, real is a slippery thing to define.

But if Darkblade isn't real, is anyone real?

For the gelatinous thinking parts between our ears, reality is nothing more than sensory input. Our higher brains know there isn't a hulking masked killer in our homes when we watch a slasher movie, but the construction of the narrative allows us to essentially hack our own bodies to produce adrenaline and a fear high, along with the catharsis of release when the characters do something on the screen. That doesn't mean the sensations are somehow less real, just because the scenario that produced them is fake.

What psychologists have found in studies like this one is that fiction also creates the capacity for empathy in the reader. Because your brain can't tell the difference between reading about a person who doesn't exist, and actually knowing someone who does. As long as the book you're reading provides you with an emotional journey that invests you in the character's experiences (something Scientific American pointed out, even if they also took the time to shit on genre fiction while they were at it) it improves your ability to empathize with other people.

So, the more you read, the more able to see other people's perspectives you become. This also means that people could begin to sympathize with perspectives they wouldn't otherwise see, or which they simply have no first-hand experience of. The same way as if they had diversified their groups of friends or family members in real space.

The Ripple Effects of Inclusion and Diversity

This is where the true power of the written word really shines through. Because just like how a scary story might give us the vicarious thrill of being chased by an undead maniac, other stories could put us in other situations we've never experienced. What it's like to be a young woman for male readers. What it's like to have a disability for those without such a condition. What it's like to be an ethnic or religious minority just trying to make your way in a world that is doing its best to keep its boot firmly on your head.

Fight the man, you feeling me?

In situations like this, your brain can't tell the difference between reading about a character and actually making a flesh-and-blood friend. Not in the delusional way (people aren't going to go around talking about how they spent the weekend escaping the prisons of NarShan with their best friend, as a rule), but in the sense that exposure to characters and exposure to people can have similar effects on your brain. So even if you live in a white suburb, reading a book can make the injustices and intolerances faced by the black community feel more real to you. Even if you've never once questioned being heterosexual, you can catch a glimpse of what it's like to be unsure, or to have other people trying to push and pull you in different directions regarding your sexuality. If you're part of the most common religion in the nation, a good book can show you what it's like to be someone persecuted for their faith by the majority.

In short, making friends with fictional characters affects us. The messages we see in their worlds lodge themselves in our brains, and open up channels that might not grow in any other way. They allow us to see different perspectives as readers, and to understand people outside our own experiences and beyond our own skins, metaphorically speaking.

This is why it's important for people to read a varied diet, but it's also why it's important for writers to make sure that the characters and stories we present are the sort of things that we want changing people's brains. We need to make characters, not caricatures, and to present scenarios that have internal consistency and logic to them, while also being engaging to read. In short, we are the ones tasked with making brain food for the masses, and tricking them into eating a double dose of empathy because it has a candy coating of engaging story and tasty drama to it.

Nobody ever said this job was easy. But if you've ever wondered if what you're doing matters, know that it does. You are literally affecting the way people see the world when they chew through your story... who else can say that about their work?

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 sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

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!