How I Incorporate AI In My Writing Process

 

Not long ago, the idea of utilizing AI in my story-writing process was so far off my radar, it never even blipped in my brain. I don't know why. Perhaps fear of the unknown or my natural aversion to change of any kind. Then, back in November, I was asked to write an Advent devotional for my church. Along with sharing the wonder of the incarnation, I was asked to include several thought-provoking questions with each section that would help people dig deep into the beauty of God's gift of Himself to this sin-sick world. The pastor who asked me to do this, mentioned very nonchalantly that I could just use AI to generate questions then tweak them to suit my liking. Honestly, I had no plans to do that, but when the time came to come up with the questions, I was totally stumped. So, I grudgingly opened ChatGPT, copied and pasted my devotional and asked for five deep dive questions into the subject. Within ten seconds I had nearly perfect questions to include in the devotional. What might have taken me hours, had taken a robot under a minute. 

 After seeing the ease with which I could generate the questions for my devotional, I started to wonder how I could use AI to my advantage in the writing process. I felt like I was sitting on an untapped-by-me resource, and I wasn't about to let it remain dormant. Conveniently, I had just begun brainstorming my newest work in progress and thought I might give AI a whirl with research. That has always been a time-consuming part of the process that I enjoy, but it slows me down. Searching for and reading countless online articles on subjects of which I'm no scholar, reading whole books sometimes, tapping in to human psychology to see how a character's wounds from childhood would impact their actions and behaviors as adults. These were the main brainstorming elements that burned through my hours, making the start to finish time for completing a manuscript much longer than I liked. What could it hurt to dip my toe into the AI waters and see if Claude, an AI program designed for writing, could help me shave down my research time?

So, I set up an account with Claude and asked my first question. My current story has some apocalyptic elements, so I asked specific questions about how an EMP would affect certain parts of everyday life. The answers Claude gave were well-rounded and complete. I then moved on to asking how my character's would react to certain situations I had planned if they struggled with feelings of never measuring up or abandonment issues. Again, great insight from Claude. At this point I was hooked. I could have spent hours looking through the Emotional Wound Thesaurus and found good information, but Claude was giving me great examples of specific reactions my characters might have to stimuli in a matter of seconds. At this point I typed my entire story idea into the chat box and asked if the story could be used as a Biblical allegory and if so, which Bible story would fit. Without missing a beat, Claude informed me that my story had many parallels to the book of Daniel and gave me direct correlations between my main character's struggles and those of Daniel and, in my villain's case the parallels to Nebuchadnezzar. 

In the matter of a month I went from not considering AI as a useful tool in the writing process to finding so many ways it helped cut my research time exponentially. Just the other day, I was faced with writing a synopsis on an old story I wrote years ago. To be honest, I couldn't even remember what the story was about, so I thought I'd have to read the entire book again in order to distill everything into a 2,000-word nutshell. I was dreading it. Synopses are one of my least favorite things on earth. Before I started reading, I attached my manuscript in a chat to Claude and asked for a synopsis. In under a minute, I had something that only  needed slight adjustments before I sent it to my agent. Then, I asked Claude for a back cover blurb of the story. Again, Claude delivered in no time at all. I did ask him to make a few tweaks to the blurb, so it would come from the angle I needed, but he gladly did it, because he isn't programmed to get annoyed with my neediness. 

I know there is controversy surrounding AI and writing, since the technology is intelligent enough that it can write novels in so much less time than it takes me. Still, I'm enjoying using it to make the research and synopsis-writing parts of the writing process quicker and easier. It's freeing up time for me to do the parts of my process that I love: writing and editing. I don't see myself going back to my old ways anytime soon. 

A recent release that deals with an AI chatbot is I Think I Was Murdered by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker. I really enjoyed this book and the interesting take on AI that it offered. Comment below for a chance to win an ebook copy. 

Heather Mitchell is the winner of last month's drawing. She won Surge by Voni Harris! Keep an eye on your inbox, Heather, because it's headed your way.