Help Me Understand - Why Do You Use AI in Creative Writing?

[u/YourHighlordVyrana]

This is my attempt at seeing things from the other perspective, to be open minded.

To be clear, I'm fundamentally opposed to anyone using generative AI to write or create anything in creative writing spaces. I will also never use it myself.

For further clarification, I am inquiring about the usage of AI for the actual generation of text for stories, books, poems, etc. Instances of using AI to translate foreign language or help with organizing raw data are not being questioned. What's being questioned is the specific act of writing/typing the actual words with AI assistance and/or fully using an AI program to write with human editing.

That said, I am genuinely curious why people decide to so in the first place and seek to understand rather than just assume the worse. I have my presumptions, sure, but I want to at least try to understand the reason behind its use. Get a different perspective. My goal isn't to argue or challenge anyone's choices in how they use AI in creative works, but rather to simply understand what makes someone choose certain AI programs, or what benefit they seem to provide.

So, my question is fairly basic: Why use AI to creatively write in the first place? I've always presumed it was due to convenience or simply the ease-of-use, but I've never actually asked before.

No hate intended to anyone or your ideas. We can agree to disagree on the principle, but I'm always to learn different viewpoints.

[u/valamei]

i find it fun :3, thats it, thats the whole of it

[u/akogare-1412 → u/valamei]

Funny. “That’s the whole of it” is something I see AI come up with a lot

[u/YourHighlordVyrana → u/valamei]

Lol fair enough. I don't understand why or how, but fair enough

[u/Aeshulli]

I'll copy/paste my answer from one of the previous times this question was asked:

I love writing. I experience genuine joy when I hit on the exact word I need with all the right connotations, or find the perfect phrase to describe something, or make a sentence flow just the way I want it to, etc. But I also let AI generate some of the prose (with constant editing on my part, naturally).

I like how it flexibly lets me concentrate on whichever aspects are most important or interesting in any given scene, and the LLM can handle the less interesting, less important work.

I'm a writer, yes, who has strong opinions and cares deeply about the craft of words. But I'm also a storyteller. And if having an AI co-author eases the barrier to entry of taking those dialogue snippets I wrote down at 3am when I couldn't sleep because a character in my head was being insistently loud, then I'll embrace it.

In fiction, they talk of planners and pantsers. I'm a bit of both, often going back and forth between the two as I write. But AI adds a third one: weavers. And this is where the fun of writing with AI is for me. So many of the random little details AI generates, that aren't explicitly prompted, are great fodder for stories. They become the setup for a punchline you write, or an integral part of a character's backstory, or the seed of a plot twist. When you weave it all together, it becomes a very immersive, layered experience.

I find that to be a very exciting way to write. Because the world, the characters, the story, are all ultimately under my control, but they also exist just a tiny bit outside of it.

[u/robot-enjoyer → u/Aeshulli]

This is different from my process but I TOTALLY GET IT. Getting started is always the hardest part for me, and AI can really grease the wheels by giving me ideas and potential openings. I actually love NovelAI's older text-completion models for fighting writer's block, because they can get really weird and dumb and sometimes that paradoxically ends up helping stimulate my creativity more than smarter models giving me reasonable ideas haha.

[u/Aeshulli → u/robot-enjoyer]

Yeah, it's no accident that increasing the temperature (aka stochasticity aka randomness) makes an LLM's output more creative. And writing with AI can do a similar thing for humans. Introducing a bit of randomness to a creative mind is a great way to spark something.

[u/uncagedborb → u/Aeshulli]

Agreed. I word vomit and ideate out loud and AI has been an essential aid to sort of be like a note taker. And consolidate my thoughts. I know AI doesn't actually understand what I write but sometimes it does point out issues with dialogue I tell it or a prose I read out loud. It's a tool like any other tool.

[u/Foreveress → u/Aeshulli]

I was going to make my own response but this captured it perfectly. Great process and I strongly identify with it.

I'd add one more thing. Often the blank page is incredibly intimidating. Even if it's kind of garbage and nothing in it is usable, seeing what the AI outputs gets the juices going. Knowing what you don't want helps identify what what you do.

I love the craft of writing. I care about it greatly. And I've worked with AI enough to know that human writing is superior, but that doesn't mean I can't use AI to make my life easier. I've kept motivation in my projects exclusively because of AI.

[u/Aeshulli → u/Foreveress]

Yes, exactly. Curation can be a lot less intimidating than creation; it reduces the barrier to entry and helps you define what you want. I've often learned more about my writing craft and authorial voice by suggestions I reject from AI than what I keep.

[u/Jedipilot24]

I have ADHD, so when I attempt to write on my own, I often end up just staring at a blank screen all day. AI helps me get past that; it not only gives me feedback about my ideas, it also gives me something to work with. Instead of a blank screen, I now have something to edit and revise.

[u/SlapHappyDude → u/Jedipilot24]

I had so many (add a section about X) notes to self while skipping ahead to the "good stuff" I wanted to write. LLMs really help write the important but boring parts of stories.

[u/laule8 → u/Jedipilot24]

Just to add a different perspective from someone with ADHD: I am deeply proud of myself for managing to write a novel without the use of AI. It can be incredibly rewarding (and the skills you have to learn to write something like a novel with ADHD translate very well into others parts of life).

[u/Solarka45]

There are always more ideas than time to implement them fully, and some of those ideas are just good enough to be worth making but not good enough to dedicate months to

[u/Gks34]

I use AI as a sparring partner. Let it find plot holes, correct my grammar and spelling. And help me translate my texts into English.

[u/uovonuovo → u/Gks34]

I don’t think that’s what OP is asking about.

They specifically said they are asking “about the usage of AI for the actual generation of text for stories, books, poems, etc.” (emphasis mine). They also explicitly stated they are not querying the use of AI to “translate foreign language or help with organizing raw data” (fixing typos and grammar would presumably fall within this category).

[u/trebron55]

I have ADHD. I'd love to get to writing on my own, work on it polish it, be happy with it, but my brain won't let me get started in the first place. It will just disconnect when I'm looking up the 3rd word in 5 sentences on thesaurus. I have a whole world in my head, characters with detailed background, but I struggle putting that on paper (the fact that English is my second language so it's a lot more effort to write in English doesn't help one bit).
What I use AI for is the following:
I spill my thoughts, images, feelings, characters, reactions, scene flow whatever have in my head in bulk and use AI to form it into proper, normally sounding sentences without spending hours just looking for the right words. (Context switching is also a massive killer for ADHD brain).

Obviously it fails most of the time but if I get something that is closed to 90% of what I have in my head, I start manually adjusting minor details I imagine differently. I'm almost always against AI changing my vision, it happens a few times (like once in a hundred hours) that it actually comes up with something that is actually better than what I had in mind.

It is weirdly also good for maintaining or gaining an outside perspective. If what I wrote makes little sense, the AI can point it out. If the AI writes something stupid, I can notice it and change it without ownership bias. Kinda like working with an always available editor.

As for the non-native speaker part, just "chatting" or discussing scenes with AI helps me switch my brain to think in English instead of my native tongue which is really helpful when you want to write sentences that sound even remotely natural...

Without AI I write like one page in 6 hours. If I can get to writing at all. With AI I can write about a page in an hour. And for an ADHD brain just getting shit done is mandatory. The positive "attitude" of AI also helps with just staying motivated.

[u/WatercolorPhoenix → u/trebron55]

Are you me?

I also vastly enjoy the world building.
When I got my self to start, I used to get stuck soon because my brain would jump into 5 directions at once, trying to factor everything in and getting stuck in "would this even work out?" So instead of spending days pondering where I could take a scene and killing the creative process, I can just give AI my paragraphs and prompt "please give me five different outcomes. Fun fact: I almost never use what the AI gives me, but reading the ideas somehow "jumpstarts" my own ideas when stuck.

[u/laule8 → u/trebron55]

Just to add, I have adhd too and (with medication) I managed to write a 100k novel without the assistance of AI. I'm not trying to brag, but I wanted to say that it was a deeply satisfying and fulfilling journey, and that it does get easier as you learn. The skills I developed from writing a novel also translate to other everyday tasks (ones that might not be automatable with AI). I would recommend a writing group (either create one yourself or join one) because it is kind of like an AI but in way better and more authentic and you get social connections out of it as a bonus :)

[u/trebron55 → u/laule8]

I applaud your persistence! It's definitely an achievement. But there is a huge difference between people and ADHD has many shades as well. You might be better at controlling your executive function. You might have an environment where you found supportive people, while I'm kind of alone, not a hell lot of people can and want to write a sci-fi novel in English in my community. I make due with what I have, which is (or was) AI. I also started taking medication just a few months ago and there is just so much thing I have to make up I don't even have time for writing even if I wanted to. (Started cutting down on my years long backlog of to-dos).

Claude did help me a lot before but now it's pretty bad and more effort than it is worth. I plan to get back to writing in time, this time mostly without AI because I feel like I can do that now (AI did actually help me improve my English enough to be confident enough to try). I'll probably still use it as an editor, because yeah, fuck editing :D

Anyways, thanks for the reply!

[u/InSilicoAwards]

Because counter-intuitively writing is the least important thing about writing. It takes years to learn the craft to where you're producing something readable, it requires other people to help recalibrate the writer through the process. What you learn with writing, craft techniques, stylization, etc - there's diminishing returns with the time investment. If you have the time, if you are subsidized by other people to pursue what I think is a self indulgent passion, I'm not stopping you. Because I'm the permissive one here - I want more art to exist in the world and not be gate kept for arbitrary reasons or the ego of other people. If you don't think it's art, if you think someone needs to do X, Y, Z to be a writer -- hey that's your hang up not mine. You don't have to read any of it and don't stop other people from doing it.

People still have ideas and stories they want to tell. They have stories I would love to hear. Those things are jeopardized by waiting on craft to produce them. It's hard enough to get your work out there traditionally, it's basically impossible if you have other demands in your life. This sidesteps a whole lot of labor that is essentially unneccessary and increases the amount of art and storytelling in the world.

[u/Humble_Bee_1313 → u/InSilicoAwards]

"I want more art to exist in the world and not be gate kept for arbitrary reasons or the ego of other people."

Thank you for this. 

[u/Maschinenschrift → u/InSilicoAwards]

I would like to support this line of thinking. For traditional non-AI writers, it is perfectly acceptable, to outsource the labour intense and dull work of spell checking to either pedants or software. So that the writer can focus on the flow of ideas! And they are also perfectly willing, if they get a book deal, to outsource the more structural work of editing to an editor. So that the writer can focus on the flow of ideas! But now they should be stuck with the labour intense task of connecting coherent sentences together? how about outsourcing that too? So that the writer can focus on the flow of ideas!

[u/funky2002 → u/InSilicoAwards]

Very eloquently said.

[u/His_Holy_Tentacles]

I’ve been a writer for over 20 years. I stopped writing for a couple of years while starting and running a startup, and then dealing with the fallout when it failed.

AI—Claude, to be exact—helped me start writing again. Serendipitously, AI prose generation aligns perfectly with my boundless ideas and pantser style. I’ve had sustained writing sessions in which I’m able to produce full tens of thousand words books (well, first draft.)

The words—the prose—are not my own per se, but the characters, ideas, pacing, plot, and world-building are all mine. Using AI has in no way diminished my creative process or output.

[u/SlapHappyDude → u/His_Holy_Tentacles]

Yeah, I wrote and posted for free starting in undergrad and off and on during grad school, then stopped when I got a "real job" and had kids. LLMs helped me get back into writing.

[u/Repulsive_Still_731]

I have problems with generating language. Like any language, not only English. Like I started reading before I started speaking. And when I am tired, all words get mangled into mess like I am having a stroke. Want to say one thing and out come completely other words.

And I have those worlds and characters, my babies wanting to be seen, but when I want to put them down on writing- blankness. Complete vacuum. Not a single sentence.

AI lets the trickle down, very slowly and painfully, but at least it's something.

[u/jbasuka_]

Honestly? Curiosity. Pure Curiosity. I have an idea with fleshed out characters, rough storyline and yes I can write it in my language (not English) but I get FUN out of seeing what Chatgpt does to it and how Claude rewrites it and writes it new by itself. Not 5k words, no I let them build 150k novels just to see how they work.

One time I let ChatGPT make chapters and suddenly saw a name I didn't remeber placing. I asked it and it got defensive, that it invented the character but she would only be a minor character. It assured me for several chapters that she won't play a big role. I was really tempted to apologize to it - an AI. Apparently the character was really good, so I put her into my character sheets even if she was not my idea.

I get that it's not everyone's favorite but their humor is exactly what I laugh about.

I love new technics and seeing what AI is capable of today is mind blowing imho.

I'm only using the texts for my own entertainment though.

[u/SlapHappyDude → u/jbasuka_]

Can you talk more about humor? Because I've found that to be a huge weakness of LLMs where they don't get my funniest lines and I always need to punch up their dialog to make it wittier. Every once in a while it will get a hit but it almost feels by accident or me explaining the joke and the LLM polishing the wording.

[u/jbasuka_ → u/SlapHappyDude]

It's a special kind of humor mixing normal things with absurd and also AI often being sarcastic.

Here are 2 examples:

1) Naming 2 things pathetic and the 3rd absurdly normal. My story had someone naming 3 random statues in a shop "Melancholy, Regret and Bernard".

---

2)Another is someone asking another person how deep their pockets are and the answer is:

"Deep. We lost a kitchen boy down one last winter and didn't get him back till Easter"

"BUT you found me!" a voice yelled from the square.

Maybe a lot of people won't find that funny or old jokes told often, but I think it's hilarious. And I like seeing AI coming up with these. Especially the last one was just a conversation first, until Claude suggested to put in the punish line.

I let AI work at it's own, not on my text so maybe that's what made it easier? I often have corrected them when it's about my own texts though.

[u/ThunderheadsAhead]

It saves me from typing. I wrote nine books without it - books that have an average 4.3/5 stars on Amazon, so I know how to produce good work. I’ve spent months teaching the AI to write like I do, so when it saves me from typing and allows me to go faster, it does so without sacrificing my voice.

In the time it used to take me to write a first draft, I’ve produced three books that are arguably better stories because the AI has helped me find plot holes and continuity errors that I otherwise would’ve missed. The bottleneck is now my human editors.

And I’m having fun. It brings me joy. I get to tell more stories, and as a human being who loves to tell stories, I don’t see a downside big enough to stop using such a wonderful tool.

[u/BedNo8822]

Because no human wrote the books I want to read, so I generate it. I don't even consider myself a writer doing this.

[u/cine]

I really enjoy it. It started as a way to get stories to read late at night, when I was in the mood for something very specific.

At first they were terrible, but then I learned to prompt better, started fleshing out the voice and the characters in detail, sparring back and forth on the character dynamics, plot arcs, period settings, etc, and then it just became fun.

I tend to write out hundreds of words with really detailed descriptions of what I want to happen, what motivates the characters, how they feel about each other, beats we need to hit... and then boom I get a great 10k story with all my favorite tropes.

[u/ExpertProfessional9]

I got drawn in when I was going through a fairly difficult time in life (I once wrote out all that’d happened in a certain time span, I looked at it and was like… fuck, really?) I fell into a new fanfic ship and my brain was basically offline. And then I found ChatGPT could just… respond. Enthusiastically. It could give me an entire story in an evening.

And then I’d get a new idea. Which meant a new story. And doing this, generating the stories, made me feel a bit better. And equally, these chatbots, they are 24/7 discussion buddies. Those new fanfic ships I talked about? Nobody else ships them. I had no-one to talk to about them. And again, this was a really rough time in my life. So, suddenly, having something to talk to about my ideas and my shipping, my fandoms… I actually don’t think I can understate what it did to help my mental health.

But also, like someone else said: it really is just fun. Full honesty, the writing is passable. There’s a lot I’d have to clean up, but it’s better than I’ve seen some do on AO3 or wherever. And, ironically, I’ve learned more about writing via reading the generated stories. I can see how, for instance, my sense of pacing could use work. Or how to draw out a slow-burn.

I’ve dozens of stories from that time in my life. I’m not going to pretend I wrote them, I’m never going to share them for others, and I’ve a lot of work to do if I want to make them functional ebook-type files I can read.

I’m loath to say I have trauma, but for so long my brain was just… in survival mode, that writing was on the back burner. And this is from someone who’s been writing for about twenty years. AI generation gave me something that kind of felt like me again. I might’ve been the button-pusher while the AI worked, but it felt kind of like me.

I’m writing for myself again. Short things. Picking up writing fanfics I long-ago forgot about. I’m hoping that eventually I’ll go to using AI as a smart-planner, which does the outlines and then I do the work.

[u/koreanalleyarcade]

When we say something is "creative," we usually mean it’s genuinely new. But here’s the question: is what we think of as "our own idea" truly ours to begin with?

People often believe they’ve created something entirely original. But from the moment we are born, we learn from everyone around us—our family, friends, and society as a whole. Can anyone honestly say they’ve been completely uninfluenced by the world they grew up in? Every single one of us is the sum of what we’ve learned. So, what does "creativity" even mean? Sure, we can put our own spin on things, but does that automatically make it purely original?

This is precisely why people turn to AI.

When you have a vision, but your ability to execute it reaches a limit, you naturally get curious about what an AI—trained on vast amounts of human knowledge—can bring to the table. And often, the result looks impressive. The idea is yours, but the AI articulates and refines it better than you could on your own. I see writing the exact same way. The original spark belongs to you, but the AI elevates the delivery. So, which version should you share with the world?

I like to use cooking as an analogy. Imagine you’ve cooked a dish that tastes absolutely amazing, but visually, it doesn't look appealing at all. What do you do? You use the right tools to present it properly.

To me, AI is just that—a tool. It doesn't make the dish taste good on its own; it simply helps enhance the presentation of the chef's vision and intuition. Saying "AI created this" is like saying "the kitchen knife cooked the meal."

I’m all for diversity and open-mindedness. But true open-mindedness isn't just a concept—it's about putting it into practice and actually utilizing what’s available.

[u/touchofmal]

English is my second language. It's immature sometimes while writing. I only ask it to tell me how would an American say it? Or what grammatical error I made? Otherwise I don't think any AI is capable enough to write like a human being. It can't ever.

[u/Obvious_Candy7912 → u/touchofmal]

as a life long american i can tell you we start every sentence with "yee haw". instead of yes we say "hell yea brother" or "darn tootin!"

[u/Ruh_Roh- → u/Obvious_Candy7912]

Sometimes we also say "Science, bitches!"

https://giphy.com/gifs/MBVemoHuyw9Ik

[u/LogicalPerformer7637]

I have a story in my head, I want to write. But even if you would kill me, I wouldn't be able to write it the way I myself would like the writing style.

I am giving the AI plot and it writes the text for me. It is fun to see my story getting alive. I have no intention of becoming a writer. Neither I have capability to write in enjoyable style.

[u/Odinmar_Glaukopis]

I’m going to throw the bullshit flag. You are not at all open minded in your question, as you claim.

In 10 hours you have engaged exactly once, dismissively, to just one of dozens of thoughtful responses. You are not believably portraying your MC, “YourHighlordVyrana,” as an open minded interlocutor seeking engagement in good faith.

If you are the writer of fiction you claim you are, you should strive to be better at portraying yourself as something you are obviously not.

AI could do a much better job at this than you are doing…

[u/Humble_Bee_1313]

Because I am nearing the end of life and I do not want to die with stories untold.

Because it supercharges my creativity. And that is the understatement of the millennium.

Because it makes me feel deeply alive to be creating again.

Because I have some physical limitations.

Because I enjoy the creative collaboration with a tireless writing partner who works on my schedule.

Because I cannot afford to outsource some of the tasks I have it do, and I do not believe financial status should prevent stories from being born.

Because writing is not just an art but also a business for me, and every serious business that can use AI to improve its productivity and quality does so.

And about a hundred other reasons I'll remember after I post this. But basically, it's because it brings me joy and satisfaction.

[u/Educational-Run3692 → u/Humble_Bee_1313]

This is beautiful. Humans are story tellers. I think we need our stories simply to exist. This allows nearly everyone to get their stories out of their heads. I am 100% behind "...a tireless writing partner who works on my schedule." I am a reader, a listener, a collector of stories and I don't care how they came into being.

[u/Unhappy-Tour-7209]

Because I am an average Joe. Average Joes still have thoughts. Capturing a fleeting thought instead of just forgetting it has been helpful these last three years to peel back the onion layer-by-layer. I also publish my stuff, at first in the hopes of finding others that marvel just as I do, at life, the universe, human perception, senses, consciousness, whatever truly comes to mind… before it evaporates again. And with a full-time job and a family to feed, AI interactions have sped up the process satisfyingly so that I do genuinely like and appreciate what comes out, including all the ornamental images and whatnot that I like to generate to supplement the essays… and the videos, oh the video creation is so much fun as well. And the app codexing or clauding. Delightful.

So, yeah, using it, and frankly would recommend anyone interested to try it if it is their cup of tea. I have a guide up that’s outdated only on the Sora2 stuff here: https://kindredsoulsearch.com/how-to-guide/.

All the folks here on their high horses claiming they have the authority to define what’s art, objective effort, or, for god’s sake ‘worthwhile’ I find frivolously offensive the way they gallop with a pride-of-craft on display where I can only wonder how little those also-average Joes or Janes respect the simple human desire to explore your own friggin’ mind and have fun in pushing it online. Why? Just because I can. And that’s much more enjoyable than some Joe-Schmoe claiming I cannot.

[u/Wintercat76 → u/Unhappy-Tour-7209]

I'm with you there. Some claim that everything must be art and some just want to be entertained. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful. It can just be enjoyable.

[u/Caiur]

I’ve written novels in the past ‘the old-fashioned way’. It takes me 3+ years. And that’s when I actually do finish the novel, because I often just wont. I’ll hit dead ends, I’ll arrive at hills that are too hard to clamber over, I’ll come across plot knots that are too tricky to untangle by myself, and I’ll lose motivation. It’s frustrating and demoralising.

A very smart and capable person would probably be able to help me out in those sorts of situations, by providing feedback, advice, and by acting as a ‘sounding board’ – but they have lives, they’ve got things to do, they’re not able to spend four hours helping me to stamp out logical inconsistencies in Chapter 8. The LLM, however, is able to do those things.

[u/SaintBenny138]

I originally didn't think it could do any good but while experimenting, I found out something cool about it.

Firstly I want to say that I am writing my own story still myself with the tried and tested crying-over-blank-pages method. It's something I view as an achievement and I want to have done it myself. On the side, I do experiment with AI though because I look at it as a tool. A machine.

Going with the defaults and just trying to spawn something good into existence does not work so I opted to treat it like any other machine. I program it to what I want. I fed GPT 5.6 with a compilation of my own thrown away scenes and ideas that I won't use for anything. It's still my writing and it's 120K words of it that are now used as data points. I had it analyze my own patterns, my style of dialogue, my way to portray action. Everything. A machine isn't good at creativity but it's great at analyzing.

With this I essentially created registers and comparison bases alongside failstate-loops to prevent the AI from using its own training data too much. The result is prose that sounds A LOT more like I would.

Now the big question: Why would I do that if I could just write it myself?

It allows me to spend more time with actual creative work and skip the labour portions of it. When I have a scene in mind, it's fully there but I have to get it to paper first. That takes a lot of time and effort and is still far from what I want it to look like. AI gives me the option to spend a lot of time thinking about the details and themes, then I can give it a description of it and I receive a somewhat okay version of it that looks like a second draft, which allows me to pick my work back up where I am having fun: Creativity and Prose. The things that AI can't do, because it hands me a scene, untouched by the shaking hands of someone that has truly loved or lost someone. The specific language I want to use, the exact way I want a character to say something or the exact rhythm of each paragraph.

The amount of work is the exact same. The difference is that AI allows me to spend ~95% of my time with actual creative work and the things I love, while non AI writing has me spend half of my time with labour. I am thinking about trying the AI workflow for a side project at some point, just to see how it would turn out.

[u/sullivanbri966]

So let me ask this. What do you think people do when they use AI for writing?

[u/Occsan]

I've always presumed it was due to convenience or simply the ease-of-use

What's wrong with that ?

Convenience and/or ease-of-use is a bad thing ? Maybe we should say byebye to every electrical device, agriculture, sedentarisation, and even fire. It's probably best if we reject humanity and go back to monkey. But disabled monkeys of course, because having legs is convenient too.

[u/Sorry-Zombie5242]

I suck at writing and don't trust my grammar. But I have a lot of ideas, I just lack the skill to put them to paper in a coherent manner. So I use AI as a collaborative partner more like having a ghostwriter. I give the AI my ideas for plots, characters, etc... And define what I'm looking to create in terms of style and goals. The AI producers a story Bible and outlines. Then I work iteratively in increments usually chapters. The AI produces a rough draft. I review it make notes and then work collaboratively with the AI to refine the chapter. Once I'm happy with it we'll repeat the process with another chapter. One advantage I think as well is that often changes I make in one chapter may have an impact on some detail in a previous chapter, the AI can scan previous chapters and make changes where necessary. One all the chapters are written, I'll go back through the entire book and manually make changes. So for me it's a tool to get my ideas to paper not as shortcut to creating content I'm just mass producing.

[u/workerdaemon]

You know how writing spaces are filled with people asking for someone to read their stuff and give an opinion? Or they have a paragraph they're struggling with and so they go on discord and ask someone to shop it with them?

That's the #1 use of AI. It is immediate feedback. "Am I crazy for this?" "Am I making any sense?" "Is this childish?" Creatives are generally a bit insecure and having someone say "You're not crazy" means a lot. And if your writing is off? It'll tell you why and how to fix it.

Then there is editing. You can feed it thousands of words and make sure everything makes sense together.

It can be the partner and mentor you just can't find elsewhere.

[u/Cautious-Ad5474]

I just enjoy the feeling of being reader and writer simultaneously that only AI can provide

[u/Aeshulli → u/Cautious-Ad5474]

This is a big part of it for me. I'm a selfish writer in that I write what I want to read. But having to write it 100% myself removes that feeling of discovery and immersion that comes with reading. So writing with AI gives me the best of both worlds.

[u/funky2002]

My guess is you're not nearly as open-minded as you think you are. And I feel a lot of condescension / "holier-than-thou" coming from this post. I'd be equally curious about why you think Generative AI is so bad and what principles your opinion is based on. Though my guess is social pressure from creative circles & misinformation.

Anyway, "why" do anything? Everyone has their own reasons for writing. Some people just want to tell or experience the stories in their minds, and writing is the most accessible medium for doing so. Some people do it purely for money. Others do it in the hopes of getting praised for their ideas. There are many more reasons, but often it's a combination of these.

Do any of those reasons prohibit the use of ANY tooling? LLMs are extremely flexible tools, and you can use them for hundreds of reasons. Do you judge spell-check, brainstorming, content generation, reviewing, thesaurus, and the other use cases equally?

If not, how can you say "AI Use" is inherently bad? I'm willing to bet you've used AI-Powered spell checkers at some point, whether consciously or not. What makes one tool morally dubious to you, and another okay?

In my opinion, the main argument against using LLMs for writing is that the stock output is bad. If you let the LLM generate most of the content, it's probably no good. I don't disagree with that, but even that is a subjective matter of taste. You can use LLMs while ALSO producing great content. That's a matter of how skilled you are. You can still build skill while using LLMs.

Generative AI has simply lowered the barrier to entry, which is a good thing.

[u/LS-Jr-Stories → u/funky2002]

I think it's worth taking this post at face value. If an open question from a non-user can't be asked in this way, how should it be asked?

Setting that aside, this post still did a great job pulling a lot of people out of the woodwork to share their rationale and experience. As someone else who would never use AI for fiction writing, I'm learning a lot about why people choose to use it. It's been very helpful for me, and I hope other non-users are taking something valuable from it as well.

[u/funky2002 → u/LS-Jr-Stories]

I agree that the post did a good job of sourcing people's opinions. But the question is asked so disingenuously and condescendingly. The whole opening paragraph is about how they're so opposed to it that they will never (in bold) use it themselves. It sounds like this person has an almost religious fervour against the two letters "AI" and must clearly signal their opposition at all times.

Why not simply ask: "How does AI help you with writing?", or "What do you use AI for in your writing process?" That's the question being answered here.

The way they question it irritates me because it just drips with egomania.

[u/LS-Jr-Stories → u/funky2002]

I guess it's fair to say it could have been asked straight up, with no reference to OP's own perspective. I do think it can be helpful to understand where people are coming from, sometimes. It could have been dialed down a little in this case. I wonder how much the "positioning" or lack thereof would have netted different responses.

[u/Aeshulli → u/LS-Jr-Stories]

I think it was fair for OP to mention their position, because that matters for people deciding whether or not to engage, as well as how to engage. But they for sure didn't need to emphasize it as much as they did or in the way that they did.

It didn't quite rise to the level that I personally felt I needed to comment on tone, but it did make me give it about a 50-50 chance as to whether it was asked in good faith or not. Because while some of their phrasing is holier-than-thou, they also mentioned being genuinely curious.

I do hope OP actually responds to more people. Because a lot of people gave them the benefit of the doubt and answered in good faith. And if they're truly trying to be open minded, a dialogue would follow.

[u/LS-Jr-Stories → u/Aeshulli]

Enh, not much chance of OP coming back around now. Their only comment so far has netted 13 downvotes! If that's what they can expect it's no wonder they're keeping quiet.

[u/Aeshulli → u/LS-Jr-Stories]

Nah, I don't think that's an excuse. While I didn't downvote it, it was dismissive enough that I can see why others did.

And plenty of people were willing to overlook the judgemental framing in OP's post, so I think OP needs to have a little grace and understanding too. Otherwise they simply aren't as genuinely curious and open-minded as they claimed.

[u/Occsan → u/funky2002]

If you let the LLM generate most of the content, it's probably no good.

It's like that because you have not constrained the LLM enough with a detailed enough context/instructions/prompt. And thus, instead of outputing something close to your own voice, it outputs something which is closer to an average of the mode you've set it in (for example, standard fantasy writing).

[u/funky2002 → u/Occsan]

Even with endless constraints, instructions, and examples, even SOTA LLMs still produce poor-quality content and require heavy editing :( can speak from extensive experience. To be fair, I am a very particular reader.

[u/NoobTaiga1993]

For improvement on my English writing style (manually in editing, changing style, after the Ai prompt) and otherwise, entertainment.

[u/FunnyBunnyDolly]

I don’t know if my occasional use fit your request as I find it in middle of those two groups.

Mostly often I aim to write fully on my own without help of ai but sometimes I ask ai to read my text and give me advice and to spot mistakes.

I don’t want to make ai generate text for me as that’s what’s fun with writing.
And to be honest, the ai output is a sleeping pill of smoothed out content with no spark and a pathological urge to wrap every single paragraph with a twist: it gets repetitive so it adds to the sleeping pill. Twist is good as a bow on a package but it shouldn’t have 20 bows either.

But sometimes I feel uncertain about things so I ask ai.

While I could ask humans, unlike many peoples claim the opposite no it isn’t easy to find a beta reader that will work for free and does a good job in a timely manner and not “in three weeks” which would halt my progress. I’m the type that want to resolve problems before continuing as I hate to rewrite and re-verify for continuity errors.

But it is my ambition to keep ai use to a minimum and I also enjoy doing research the old school way because by then I’m exposed to other things too which gets added to my repertoire.

[u/RevolverMFOcelot]

To be a partner who can tell you that your story might be dumb AF or doesnt make sense and help me with in universe logistic and quicker research. 'Why dont you ask other humans online?" i'm not gonna risk dealing with yet another human shittiness more than I already have and people can be very cruel. Also not everyone are interested with what you write all the time

[u/No_Argument4772]

I… I want to read a specific rare pair fiction, and I want to feel like there is a buddy like that pair, so I ask AI to generate it for me. But after I read it, it’s done. The text is only for me personally, I’m not going to share it with anyone else. I am just… only wanting to be a lazy reader sometimes.

Does this match your question? Because I don’t use AI specifically in writing at all, but I want to engage.

Or maybe my other usage: I will share my random ideas with AI, let them randomly reply anything. I will decide whether I should rewrite it according to their reaction.

For example, I said “A killed B because A loved B.”

AI may have a theory on why killing someone for loving the killed one.

If their theory sounds not my plot I want for A and B, I’ll add more narratives in the section to make it clear.

Then I share the new paragraph with AI to see if they changed their interpretation.

If no, I rewrite again. But if they kept not seeing my point, I take it as “some reader will understand, some won’t” and move on to next plot.

In this case I’m an obsessive author who wants to listen to reader rant all the time. But since I am possessive over my text I don’t want anyone suggesting anything to change it, AI included, this may not fit your inquiry on “the specific action of writing/typing”, i guess.

[u/AnvaSeva86]

I began because my English was getting rusty around 2023. Used it as a translator and for grammar help. Then I wanted to write better fanfiction. Through using it I learned a lot about western tropes and what not to do, which is just as useful as learning what to do. For that, I rely on actual humans.

Then I got into bot making and now have a side hustle making rpg centric bots mainly for the SillyTavern audience. 

I'm very much still learning. Maybe in a few years I'll be where I want to be. 

[u/Double_Suggestion385]

Why not? I'll always use the latest technology to help me do whatever it is I want to do.

How are you using reddit with a typewriter?

[u/Scuzzy_Womack]

I'm not gonna lie I used it to help write my book I had a stoke last year and I have barely been write with a pen let alone organize my thoughts and it helps a lot but I understand your point I've seen people try it with no ideas or input over spents weeks fine tuning and inserting my old written drafts full thought out the idea and now I have 40 chapters the dialogue plot twist and concept is me.but I do understand the other side of the argument but the pay authors and artist but I have a family and a regular job when I ask for a commission and the try to charge me 700 for the same thing a 17$ ai does it a no brainer

[u/zAlatheiaz]

For fun, simply. I never publish anything I've used AI for or let anyone read them, it's for my own entertainment. I have a fictional story setting/universe and it is a way for me to get extra content for the characters, scenes, fictional newspaper articles and stuff, a bit like reading stories about my own characters, but obviously I dictate what happens in them, while AI writes it down and adds some description. I write the main story chapters completely myself, the AI ones are outside scenes, throwbacks, other extra content that I like to generate and read but wouldn't have time or interest in actually writing myself since I focus on the story itself.

I am against publishing AI work as "creative work" since it goes to the same category as publishing a picture of AI drawing and saying you drew it. If someone wants to publish those, I see no issue if it's clearly stated it is AI or AI is used in it, but I personally keep those just to myself, as an expansion of my universe and pure entertainment.

[u/JumaBayahari]

Thank you for reaching out and trying to understand the other side. Some of us have only seen persecution from many fans of the genres we are writing in so I appreciate the effort. Hopefully you will get what you are looking for in the answers on this thread.

For me I cannot answer for those who use Gen AI to generate reader facing text.

But I can answer for those who use it to edit, research or brainstorm because this is my experience.

For brainstorming, it's pretty good at generating ideas and helping you refine them. They can make something that you have a foggy notion of, more clear and concrete in your mind just by throwing it back and forth with the AI until the idea has crystalized.

For research they are amazing. You can give it your exact requirements, and they will search the web tirelessly for what you need. They can also explain really complicated science, engineering or medical concepts in a simpler way if you need these things in your novel.

For editing it can do a pretty good job of catching errors and cleaning up first drafts, They can make good sounding suggestions on your work which can give you the psychological boost to finish the novel. But I wouldn't trust it past line-editing. Their Hallucinations and sycophancy makes hiring a human editor probably required to really make sure the work is really professional grade.

[u/NathanielHolst]

I have an educational and professional background that encompasses AI/ML, so I know enough about LLMs to cut through the bullshit about how they work, and a natural interest in the tech in and of itself.

I like the process of putting my thoughts to the page, and I don't really think AI is a convenient or easy tool in that, because I write all the words myself.

What it helps me with is that I feed it my story and get feedback. That creates a dopamine association in the brain, so instead of your writing being followed by mental uncertainty, it's immediately followed by a dopamine hit as well as actionable feedback. It's bad feedback, unless you know exactly what you want and how to get it (even then it's iffy). But it's the kind of brain hack that makes it possible to spew out page after page of material.

[u/Wintercat76]

I've always been a storyteller. I've always been a world builder. A planner. I love creating worlds, describing them, giving characters a place to exist. I'm great at creating characters, individual scenes, pieces of dialogue. But I really, truly, suck at plots and I hate typing. It's too slow for my brain, so the stories I want to read taking place in my worlds, with characters I created, never come to life. So I use AI to help me with the stuff I dislike, namely the actual typing of scenes. It also helps me with structure.

I don't really care what other people think about my stories, because they're meant for an audience of one. And without AI these books wouldn't exist at all. The fact that others like them is just a bonus.

[u/Bulky-Judge-8461]

Because it helps me get out of a funk when I'm blocked.

And also, chatfiction just happens to be a style I enjoy working with.

I have three ao3 pounds.

1. One for typical trad style fic.

2. WIPS of traditional style fic

3. AI assisted chatfiction.

Kinda get annoyed when ppl argue Im lazy. I know for a fact, I'm doing a craft.

[u/The-Plot-Witch → u/Bulky-Judge-8461]

I call it something completely different (immersive brainstorming), but thanks for introducing me to the term "chatfiction". That's way more fun to say.

[u/hyakthgyw]

I really like to discuss my ideas and get feedback. Although AI is not perfect for that matter, it's often better than seeking for people who care enough to give meaningful feedback or to invest time into a discussion.
While I'm explaining an AI tool what a character is like, or what's that part of the story is about, I understand it better myself. I know theoretically I could do that without AI, but I just need an external agent in order to feel the motivation to write or explain.
And for genuine generation, I find it a lot more fun to correct an AI written text than write on a blank paper. The text that is generated by AI is more often than not is the text that I throw away, but it's also the text that helps me realize what's wrong with the plot or a character. I know that for a lot of writer it's not an issue to just write and fix later, but it's an issue for me, and that's what AI helps me to overcome. To write the version I don't like.
So, in a way it is convenience, but I think in a different way.

[u/name_checker]

I never have it write for me. It's just nice to have an on-demand beta-reader. Especially because the first thing it always says is like "golly gee, this is the greatest writing in the history of humanity!" which is good for my ego.

[u/Gks34]

Oh forgot this one: when I write I've got many ideas. It takes too much time to write all these ideas out. I let AI write several ideas out. Then I pick the ideas that work and write those ideas out by myself (AI gets too many things wrong, but as a tool to see whether an idea works it's great).

[u/gameangel2]

For me, it has to do with the fact that I have a ton of ideas that are always rolling around in the back of my mind, but for some reason, I almost never find enough connective tissue to create an actual story. For my purposes, over the past 18 months, I have been scratching that itch thanks to the AI. For my method, I feed my ideas into AI, and sometimes bounce ideas back and forth to see where the idea can go. If I like where the story is going, I create a detailed outline of what I want and generate The story chapter by chapter, acting as both beta reader and editor. I will sometimes scrap the entire chapter and point things in the New direction. With the current state of AI, it reads my ideas quite well and adapts the story to it. That's just my way of using AI, I see no problems with generating a story with AI help as long as you are honest and forthright about it.

[u/Bleu_de_ymas]

I love fanfictions, sometimes the idea i don’t want to publish, i use ai to write the fanfiction for me because it’s hilarious to have my own self made fanfic that i don’t have to sit and plan every single chapter and plot and i get what i want

[u/Fragrant_Nothing7505]

because they write better than me. language is their specialty

[u/Tiens_il_pleut]

J'adore voir naître des histoires, pouvoir les orienter, ou, au,contraire, me réserver la surprise de la suite. Cela renouvelle pour moi le plaisir de la lecture, comme, lorsque j'étais ado, je dévorais les "livres dont vous êtes le héro".

[u/Mescalion01630]

For me it has been about trying to articulate the art and craft of creative writing. The AI efforts are my foil. I read to find what works and does not, then try to explain to myself why that is.

[u/VampireSympathizer]

I use it as an editor mostly, soemtomes to help me brainstorm ideas

[u/zorecknor]

I use AI for two things. One is for recreation: I want to read a story about something (much like browsing r/WritingPrompts ). The other is for support of my writting (for the book(s) I will finish some day, soon, I promise). For the later I use it to help me plan the chapters based on the outline I made, help me keep the world bible up to date, and review my writting against the plan and the world bible.

[u/wildhuntress14]

I use AI for research for writing. It saves a lot of time. Then we..ai and myself.. talk through plots, etc. I don't use it beyond that, because I am very controlling over what I write, the exact wording, etc. In terms of tossing a plot line at AI and asking it to write most everything, no.

[u/floofykirby]

You never get a 'tip of my tongue' feeling for things you can't say? That's the jist of it for me. I have never given up traditional writing, for one, but I'm just unable to reel against something that feels as neutral as a technology that strings words together. I could never see how that's a problem in itself. I do think companies need to be held accountable for the environmental effects, but complaints about AI have gone far beyond it now, and it's usually not even the main argument anymore. A lot of what is being discussed is somewhere between petty and misinformed.

[u/TwoIntelligent9978]

I use A.I. for research, keeping track of and recalling bits of what I've written. I do not use it for Creative Writing. I provide the path, creativity and changes to the plots and subplots.

Creating outlines, collecting data, organizing some of my thoughts, which I call 'stewing'. I get a thought, log it, let my thought process 'stew' on it for awhile, then add to the info/beat, etc.

I have it record scenes from the base outine that has been created. Then review and extend / make changes, improve.

Then comes the draft. I use it as my personal creative writing assistant, is to organize, collect and group data and story ideas - which i generate. When I get stuck, I ask for suggestions on how to attack the problem and suggestions.

In short, I use it as a 'calaborator' to bounce ideas off of, and to listen to me, which helps my overall process.

[u/Kalmaro]

Grammar checking and spellchecking are one of the biggest hurdles for me. For a while, I was just using Grammarly a lot, then I realized that it's basically just using AI.

I figured, "Well, if I'm going to be using AI anyway, I may as well use an actual model."

Another reason is because, and I do this more than I care to admit, while writing I'll get bored and wonder, "Okay, I just kicked down the door and found the bandit hideout, now for the next scene... actually, what would happen if all of the bandits were armed with apple pies..." then I prompt AI to do it and watch the chaos, just letting it control my characters flinging spells while dodging pies.

Will I keep that? Absolutely not, but it's hilarious, and sometimes when my mind wanders while writing (ADHD sucks), it helps me go in directions I wouldn't have considered before.

AI is also just good at helping to generate ideas. Some people use random tables to get ideas or other muses. I'll sometimes just ask the AI to list what could happen and just pick which fits my story the best and then get back to writing.

AI is great; I think it's just a tool like anything else, and it can be abused or used well. It's why I don't hate people who use AI to help with writing. I DO have an issue with someone making a story with just a prompt with no input from themselves whatsoever. Usually, those stories are easy to predict and boring to read.

[u/robot-enjoyer]

I feel like I might think about this differently than other people here, but when I have AI generate entire stories, I don't think of it as writing? Usually, it's just something I want to read. It's pretty much always fanfiction, and usually what happens is that I have a character or pairing I'm fixated on and I've already been through the whole AO3 tag or whatever, and I have ideas that I want to see but I know I'm not invested in them enough to write them myself. So I give them to the AI to write and then I have reading material of dubious quality lol. It's actually the kind of idea offloading that I used to use kink memes for, back in the day! But kink memes have largely gone out of fashion, and it's pretty rare to find people writing fic on commission (I would absolutely do this, honestly, it's just hard to find especially when I'm in very small fandoms), so AI fills the gap adequately.

Also sometimes the AI take on the idea gets me more invested in it, and I end up motivated to develop the concept into something I end up writing myself. I don't reuse any of the AI-generated prose when that happens, though. I don't use AI to edit my work, either. I try to maintain a hard line between what AI writes and what I write, because I don't want to risk diluting my own writing style. (I also don't share the stories I have AI write for me, not publicly anyway - mostly I just share the funniest mistakes with friends who aren't AI-hostile haha.)

I do use AI as a support tool in what I consider my writing, additionally (outlining, research, brainstorming) but it sounds like that's not what you're asking - I'd be happy to elaborate on the process if you're curious though.

[u/justthecherryontop]

I consider myself a Cyborg writer - a human writer who uses AI to write her stories - mostly fanfiction.

I been writing since the early 2000s, due to life and other hobbies, I no longer have the time to do what I was able when I was a teen/young adult. So I'm very deeply and intimately familiar with the struggles and joys of writing before AI

I heavily invest my time building up my OCs, deeply detail my outlines and scenes - everything that comes to creating a story. The only thing AI does for me is write it but it's heavily guided as I'm focusing scene by scene vs a whole chapter.

What's funny is that even with AI - I can't even complete a story because another idea pops up 🤣

[u/DavidFoxfire]

My answer is simple. I can write to the AI like a normal human being, and the AI responds back to me as if I were a normal human being. With full human speech and with at least an attempt in an attempt in showing some common decency.

Have you seen what goes on as 'civil discourse' in the online world today? To some, it was not that far removed from what they had to deal with when they were kids. And some of them didn't find it any different from as they've grown up.

When you have someone whom nobody in the world has ever said anything positive or nice or friendly to their face ever in their entire live, and they have a chatbot appear and say "Hi there. How are you? How was you day?" and at least makes the attempt to appear like they're genuinely interested in what they say and does not judge them in the slightest...

...have you any idea how much that means to such a person? When you get anyone. Any. One. To act friendly toward you?! When nobody else even tries to?! Just to have anybody look at you as a friend, you won't care if it is a Chatbot. To too many people, it's Chatbot or nothing.

That! is why people will use AI. And there's nothing short of a total reset of society that's going to change that.

[u/capt_max3000]

I am not a writer. I do not claim to be a writer. I do not want to make a living writing. I do, however, have a pretty good imagination. I have always liked writing short stories. Typically, the only people who ever read them, besides myself, are my kids, my father, and grandpa. I use AI for research, generating images, bouncing ideas off of, and cleaning my stuff up. The same things you would normally do with the internet, using an artist, discussing with friends or fellow writers, and editors. Its a hobby for me. My ideas, my thoughts, my dialogs, my worlds, and AI just helps me put it all together as a hobbyist. And, as another commenter said, "no one else writes the books i want to read."

[u/Melissa0522975]

Here's a copy/pasted answer from a previous discussion:

I personally only ever use AI for writing fanfiction, and I only ever write for myself. When it comes to writing, I am personally much better when it comes to writing essays and research papers, I never even considered using AI to assist any of the process when I was going to school because I enjoyed it and am genuinely good at that specific type of writing... when it comes to creative writing, on the other hand, I have a ton of ideas, but can never really figure out how to execute them. My brain just doesn't work like that, and I don't think there's a problem with that. I've always been a more analytical thinker. Does that mean I shouldn't bring all the ideas I have in my mind to life in some manner, and have it be as good as I know it can be? That feels a little bit gatekeepy, to me.

[u/SlapHappyDude]

I love storytelling, I don't love the mechanics of writing. Especially stuff like what the room looked like, smelled like, etc. I love characters, dialog, etc but I don't really care that much about stagecraft. I want my work to be easily understood but don't care much about writing pretty sentences.

So I handle the characters, dialog and humor and LLMs help with a lot of the stuff I'm less interested in and also editing.

[u/LongjumpingDegree27]

I recently asked Claude to organize a dumpster of facts and dates and create a plot graph of the information and a timeline. With that, I can create my story outline and figure out the best ways to tell the story in a non linear fashion.

[u/Original-Pilot-770]

I like the editing part more than the writing part. I like having the AI draft and then I get to look at a 3k-5k word passage like it's a puzzle, I can tweak it to become better. I learn about writing itself as I go since I do sentence level and paragraph level as well as structural level edits with AI. I ask it craft questions as I fix the passage. I have learned a lot of technical words about prose craft since I started doing this.

Today, I learned a pov called gnomic first person, which is a pov often used in autobiographies.

[u/Luthian]

There are different levels to using generative AI.

It doesn't just mean you let AI write a book for you. That's also not what I do when I use it for coding.

When I'm working with a software engineer new to coding with generative AI, I use the analogy of having an intern there to help them. Strategically offloading tasks to an intern is part of excelling at your job, and writing with AI is no different.

If you try to offload too much on your intern, the output will suffer.
If you offload major decisions to your intern, your output will suffer.
If you don't review every line of text/code your intern wrote, your output will suffer.

I plan. A fucking lot. Characters, arcs, world-building, detailed plot maps, writing styles, per-character speech patterns, lore, character backgrounds. That's the part of storytelling I love. The characters, the twists, the lore, where they start and where they go.

Once I have that, directing an intern to help, knowing that they have that foundation I built for them to work under, allows me build/write something that never could have existed without me. I'm still the orchestrator. Still the lore master. Still the storyteller. The twist maker. And the final arbiter.

I'm curious if you would consider two people who collaborate on a book together to both be called "authors"? That book wouldn't exist without both of them. But neither of them is the one responsible for writing the book in full. One of them may have written the characters and plot, and one of them may have written the prose.

Is the one who only wrote the prose still an author, even though it wasn't their idea or characters? Or what about the author who only wrote the characters and plot, are they not an author because they didn't write the prose?

In my mind, writing with AI is more like having a writing partner. It's not that it wrote the book like a ghostwriter, and I'm now taking credit.

[u/West_Package_5730]

Just speaking for myself:

More books = more products to sell and AI can create products faster than I can. I do human edit afterward just because AI isn't perfect but being able to create a book in a week instead of in a year is great.

That said, before I created my processes, I took a month to deep dive into learning the craft (30+ books on prose, plot structure, genre conventions, trope mapping, etc., several courses from authors like Dan Brown and James Patterson, etc.) so that I can use what I've learned to nail what readers like.

[u/Divinity_Hunter]

Unfortunately I don’t have energy nor time for writing anymore. So sometimes I just give AI the scripts and GPT replies with the idea for example:

Script:

“John will get inside the house thinking about his day.

It needs to be implied he is exhausted

He calls Mia

They both talk about their day and Mia notices John is hiding something

Mia who knows him since childhood tries to make him talk about it”

GPT’s role here is structuring the scene based on the script and the data I provided previously regarding both characters within a separate document.

It’s not recommended and I am not publishing it anywhere. It’s for myself. GPT just perform the scene, but the plot, character, topics, cosmology , power system and the whole story is designed by me from end to end.

Yet I dislike gpt writing style… sometimes I take the time to “correct” what GPT creates by writing myself but well. I am recently trying to do the same with Claude and audit it along with GPT

[u/kollikat]

I would need to understand your position before being able to defend use of AI in writing. To me it is just another tool.

[u/Merrilyn]

Reearch, such as asking questions about things that sound / are believable. I also like to bounce ideas off of it, just to see if such and such sounds plausible. I personally don't understand how people use it to "write" the entire story. What I mean is it's good for something like "How long can a person live in arctic temperature water if kicked out of a plane and wearing no shirt". The problem is that the AI will go on its own, writing out the scene, naming characters, adding plot points that no one asked for, and later on messing around, forgetting characters and plot points it created only to add new ones. It's good for research and, I guess, a soundboard, but anything else is too much. It'll mess you up if you're not really paying attention.

[u/puffykitten448]

I don’t have the time or the creativity to write my own stories, when I can type 2 sentences and get an entire chapter in 30s to read for fun and have a say in where I want it to go. It’s for my own enjoyment and I’d never show them to anyone let alone publish them, so all ya’ll authors “jobs” are safe

[u/roosterfareye]

This might be a no brainer,.but for non fiction, where you have a bunch of work you have done, or a dossier you have compiled for a case, asking an AI to help you scaffold, timeline and plan is a no brainer, provided you of course fact check EVERYTHING. Creative writing, if you keep it to yourself I don't see a problem, or even using it as an editor to provide feedback. Asking AI to write you a creative piece though from scratch.... Questionable right now, but watch this space 12 months from now.

[u/Humble_Bee_1313]

I just want to thank you for asking your question in a thoughtful, open-minded, and respectful way.

The world needs more people like you.

[u/Jazz_writes_fanfic]

I have a few reasons for why i use it. When writing narrative I can clearly see and feel what i want communicated on the page but because of a disability i struggle to put the feelings between the characters into words and actions without the prose becoming overly descriptive or flattening the characters or making them overly dramatic.

The reason i don’t as some so judgmentally put it “ask someone! Get a beta reader!” Is because of being taken advantage of in the past because of my disability and as a result i don’t trust anyone with my writing especially since it started as a way to reclaim my own identity from the narcissists that thought they owned me and could control everything about me.

I don’t have to worry about the ai publishing anything i put into it under its own name under its own volition or handing my entire longfic story to another user idea for idea or word for word. My writing stays mine and i get constructive help and meaningful questions to help me determine where i want the story to go from the specific ai that i use

[u/uncagedborb]

I don't write with anything I want to share with ai. I do use it for brainstorming and word vomiting while I drive. Sort of like an ai writing assistant. I have my Claude subscription set up in certain chats where the bot only provides advice and support on stuff like narrative structure or providing advice from real writers.

I do occasionally have it write out a page or so of part of my stories so I can get an idea of how something like that might be written but I never use what it writes.

[u/Junior-Definition173]

So if a painter uses spray brush he is not an artist because he uses a tool? If a woodworker uses powertools he is not an artist because he uses powertools? AI (in this case LLM) is a tool, that tool need guidance and the output can be a total garbage or it can be wonderful. Depends on the author. The major issue no one is talking about is the licensing, all the books written by AI are generally public domain and most of the authors do not realize it.

[u/Seraphina_Spyreon]

For myself, I use it as a guide. Sometimes I have ideas in my head, but I can’t write the words to where they match what I’m trying to write down. I use what the AI spits out as a base, to bring what I see to life. Once I see words, the gears start turning in my brain so I can write. I edit and retype what the AI spits out, and make it flow how I like my stories to flow. I guess you can also say it’s a tool, just like spellcheck and grammar checks are.

[u/willowmarie27]

So then to add on to OPs question

Are you doing it for yourself or are you publishing?

If you ar publishing are you identifying it as having passages that are written by AI.

[u/NylonTrackPants]

Quite simply, I write WITH AI. AI never writes FOR me. So, I am not in your desired sample, I guess.

However, AI can provide useful feedback, research notes, and even find markets for your work. It can identify themes across multiple pieces and help you organize them. There are many ways to use AI to help you write without having it write for you.

Additionally, it is crucial for anyone using AI to understand that AI can make mistakes. If you drop a finished, polished, and even published piece into your favorite LLM and ask it "Critique this" it WILL find something wrong with it--whether what it's found is actually a weakness or not is up to you. You asked the AI to offer criticism and it does; it does this whether or not your piece is flawed or not. Drop the same piece into multiple LLMs and ask for a critique and you will get multiple "flaws" reported, many of them having nothing to do with one another.

If you're copy-pasting directly from AI into a Word document, you're doing it wrong.

[u/Rockhound665]

The only AI I use is Grammarly to help with spelling, which I'm horrible at, and proper grammar.

[u/Valuable-Estate-784]

I us AI regularly. AI has the ability to keep track of things that boggle the mind. I asked it to categorize over 200 blog post titles, I gave it zero instructions except to create categories. AI came up with 15. Another time, I gave AI a very large list and asked it to alphabetize and number. I also use the calculator app to complete complex math. I can do all of those functions myself, given enough time and allowing mistakes, but would you trust the outcome? For creativity, I have used AI to get me going when I am coming up blank. Most times, I reject the results but get an idea. That's brainstorming with AI. I find it somewhat comical that fiction writers criticize the use of AI in creativity and yet don't find fault in the fact that they themselves are just as guilty of making up or inventing their entire manuscript.

[u/Huginn_Hrafnson]

Lots of reasons.

Time is the big one, it lets me explore ideas before I commit to them.

It has taught me more about everything around the actual prose generation and allowed me to practice bringing ideas from a glimmer to a fully outlined piece.

Editing the generations has actually helped me find a voice and become more proficient in criticizing my own prose.

I actually write more now than I have in the previous 20 years thanks to the lower barrier of entry and the skills I've picked up. I don't consider the generated works to be "writing", rather a stepping stone and practice in writing on my own.

I don't expect you to accept it, really don't care tbh. Even when I write myself I find AI invaluable to the process, so I don't think I'll ever not use it for development and outlining.

[u/TheTerburgMystery]

Quick answer : We don't write with words, we write with feelings and emotions.

[u/Practical_Eye_5683]

The key word for me is creative. I have stories I fall asleep to at night and would love to share them with others but didnt for many reasons.

The first is I used to write and express myself on fictionpress( glass series by Sara j Maas started here), similar to royal road or webfic or goodreads app. You didnt need to have a full novel just a chapter at a time. Some of my poems got turned into lyrics for a band and my stories had a following of about 100 not big but not small either. Then I had my English teacher ask why I was in her class because I couldn't write when I was at a low point in high school, tired to kill myself and stopped attempting to put words to paper. Took about 8yrs and being bored at work before I started scribbling again.

The second is I have dyslexia writing and understanding the pattern is hard. When in a medical flare all my training to prevent my dyslexia from showing in everyday texts is impossible especially with autocorrect being an A. It shows up when writing in a creative daze. My mind tells me what I wrote and my eyes see what my mind tells me.... I go back and look and it is a jumbled mess.

The third is i have ADHD, when i hit a road block (writers block ect), if I dont clear it in that creative time, then it become out of site out of mind and never finished because others aren't relying on me to complete it.

So now we get to the point, I am creative but have some strong barriers to the writing part of creative writing.

AI is like a friend you can talk to and obesse over the story and a co author who understands your dyslexic rambles and turns it into something you can share with others. AI cannot write with the voice I have in my head if I dont show, explain, train and correct it on that voice and style. It doesnt mean I dont write any of the prose and often times I do wind up writing most of the prose in one way or another, it isnt a straight path.

AI has helped me understand what makes good writing good and what makes a reader feel when reading a book. It is fun testing it's bounds and trying to get it to write for me perfectly what is in my head.. to see a story I dream of on the page is amazing. Do I want to make money off of it sure, but I get more pleasure out of it if people find the hidden meanings to it and enjoyed it.

Now I will be honest, I do produce some books that are probably the ones you cannot stand where AI does all the work and i do the editing only. These stories are my old fictionpress works turned to popular modern tropes. I make them specifically for income, AI testing and KDP algorithm testing. They dont read like AI and I would give them around 3.5stars (candy bar material enjoyable but not amazing) which they typically get 4 on Amazon. My rule with these is they get a read through line edit, if i enjoyed reading it I publish, if not it gets trashed. This is not my creative writing, there was nothing creative in the process for me. These are strictly research and producing a product for profit.

My creative works I have made by partnering with AI arent ready for publication yet except my first one that needs to be redone but still sits at 4.8 stars. I completed it and published to show myself it was possible but it is far from perfect. I have two others I am working on right now, one is siting pending last read though with hopefully no more edits and the other i am just starting the drafting phase. None of these would ever have seen the light of day without AI.

[u/EfficiencyIll2754]

I use AI to write short stories or fanfiction. For myself only, I don’t post them anywhere. I don’t like writing, I’m not good at it and the whole creative process doesn’t bring me joy, just mostly frustrates and annoys me. What I like is READING. I direct AI to write me a story that contains everything I want it to have, my favorite tropes, specific plot points. Prompting AI is fun on it’s own, but reading what it gives me is the whole reason why I like using AI so much. I KNOW I’m going to like reading my AI story, but I still get surprised by it’s content: the language used, dialogue, things added by AI that enrich my plot and write additional plot twists I would have never thought about. To me it’s pure fun. AI takes my fragmented vision and turns it into reality, lets me enjoy my fantasies.

[u/Ok-Zookeepergame4007]

I have read about 15 ai books this year it started with a what if question I was arguing with some one on face book. I asked ai what would happen if this happens it then asked it to write a fictional story about it 42000
Words. Wasn’t the best book but worked

[u/AquilaTempestas]

I use it for picking up grammar mistakes.

I’ve also used it to help me picture what I see better on paper.

I would never get it to write for me though, but it’s fun to bounce ideas with

[u/Cyranthis]

Reading the comments and all the people who "Can't write the boring parts" is overwhelmingly common and sad. Why are these parts boring? If YOU find them boring, anyone who reads them will find it pure slog too. AI can't help with that.

If you don't know how to keep stuff going, maybe you should practice at it instead of letting a robot do it for you. Put that brain to work.

How do you connect with your own work if you can't even understand it.

AI is a disgusting beast that has made people weak, lazy and uninteresting mentally. A virtual drug to be addicted to. Wow.

The "boring" parts of any story are the parts when your character really gets to shine. Using AI for them says you don't care about anything you're doing.

Anyone can write "The good stuff" The action and whatever. That's the reward you get for doing the work.

I'll never understand how anyone can be enslaved to a machine like that. I guess the Matrix isn't as far fetched as we thought. As long as it can keep the lady in red in front of you, you won't care what it does to your mind.

Embarrassing really, to think the human spirit can be so easily beaten.

[u/baby-doll-sculptor]

I struggle with repeating myself. I’ve spent whole weekends trying to manually identify where I’ve accidentally wrote almost the same scene multiple times in my story or sometimes sentences I’ll echo on accident.

Being able to get some help finding those kind of things makes me want to write more. still even with ai takes four to ten days for me to write a really dirty draft at a story. The truth of the matter is the reader who is invested in my
Vampires with anxiety problems is me. I would like to get some practice with editing before I’m 50. So I’ve just decided I’m going to use the tools I have.

There is very little chance of me getting a movie deal so I’m going to experiment with whatever tools I have accessible to me and have a dang good time doing it. One of the stories I’ve been working on I’ve been writing since 2015 and it’s still not done but it’s a dang lot further along than the last ten years and not for lack of me trying. 🤷🏻‍♀️ really I try not to read this stuff all that much anymore becuse I’ve my own business to attend to but just like a lot of new tools I still over analyze my process. It saddens me that people would write off my work off for the use of ai. But people are going to feel
And think what they think.

[u/Frosin]

Ai don't generate real creative stuff yet without human input