by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
My gut tells me I’m in the clear when it comes to using AI on this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on. It’s not like AI actually writes the scenes for me, I do all that hard work. But let’s go through how I use AI as an “AI First” novelist.
Development
This is where I use AI the most. I use AI to dramatically speed up the process of doing development. AI really helps to guide me towards my goal, especially when that goal is rather nebulous.
Scene Summaries
I also use AI in this situation, where I write out a scene summary before I actually sit down to write the scene. I use an expanded scene summary as a guide to writing the scene.
“Gentle Editing”
The only place where AI comes close to “writing” the novel for me is when it comes to editing. I tell my AI to “gently edit” a scene once I’m done. I only do this because 1) I’m fucking poor 2) my actual writing, while ok, generally needs an editor to make it query-level.
Having said all that, I think I’m going to be a little bit more careful with the next novel I work on. I don’t want there to be ANY DEBATE about how much AI was involved in writing my next novel. I probably will not have AI write my expanded scene summaries…and not edit any of the novel…so I’m a lot more in the clear.
