by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve finally, yet again, wrapped up the first act of the scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on. Now, I’m going to stare out into space for a little while before I throw myself into the second act again.
The key thing — as always — is to make sure that my hero isn’t passive. I’ve had a real problem with my protagonist being reactive to the point that the AIs I’ve been using to develop the novel keep pointing it out. It’s all very frustrating.
Another issue is I really, really need to avoid leaning into using AI to actually write the scenes. I want as much as possible of this novel’s text to be written by my hand, even if it means the novel isn’t as good as it might otherwise be.
All this praise I’ve been getting from what little pieces of the novel I’ve given people to read is making me feel a little insecure — ok, maybe a lot insecure. It’s starting to eat away at me that maybe my writing…just sucks? And the only way for it to be good enough to get a literary agent is…to use AI to sharpen it to publishing quality?
I don’t like thinking about that.
