For the past two years or so, AI has been on everybody’s minds, and rightfully so, as it can do some pretty incredible things. It can seemingly solve any and all math problems high schoolers are forced to endure, write business plans for newbie entrepreneurs, edit the videos of YouTubers turned podcasters, and write social media posts for just about everyone. That being said, what can it do for us storytellers?

A little over a year ago, one of my co-workers introduced me to Chat GBT. He was fascinated by it and eager to show me what it could do. He asked me for a prompt, and I told Chat GBT to write a story in the style of Grady Hendrix, a horror writer, involving dogs. The story it spewed out was nothing noteworthy itself, but the fact that it was generated in a matter of seconds was very cool.

With AI now being readily accessible, I think some of us writers have this fear around its place in our craft. For example, a significant part of the writer’s strike in 2023 was concerning the use of AI in scriptwriting. In addition to that, I’ve seen literary magazines warn “writers” against submitting stories written by AI. These fears concerning AI and the actions taken as a result of them are incredibly justified.

AI is another advancement in technology that we have to learn how to use, or at the very least live with, as carefully and ethically as possible. That said, recently I’ve experimented with using it as more of a tool to help me with my writing. I’ve used it to help generate some ideas for the name of a lake in one of my stories. I’ve also used it to help me find synonyms for a few words in my poetry (yes, I have heard of a thesaurus, I just wanted to see what Microsoft Co-Pilot would give me).

There are probably more effective ways to use it, but I’m still kind of experimenting with it.

With that in mind, I did ask Chat GBT just now to create a character development guide. What it generated was ok, but honestly, I was more impressed with its speed than anything else. That being said, I know that with Chat GBT it’s all about the prompts, and I just fed it a really straight forward one.

Feel free to check it out here:

Let me know if you’ve tried using AI to assist you with your writing. What was your experience like?

Sidenote: If you’re interested in reading more about AI and its impact on writers, I recommend reading the following article from Alliance of Independent Authors: “AI for Authors: Practical and Ethical Guidelines.”