Another excellent use case for AI in writing is to do as Brandon Sanderson suggests (though he doesn't mention AI) and audition your characters before starting your novel. You can fill out their character sheets and then feed them into the AI and tell it: "Please assist me in fleshing out a character in my story. You are [character name]. You will take on that character's persona so I can refine their personality. Act and respond as if you were the character. Only return natural dialogue." You can then put your character in different situations and pepper them with questions to see how they respond. This can help you to get a sense of their voice, their attitude. It makes them come alive. Expert writers do this mentally, but for new writers, or those that are still trying to develop this skill, this can be a huge help.
The output of AI increases in value with the specificity of what you put in. For example, if you just ask for fantasy names, you will get names that feel very generic. If you ask it for names that combine this latin root with an Elvish word for "x", and then as step 2 have it run that name through common linguistic changes that occur over time... all of a sudden you have options for names that are specific to the feel of your novel, have particular meaning, and have a history behind them. Because you already know the sounds of the language you want, the meaning you want, and how much history the name the has, you're ability to get much more interesting results out of the AI. Brainstorm, as you mentioned is also helpful with AI... and what people get wrong about it, is that it is almost as helpful for realizing things you want to avoid as for getting new ideas to adopt. Very frequently, I'll ask AI for a list of options (names, objects, riddles, character quirks, whatever) and I don't like any of the list. This gets me to rethink my question. Is there something I left out, like I want the story to be have more dark and gritty feel? Or is there some trope I want to avoid? Am I looking for real world examples from actual literature, or asking the AI to make up stuff? Getting bad answers from AI actually helps me focus my question. And the last area where I feel like AI is really helpful is not generating core conflicts or character motivations. Maybe I'll brainstorm some of those with it, but for the most part, I get those ideas as I write or walk and think about my writing. But there are areas that are not the focus of the story that might hold me back for a while, but AI can do a decent job of filling in the gaps and let me keep writing. For example, there is a short riddle contest in one of my current short stories. Riddles are not a major theme of the story, or the series, or the characters involved... one character just tells a story that has a riddle contest in it. AI was hugely helpful for me getting two bad riddles (and getting the idea for a decent one) quickly, rather than being stuck on a side-detail for days. This is where it can shine: helping you leverage the specifics you already know to quickly fill out side details, and allow you to focus on the problems and conflicts that your human intuition and experience is best at.
>"what people get wrong about it, is that it is almost as helpful for realizing things you want to avoid" Sometimes what you need is to be presented with a bad idea so you can correct it.
@@johnduquette7023 That can be helpful. But even at a higher level... when you ask a question and all the answers you get awful... ...hopefully you start to realize that maybe your question sucks. Fixing your questions, not just the answers, gives you tremendous creative power.
I love using AI for name generation. Once I tried to write an editor AI buddy using local models and python to check for typos and excessive info dumps for example. I could not do it yet, but I created a chat where I loaded the raw text as context and asked questions about it and it answered and it felt great :D It's not useful at all, but it was fun chatting about my half baked novel. :D Except when it got some things up, then I had the urge to argue. For example, it did not really understand when somebody lied. I am thinking about generating images of my fantasy characters for fun, but whenever I tried to do it I get in hyper focus and waste the whole day :D
Honestly, I remember when I was first introduced to photoshop in school and how I absolutely hated it. It was cheating (imho, it is. I've never changed my stance on this). Fast forward 10 years and now you are pretty much expected to know how to use it. It took me a long, long time to admit it was "just another tool." This is the plain and simple truth of things. Love it or hate, it is not going anywhere. And to the people born today, twenty years from now when they mature into adults, they will see it as just another part of the world they grew up in. Be as angry as you want. Dig your heels in as far as they will go. Go ahead, scream and shout at me (because believe me I UNDERSTAND). Hinder your own art to feed your ego. Act snobbish towards anyone who uses it (be forewarned, from my experience, this kind of attitude burns bridges awfully fast). But know this. The world will move on without you. 10 years sounds like a long time, until it happens. I hope your pride was worth it. Mine wasn't.
Hey, just wanted to say that I've been doing exactly what you're talking about for the past month, and it's been incredible! I’ve almost got three separate books down in a World of Warcraft series set in the Wrath of the Lich King era but decades in the future-where no expansions beyond Wrath happen, including Deathwing. Each of my group’s characters has their own book, and their stories overlap in a few chapters before they all meet up in Booty Bay to go questing together. I’m using AI to write almost one-for-one perspectives for each character, and it's amazing how much depth and material I can generate this way. I've already pumped out 600+ pages in the last five weeks! Each book is deeply immersed in WoW’s lore, but my undead rogue, Muckwallow, occasionally breaks the fourth wall, talking about leveling up from within the game and even outside it. I started this when I decided to take a break from gaming, and what I thought would be just a few chapters for one character has now turned into a full-fledged series. Your videos and others like it have helped me expand and deepen my storytelling even more. Now, I’m diving into another book outside of the Warcraft franchise altogether. Thanks for the inspiration!
Working with AI is process. You give the AI something to work with. Then it might give you 5 horrible options in return. But then you take those options as inspiration, and presents a 6th, much better option. Then the AI works on the 6th option, and gives you new ideas. AI is an i incredible powerful tool for brainstorming and reworking ideas. But you still have to do the majority of the reworking. I use AI to write a Christmas story at the moment. And it has been great for character building. BUT when it comes to plot, i have yet to see it (chatGPT) produce anything that came close to my own. And that feels great, because it tells me that my plot is not so generic, that the AI can predict it. Which is an important side note. AI can help your confidence is your own work.
I think AI is good for helping you in editing; expanding upon existing passages you have written (as well as cutting and trimming them down) and otherwise refining your work further. It is great for analysing the subtext of your writing too, including characterization and relationship dynamics, which is very helpful ro me
That’s pretty much what I use it for too. I wouldn’t want it to write the story for me (I find it hard sometimes to take suggestions from human beta readers, you think I’d take advice wholesale from a computer?). I think a lot of people think AI-assisted writing is typing a paragraph into a “magic generator” and it spits out twenty pages of prose. That’s not how it works, and I don’t think it ever should.
It was good to see you mention the need to look for ethically trained AI. It's a shame that this has not been the default from the start. I think the reaction from creatives to AI might have been less intense if that had been its entrance, open ad honest from the get go. Chat screenshots had been leaked about the way AI makers were talking about the artists whose art they were using as training data and the tone was vile. And very telling. Granted, had AI makers had held respect for creators, had cared to spend the time and money to aquire training material with the consent of their authors - AI might be some more years behind compared to where it's now. It might have taken the stage slower. And people might have had more time to adjust to it. In the end, who's to say.
I started writing a sci-fi fantasy story. Since I suck at grammar I use chat gpt to make my attempt at grammar actually bearable. I ofthen ask a 3 scenario question as well to ensure consistency in the story. Since physics play a very important part of my story the ai also checks those things. Brainstorming and streamlining is also something I use ai for. My mind is the mess that my world is built upon. To not just go all over the place I often need someone to tell me that stuff is not working out. My brainstorming sessions usually consist of frantic typing all the ideas I have with th no order. Ai sorts that stuff for me so my brain can remain the math fueled hurricane that it is.
I actually use Gemini AI for some time. It's not brilliant, but still quite helpfull; sometimes It just reminds me about things I forgot, or gives me broader context of matters I already know exist. Of course there are and will be people who use AI just cuz they're lazy, but that doesn't mean others should stop using it. There were always people like that, using genious tools to make sheet. But there are and should be people using AI just as a helping hand, who will create wonderful books. And those will be easily different in quality.
Glad to hear that you can differentiate the impact/worthiness of AI depending on how and what for someone uses it. I think this is a great stance to have, because no one knows what the future will hold and how AI will evolve from here 🙂
I find Gemini to be quirky and to have an EXTREME liberal bias. Often it won't answer what I think are basic questions and preaches at me when I get a straight answer on exactly the same question from chatgpt free and from Bing copilot. Do you have that issue?
@@thelaughinghyenas8465 In my country, Gemini was not yet fully introduced during all affairs emerged elsewhere (I mean inclusive historical photos etc). Also I never really asked him (or it?) any questions of that kind (The only biased response concerning Cleopatra. I needed that for my writing (as a historical research). He suggested that Cleopatra could be dark skinned. I asked it for source, and it was a quote of some greek, that "Cleopatra face had a colour of honey". Apart from that, I had no problems.
"Never gets tired" Claude: *stops after 25 prompts* I love Claude, and I do my best to follow the guideline to "include as many messages as possible in one prompt", but I often prefer it to focus on just one or two things. Three tops. Still, excellent coverage on the topic. Thanks a lot!
I'm glad to hear that you found the video useful - thank you for leaving the comment. And you are true about the "message limit" that could have been included as a minor form of "tiredness" 🙂
Crafting a story isn't a problem to be solved. Art is hard, but that's the point. It takes practice, learned techniques, and talent. If when you hit a wall, you turn to technology to solve your problem, you are not overcoming obstacles, but simply working around them. I take issue with that. And if you aren't creative enough to flush out your characters, narrative, or world-building, maybe you shouldn't be an author to begin with. That's the harsh truth. Not everyone is meant to be an artist or author, especially if you aren't willing to put in your own blood, sweat, and tears. I choose not to use AI programs because I have ethical questions surrounding them, but beyond that, it's just plain insulting to every great author that came before. If Tolkien or Austen could do it without the help of machines, so can you. This whole trend of taking shortcuts to produce content is alarming and I want no part of it. I would never risk someone questioning my personal integrity by utilizing cheat codes. We are better than that..
If you choose to not make use of this tool due to personal inhibitions or a general distrust/scorn of the technology, that is your choice and I respect that. To be honest; though, I don't understand your statement concerning using technology to deal with obstacles. That is the whole point of technology, to allow us to deal with obstacles and exceed our own limitations. Regardless of whether you smash through an obstacle or find a way around it, you are still overcoming it and both methods are since valid if the point of doing so is to advance to the next stage. However I digress, what I disagree with you on is the idea of people not being cut out for writing stories because they are not 'creative enough'. Sometimes it's not a matter of struggling to find inspiration but of finding a way to express it in a way that doesn't mirror the thousands of stories that came before. That's not taking into account how many people spend inordinate amounts of time overcoming writers' block, as part of their daily shedding of blood, sweat, and tears. It is true that great writers of the past didn't use machines to improve their writing, like Tolkien who would have a great distrust of machines anyway, but how many other famous writers from the same era or even earlier would love to have access to AI to at least fire the engines of creativity? How many would actually pass up on what would've make their careers and lives easily? It is true that there is a danger of AI being used as a crutch, especially by those too lazy or insecure of their capabilities to take charge of the creative process, not to mention it still needs improvement and more ethical oversight, but it makes no sense to simply dismiss it as a cheap trick. Using a hammer to knock a nail into the wall instead of pushing it in with your thumb may seem so convenient that it borders on laziness but it is the most efficient method, and you can always come up with more creative ways to use a hammer. The same goes for AI technology.
@@generationm2059 personal inhibitions?? Lulz. No, I simply don't want to rip anybody off. Virtually all current AI models train their algorithms on content that was not paid for. Just like AI art, these writing tools have scanned thousands or even millions of documents and books without compensating the authors and copyright holders. That is what I meant by ethical concerns. I would not want my own work fed into these programs without compensation, so using them feels scummy. Also, if you struggle to express your creativity, that just means you need to practice writing and get good. That's the bottom line. Read more. Take courses. There are ways to learn how to become a more talented storyteller. Using technology to replace human creativity is just sad. I want AI technology to find better ways to build societal infrastructure and solve cancer. I don't want it used to write movie scripts based on audience retention, or replace traditional artists because we can press a few buttons. That's not okay. And by using any AI technology that even COULD be used to replace human artists or writers, you are contributing to the problem. Lastly, in regards to the notion that many authors from the past would have wanted to use AI if given the opportunity, wow... Consider long and hard about how utterly stupid that statement was and try again. Just because something can make our lives easier doesn't mean it should. That is exactly the problem with the current generation and why modern storytelling has become so abysmal. The great authors of the past faced much more challenging lives than we do today, and those life experiences shaped their writing. You are not going to write The Lord of the Rings at 25 or 30 yrs old. So rather than gain the life experience necessary to write a timeless and beloved story, you're going to use AI... Your reply makes it painfully clear that you have no idea why writing, and art in general, is supposed to be difficult.
I find AI to be extremely useful in writing my stories. It gives quickly and easily gives answers to technical questions, helps with phrasing things and I've used it when I have a block on a scene by describing the scene in detail with all the flow from beginning to end and getting a draft. When I do this, I will get the version from Google Gemini, Chat GPT and Bing Copilot and read each and see what I hadn't considered. Occasionally a few words will be worth keeping but generally it's pretty dreadful. Just having the material in front of me helps me see the scene and write a real version. Google Gemini has such an EXTREME liberal bias it's nothing short of painful. It often will refuse to answer very basic questions but will deliver long winded preaching to me instead. By comparison, Bing Copilot generally gives me an answer although I have had problems when asking asking Copilot to do romantic scenes. Once, two characters were going to get romantic but a chance thing happened that gave one of the two a very painful flashback killing all mood before anything started. Copilot wouldn't do it. Chatgpt remains the best overall.
That's quite some intense comparing you are doing there 🙂 Have you tried Claude 3.5 Sonnet? I've found it to be the best one when it comes to creative writing so far.
@@intergalactic92 , Once you compare them, you can''t argue the extreme political learning of Google Gemini and this extreme bias often stops it from being usable as a tool. It's SO extreme that when I wanted help identifying what gun was in a picture that all I got a lecture about how evil guns are and how dangerous they are. When I copy pasted the same prompt on Bing Co-Pilot, it gave me the correct answer and linked me to a review of the gun giving a user's impression of it. That isn't unusual at all with Gemini. When I asked for the name of the Spanish king who abdicated around 1928, I got garbage answers about how it wouldn't give responses with current politics. ChatGPT and Bing both gave the name of the king and the correct abdication date.
I use ai to discuss all the theories and what ifs I can't effectively discuss with real people. It's quite exciting. I've also tested once or twice how certain things could work. But I don't let the exploration and wonder stop where the ai does. Plus, exploring a topic and giving soul to a story are entirely different things.
In other words, use Ai to inspire and brainstorm ideas, and in an ethical way, while making sure you are the one in charge of the creative process? It's understandable that some in the comments section are cautious at best about using AI but some of them seems to mistakenly believe you're advocating letting it take the helm of the creative process. I'm not sure what to think of that.
I want your hands on procedure. Which AI are you using? What version? What software goes with it? How do you get it trained on your writing style? What I hear is selling us on using it, not showing us how to use it.
This was indeed more of an overarching statement about the use of AI in fantasy writing, yes. It was not meant to be a "how to" video per se. I'd be more than happy to put that on my to-do list but I wanted to tackle this topic at a higher level first and evaluate the feedback before spending any additional time on videos in that direction. Hope that makes sense somehow 🙂 NB: I did test ChatGPT for a long time and while I was able to work with it decently to some degree, I've personally found the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model to be far superior in terms of creative writing.
@@TheTaleTinkerer , You should see if Claude will sponsor you and give us a discount/you a cut for a sponsored video and do a video that shows the differences, limitations and how to get the most out of the strictly free versions. I am a hobbyist writer who has never made anything out of it and so my budget is limited. That means I want to use free stuff whenever possible, including the best free AI.
Man you uhh. You had my respect for a while there. I figured you just used AI for the thumbnails. Which, is still very bad, but id grit my teeth and listen to your writing advice. This, however, has pushed you to a category of content creator I can no longer support. Will be blocking your videos from now on. You are just simply not on the side of artists and creatives and I question whether you ever were now.
I'm coming into this video as a skeptic and after watching a bit I wanted to offer some of these points. 1) I feel like AI and writing isn't just about small assistance only. There are a lot of different applications people are using AI for. There are those who will not disclose their use of AI which can lead to a uncertainty of what stories are truly human created. I've seen this in the Online Art Sphere where people will accuse and harass normal artists of using AI when they do not. It can be one thing when you use AI to help brainstorm, but readers will not know how much of that is your own, or created with AI. How much AI input can you have without labeling your work as AI generated? 2) you've brought up ownership of writing but I think there was an angle you did not account for, creative AI isn't currently set in stone as who owns what. It's possible that AI companies might try to claim ownership of stories or ideas generated with their programs. It might sound a bit science fiction but I wouldn't put it past corporations to at least take a swing at it. 3) Regarding the statement that all art and stories are built on something that came before, This is true but I feel like it doesn't quite address the issue. When you do research or look up information, that information is filtered through your own lens of understanding. Your takeaway from what might have been an hour of research would look very differently from a 5 minute question to chat GPT. And this is even without taking AI's dubious accuracy on information. I hope you understand my possible concerns when it comes to using AI. I could end up being a Luddite in all of this but considering people's careers and even how we consume media I think it's worthwhile to be a little cautious.
Another just came to me as well 4) I think there is a different between word processors and AI generation. To use art as a comparison, an art program gives you the undo function that previously a painter would have to paint over or scrap the painting entirely, but they still have to create the image themselves. AI can create the painting on its own. It might not look as good, but as Brandon Sanderson said, eventually they could write books as well as any human. The word processor alone cannot write a book just as paint.exe cannot create an image on its own. So I feel like the comparison between word processors and AI does not work.
I messed around with an AI writing tool a few months ago, just to see what would happen. I can attest to the fact that it must have been 'trained' using fan fiction because it did spit out random author's notes from time to time.
AI can’t catch up to my level of imagination. I already out weird AI dungeon. I also asked Instagram, Instagram’s AI to write a story about talking dogs and a post apocalyptic world. It only gave me a surface level story using dog names like Max, Duke, and Rosie
It’s a tool and like all tools it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Is there any difference in asking AI to generate something based on work it has in its database, and you rewriting Lord of the Rings yourself? Helping you with ideas, and pushing through writers block is one thing. Organising disparate thoughts seems fine as well. Getting it to write the whole thing for you….. too much. Full disclosure I did play around with an AI writer a few months ago. I absolutely loved it until I realised I wasn’t writing, I was just clicking next over and over to see what was going to happen next. I was letting the AI do all the hard work for me. It was a lot of fun, and I did sometimes join in and nudge it in a direction, but ultimately there was very little creativity from my side. So I’ve gone cold turkey now, and have been trying to get back into organically writing. It has not been easy but I’m wary of slipping back into bad habits.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.
Off topic, and someone probably asked you this before, but I just checked out some of the links in your RUclips bio. Cause I was curious about your books. I was suprised when I didn't find a bibliography. Is finding a publisher, or self publishing your works something you have been working towards or planning to? I heard getting published can take like 10 years. And a lot of luck. That said, I do find a lot of your videos and community posts to have lots of sound advice that makes one think. I was not suprised though to learn you are German. :D I was wondering about the accent for a while.
I'm glad to hear that you found some things in my videos valuable to you. In terms of books, I have never been a fan of traditional publishing personally, and thus never really aspired to go that route. With the evolution of self-publishing over the last years though, I do find this to be an interesting route, and thus also plan to publish the first novel of mine next year, yes :-)
@@TheTaleTinkerer ohh I see! Yes that is understandable! It's good that self publishing has been becoming more viable these days. Wishing you all the best with your first release!!
Some here are reacting as though this tool is anathema. As someone who has thousands of pages of notes on hundreds of gemstones and plants, dictionaries of historical magical words and historical conlangs dissected radical roots, and so on, passing on a tool to assist in the organization of the objective data I've already gathered would be stupid.
Follow-up: Did a test run on the free version, using some notes I gathered on a specific material. I played around with it to figure out if it was any good. Was not satisfied with the end result of the tinkering on my notes, but it was a test run of its ability to understand my prompts and queries. I was satisfied with its understanding of the prompts, and its ability to trim my notes down. Once a final format is decided, it's going to be great for laying things out to make writing the actual entries quick and easy. Once that's done, it's also going to make integrating my general notes into my story notes pretty quick and easy (I have them as separate scrivener archives due to volume).
NO! JUST NO! The more you use it less creative you will be. If you hit a wall YOU must find a way to break it. If not, you are just not a good writter. The more help you seek, less capable you are
Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is Immortal.
@@URKCEHinoSuuthe machine was made by imperfection. Therefore can never truly be trusted. Trust is impossible. Things fry out and hardwires break. The only person you can trust is yourself and even then, that’s only because you are in ur own head. AI is bad. It should be doing the things we don’t need to do like clean our homes and cook our meals at home. Not do our work for us. Nobody would care about diamonds if they were common. Glass is just as shiny, yet nobody bats an eye.
At best, Ai will just make your original works more generic. AI literally cannot create. It can only spit out chopped up bits of information from other people's works.
cant it help if you use your own work? i use a tool called obsidian for world building, if i just feed all those notes into ai, it can help generate ideas no?
@@anjaneytripathi6949 It cannot. See, one of the biggest problems is that AI cannot understand. It knows how to do things, but it doesn't know why. It knows that a character can die/fall in love/perform any action, but it doesn't know why. It's why AI art can't get fingers or windows right. It knows buildings have windows, but it doesn't know why we have them be even, or where they go on the building. More importantly to your point, unless it has other data sources, then the ai hasn't created anything "new". It probably wouldn't have enough data to actually make anything beyond your notes. The only way it can actually "Create" something new is if it has other data points to draw on. In which case, it's still not original, but other people's works being chopped up and spat out. Combine these two factors, and you end up with stories that either so basic you wouldn't have needed an Ai's help, or stories that don't make any sense, as Ai doesn't understand the context of the story or events within the story.
I am old enough to remember the time when many writers insisted that you could not write a good novel using word processing, only a typewriter. And then they died or retired, and their convictions with them.
I understand what you're talking about, but I think some of the examples you give I disagree with. I don't think walls in your writing should be fixed with AI. I think fact finding, fleshing out weak areas like masp building, conlangs, quick answers for words that rhym with and mesn x for example, maybe battle planning. These sorts of things, its just a helper like s thesaurus or a strategy book or a research tool. But something to deal with your blocks. Na I'm not sure. I get what your saying and it is a revolation that could well help you be the most creative and most productive but at some point you have to ask is this my story. Did I write it? If I am an excellent prose writer with no ability to make a plot centreded on a theme and I use AI for that, yes its helped me, but is it my story. Did I really write a book. Have i learned my craft truly? I sat down, i wrote the word, but thats not all that being an author is. And if you struggle with a part of it, learn.
![How to build a magic system | Worldbuilding magic [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jnDuppjJXng/mqdefault.jpg)
Find even more storytelling and fantasy writing advice in this playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLDpOcpMPZP3D-KapKbtwA5mjPlEon9rad
Another excellent use case for AI in writing is to do as Brandon Sanderson suggests (though he doesn't mention AI) and audition your characters before starting your novel. You can fill out their character sheets and then feed them into the AI and tell it:
"Please assist me in fleshing out a character in my story. You are [character name]. You will take on that character's persona so I can refine their personality. Act and respond as if you were the character. Only return natural dialogue."
You can then put your character in different situations and pepper them with questions to see how they respond. This can help you to get a sense of their voice, their attitude. It makes them come alive. Expert writers do this mentally, but for new writers, or those that are still trying to develop this skill, this can be a huge help.
At this point didn't AI writing novel for you while you just type text that its telling you to write?
The output of AI increases in value with the specificity of what you put in. For example, if you just ask for fantasy names, you will get names that feel very generic. If you ask it for names that combine this latin root with an Elvish word for "x", and then as step 2 have it run that name through common linguistic changes that occur over time... all of a sudden you have options for names that are specific to the feel of your novel, have particular meaning, and have a history behind them. Because you already know the sounds of the language you want, the meaning you want, and how much history the name the has, you're ability to get much more interesting results out of the AI.
Brainstorm, as you mentioned is also helpful with AI... and what people get wrong about it, is that it is almost as helpful for realizing things you want to avoid as for getting new ideas to adopt. Very frequently, I'll ask AI for a list of options (names, objects, riddles, character quirks, whatever) and I don't like any of the list. This gets me to rethink my question. Is there something I left out, like I want the story to be have more dark and gritty feel? Or is there some trope I want to avoid? Am I looking for real world examples from actual literature, or asking the AI to make up stuff? Getting bad answers from AI actually helps me focus my question.
And the last area where I feel like AI is really helpful is not generating core conflicts or character motivations. Maybe I'll brainstorm some of those with it, but for the most part, I get those ideas as I write or walk and think about my writing. But there are areas that are not the focus of the story that might hold me back for a while, but AI can do a decent job of filling in the gaps and let me keep writing. For example, there is a short riddle contest in one of my current short stories. Riddles are not a major theme of the story, or the series, or the characters involved... one character just tells a story that has a riddle contest in it. AI was hugely helpful for me getting two bad riddles (and getting the idea for a decent one) quickly, rather than being stuck on a side-detail for days. This is where it can shine: helping you leverage the specifics you already know to quickly fill out side details, and allow you to focus on the problems and conflicts that your human intuition and experience is best at.
>"what people get wrong about it, is that it is almost as helpful for realizing things you want to avoid"
Sometimes what you need is to be presented with a bad idea so you can correct it.
@@johnduquette7023 That can be helpful. But even at a higher level... when you ask a question and all the answers you get awful...
...hopefully you start to realize that maybe your question sucks. Fixing your questions, not just the answers, gives you tremendous creative power.
I love using AI for name generation.
Once I tried to write an editor AI buddy using local models and python to check for typos and excessive info dumps for example. I could not do it yet, but I created a chat where I loaded the raw text as context and asked questions about it and it answered and it felt great :D It's not useful at all, but it was fun chatting about my half baked novel. :D Except when it got some things up, then I had the urge to argue. For example, it did not really understand when somebody lied.
I am thinking about generating images of my fantasy characters for fun, but whenever I tried to do it I get in hyper focus and waste the whole day :D
As long as you're having fun, is it really "wasting a day" then? 🙂
@@TheTaleTinkerer I'm not having fun D':
Honestly, I remember when I was first introduced to photoshop in school and how I absolutely hated it. It was cheating (imho, it is. I've never changed my stance on this). Fast forward 10 years and now you are pretty much expected to know how to use it. It took me a long, long time to admit it was "just another tool."
This is the plain and simple truth of things. Love it or hate, it is not going anywhere. And to the people born today, twenty years from now when they mature into adults, they will see it as just another part of the world they grew up in.
Be as angry as you want. Dig your heels in as far as they will go. Go ahead, scream and shout at me (because believe me I UNDERSTAND). Hinder your own art to feed your ego. Act snobbish towards anyone who uses it (be forewarned, from my experience, this kind of attitude burns bridges awfully fast).
But know this. The world will move on without you. 10 years sounds like a long time, until it happens. I hope your pride was worth it. Mine wasn't.
@@LordVVar You must be old if you think using Photoshop, of all things, is cheating in some way
@@unicorntomboy9736which proves his point, when it was new it will have been treated differently.
Photoshop will not make pictures for you without your involvement in 80% of the process
Hey, just wanted to say that I've been doing exactly what you're talking about for the past month, and it's been incredible! I’ve almost got three separate books down in a World of Warcraft series set in the Wrath of the Lich King era but decades in the future-where no expansions beyond Wrath happen, including Deathwing. Each of my group’s characters has their own book, and their stories overlap in a few chapters before they all meet up in Booty Bay to go questing together.
I’m using AI to write almost one-for-one perspectives for each character, and it's amazing how much depth and material I can generate this way. I've already pumped out 600+ pages in the last five weeks! Each book is deeply immersed in WoW’s lore, but my undead rogue, Muckwallow, occasionally breaks the fourth wall, talking about leveling up from within the game and even outside it.
I started this when I decided to take a break from gaming, and what I thought would be just a few chapters for one character has now turned into a full-fledged series. Your videos and others like it have helped me expand and deepen my storytelling even more. Now, I’m diving into another book outside of the Warcraft franchise altogether. Thanks for the inspiration!
Working with AI is process.
You give the AI something to work with.
Then it might give you 5 horrible options in return.
But then you take those options as inspiration, and presents a 6th, much better option.
Then the AI works on the 6th option, and gives you new ideas.
AI is an i incredible powerful tool for brainstorming and reworking ideas.
But you still have to do the majority of the reworking.
I use AI to write a Christmas story at the moment. And it has been great for character building.
BUT when it comes to plot, i have yet to see it (chatGPT) produce anything that came close to my own.
And that feels great, because it tells me that my plot is not so generic, that the AI can predict it.
Which is an important side note.
AI can help your confidence is your own work.
AI is like having a coach, editor, publisher, translator by your side 24 hours a day and much more.
I think AI is good for helping you in editing; expanding upon existing passages you have written (as well as cutting and trimming them down) and otherwise refining your work further. It is great for analysing the subtext of your writing too, including characterization and relationship dynamics, which is very helpful ro me
That’s pretty much what I use it for too. I wouldn’t want it to write the story for me (I find it hard sometimes to take suggestions from human beta readers, you think I’d take advice wholesale from a computer?). I think a lot of people think AI-assisted writing is typing a paragraph into a “magic generator” and it spits out twenty pages of prose. That’s not how it works, and I don’t think it ever should.
It was good to see you mention the need to look for ethically trained AI. It's a shame that this has not been the default from the start. I think the reaction from creatives to AI might have been less intense if that had been its entrance, open ad honest from the get go.
Chat screenshots had been leaked about the way AI makers were talking about the artists whose art they were using as training data and the tone was vile. And very telling.
Granted, had AI makers had held respect for creators, had cared to spend the time and money to aquire training material with the consent of their authors - AI might be some more years behind compared to where it's now. It might have taken the stage slower. And people might have had more time to adjust to it. In the end, who's to say.
I started writing a sci-fi fantasy story. Since I suck at grammar I use chat gpt to make my attempt at grammar actually bearable. I ofthen ask a 3 scenario question as well to ensure consistency in the story. Since physics play a very important part of my story the ai also checks those things.
Brainstorming and streamlining is also something I use ai for. My mind is the mess that my world is built upon. To not just go all over the place I often need someone to tell me that stuff is not working out. My brainstorming sessions usually consist of frantic typing all the ideas I have with th no order. Ai sorts that stuff for me so my brain can remain the math fueled hurricane that it is.
I actually use Gemini AI for some time. It's not brilliant, but still quite helpfull; sometimes It just reminds me about things I forgot, or gives me broader context of matters I already know exist.
Of course there are and will be people who use AI just cuz they're lazy, but that doesn't mean others should stop using it. There were always people like that, using genious tools to make sheet. But there are and should be people using AI just as a helping hand, who will create wonderful books. And those will be easily different in quality.
Glad to hear that you can differentiate the impact/worthiness of AI depending on how and what for someone uses it. I think this is a great stance to have, because no one knows what the future will hold and how AI will evolve from here 🙂
I find Gemini to be quirky and to have an EXTREME liberal bias. Often it won't answer what I think are basic questions and preaches at me when I get a straight answer on exactly the same question from chatgpt free and from Bing copilot. Do you have that issue?
@@thelaughinghyenas8465 In my country, Gemini was not yet fully introduced during all affairs emerged elsewhere (I mean inclusive historical photos etc). Also I never really asked him (or it?) any questions of that kind (The only biased response concerning Cleopatra. I needed that for my writing (as a historical research). He suggested that Cleopatra could be dark skinned. I asked it for source, and it was a quote of some greek, that "Cleopatra face had a colour of honey". Apart from that, I had no problems.
"Never gets tired"
Claude: *stops after 25 prompts*
I love Claude, and I do my best to follow the guideline to "include as many messages as possible in one prompt", but I often prefer it to focus on just one or two things. Three tops.
Still, excellent coverage on the topic. Thanks a lot!
I'm glad to hear that you found the video useful - thank you for leaving the comment. And you are true about the "message limit" that could have been included as a minor form of "tiredness" 🙂
Crafting a story isn't a problem to be solved. Art is hard, but that's the point. It takes practice, learned techniques, and talent. If when you hit a wall, you turn to technology to solve your problem, you are not overcoming obstacles, but simply working around them. I take issue with that. And if you aren't creative enough to flush out your characters, narrative, or world-building, maybe you shouldn't be an author to begin with. That's the harsh truth. Not everyone is meant to be an artist or author, especially if you aren't willing to put in your own blood, sweat, and tears.
I choose not to use AI programs because I have ethical questions surrounding them, but beyond that, it's just plain insulting to every great author that came before. If Tolkien or Austen could do it without the help of machines, so can you. This whole trend of taking shortcuts to produce content is alarming and I want no part of it. I would never risk someone questioning my personal integrity by utilizing cheat codes. We are better than that..
meh
If you choose to not make use of this tool due to personal inhibitions or a general distrust/scorn of the technology, that is your choice and I respect that. To be honest; though, I don't understand your statement concerning using technology to deal with obstacles. That is the whole point of technology, to allow us to deal with obstacles and exceed our own limitations. Regardless of whether you smash through an obstacle or find a way around it, you are still overcoming it and both methods are since valid if the point of doing so is to advance to the next stage.
However I digress, what I disagree with you on is the idea of people not being cut out for writing stories because they are not 'creative enough'. Sometimes it's not a matter of struggling to find inspiration but of finding a way to express it in a way that doesn't mirror the thousands of stories that came before. That's not taking into account how many people spend inordinate amounts of time overcoming writers' block, as part of their daily shedding of blood, sweat, and tears.
It is true that great writers of the past didn't use machines to improve their writing, like Tolkien who would have a great distrust of machines anyway, but how many other famous writers from the same era or even earlier would love to have access to AI to at least fire the engines of creativity? How many would actually pass up on what would've make their careers and lives easily?
It is true that there is a danger of AI being used as a crutch, especially by those too lazy or insecure of their capabilities to take charge of the creative process, not to mention it still needs improvement and more ethical oversight, but it makes no sense to simply dismiss it as a cheap trick. Using a hammer to knock a nail into the wall instead of pushing it in with your thumb may seem so convenient that it borders on laziness but it is the most efficient method, and you can always come up with more creative ways to use a hammer. The same goes for AI technology.
@@generationm2059 personal inhibitions?? Lulz. No, I simply don't want to rip anybody off. Virtually all current AI models train their algorithms on content that was not paid for. Just like AI art, these writing tools have scanned thousands or even millions of documents and books without compensating the authors and copyright holders. That is what I meant by ethical concerns. I would not want my own work fed into these programs without compensation, so using them feels scummy.
Also, if you struggle to express your creativity, that just means you need to practice writing and get good. That's the bottom line. Read more. Take courses. There are ways to learn how to become a more talented storyteller. Using technology to replace human creativity is just sad. I want AI technology to find better ways to build societal infrastructure and solve cancer. I don't want it used to write movie scripts based on audience retention, or replace traditional artists because we can press a few buttons. That's not okay. And by using any AI technology that even COULD be used to replace human artists or writers, you are contributing to the problem.
Lastly, in regards to the notion that many authors from the past would have wanted to use AI if given the opportunity, wow... Consider long and hard about how utterly stupid that statement was and try again. Just because something can make our lives easier doesn't mean it should. That is exactly the problem with the current generation and why modern storytelling has become so abysmal. The great authors of the past faced much more challenging lives than we do today, and those life experiences shaped their writing. You are not going to write The Lord of the Rings at 25 or 30 yrs old. So rather than gain the life experience necessary to write a timeless and beloved story, you're going to use AI... Your reply makes it painfully clear that you have no idea why writing, and art in general, is supposed to be difficult.
I find AI to be extremely useful in writing my stories. It gives quickly and easily gives answers to technical questions, helps with phrasing things and I've used it when I have a block on a scene by describing the scene in detail with all the flow from beginning to end and getting a draft. When I do this, I will get the version from Google Gemini, Chat GPT and Bing Copilot and read each and see what I hadn't considered. Occasionally a few words will be worth keeping but generally it's pretty dreadful. Just having the material in front of me helps me see the scene and write a real version.
Google Gemini has such an EXTREME liberal bias it's nothing short of painful. It often will refuse to answer very basic questions but will deliver long winded preaching to me instead. By comparison, Bing Copilot generally gives me an answer although I have had problems when asking asking Copilot to do romantic scenes. Once, two characters were going to get romantic but a chance thing happened that gave one of the two a very painful flashback killing all mood before anything started. Copilot wouldn't do it. Chatgpt remains the best overall.
That's quite some intense comparing you are doing there 🙂 Have you tried Claude 3.5 Sonnet? I've found it to be the best one when it comes to creative writing so far.
@@TheTaleTinkerer , Not yet, but thanks to you I have it on screen now.
I like the fact that the supposed political leaning is where you draw the line.
@@intergalactic92 , Once you compare them, you can''t argue the extreme political learning of Google Gemini and this extreme bias often stops it from being usable as a tool. It's SO extreme that when I wanted help identifying what gun was in a picture that all I got a lecture about how evil guns are and how dangerous they are. When I copy pasted the same prompt on Bing Co-Pilot, it gave me the correct answer and linked me to a review of the gun giving a user's impression of it. That isn't unusual at all with Gemini. When I asked for the name of the Spanish king who abdicated around 1928, I got garbage answers about how it wouldn't give responses with current politics. ChatGPT and Bing both gave the name of the king and the correct abdication date.
I use ai to discuss all the theories and what ifs I can't effectively discuss with real people. It's quite exciting. I've also tested once or twice how certain things could work. But I don't let the exploration and wonder stop where the ai does. Plus, exploring a topic and giving soul to a story are entirely different things.
In other words, use Ai to inspire and brainstorm ideas, and in an ethical way, while making sure you are the one in charge of the creative process?
It's understandable that some in the comments section are cautious at best about using AI but some of them seems to mistakenly believe you're advocating letting it take the helm of the creative process. I'm not sure what to think of that.
I want your hands on procedure. Which AI are you using? What version? What software goes with it? How do you get it trained on your writing style? What I hear is selling us on using it, not showing us how to use it.
This was indeed more of an overarching statement about the use of AI in fantasy writing, yes. It was not meant to be a "how to" video per se. I'd be more than happy to put that on my to-do list but I wanted to tackle this topic at a higher level first and evaluate the feedback before spending any additional time on videos in that direction. Hope that makes sense somehow 🙂 NB: I did test ChatGPT for a long time and while I was able to work with it decently to some degree, I've personally found the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model to be far superior in terms of creative writing.
@@TheTaleTinkerer , You should see if Claude will sponsor you and give us a discount/you a cut for a sponsored video and do a video that shows the differences, limitations and how to get the most out of the strictly free versions. I am a hobbyist writer who has never made anything out of it and so my budget is limited. That means I want to use free stuff whenever possible, including the best free AI.
Man you uhh. You had my respect for a while there. I figured you just used AI for the thumbnails. Which, is still very bad, but id grit my teeth and listen to your writing advice. This, however, has pushed you to a category of content creator I can no longer support. Will be blocking your videos from now on. You are just simply not on the side of artists and creatives and I question whether you ever were now.
I'm coming into this video as a skeptic and after watching a bit I wanted to offer some of these points.
1) I feel like AI and writing isn't just about small assistance only. There are a lot of different applications people are using AI for. There are those who will not disclose their use of AI which can lead to a uncertainty of what stories are truly human created. I've seen this in the Online Art Sphere where people will accuse and harass normal artists of using AI when they do not. It can be one thing when you use AI to help brainstorm, but readers will not know how much of that is your own, or created with AI. How much AI input can you have without labeling your work as AI generated?
2) you've brought up ownership of writing but I think there was an angle you did not account for, creative AI isn't currently set in stone as who owns what. It's possible that AI companies might try to claim ownership of stories or ideas generated with their programs. It might sound a bit science fiction but I wouldn't put it past corporations to at least take a swing at it.
3) Regarding the statement that all art and stories are built on something that came before, This is true but I feel like it doesn't quite address the issue. When you do research or look up information, that information is filtered through your own lens of understanding. Your takeaway from what might have been an hour of research would look very differently from a 5 minute question to chat GPT. And this is even without taking AI's dubious accuracy on information.
I hope you understand my possible concerns when it comes to using AI. I could end up being a Luddite in all of this but considering people's careers and even how we consume media I think it's worthwhile to be a little cautious.
Another just came to me as well
4) I think there is a different between word processors and AI generation. To use art as a comparison, an art program gives you the undo function that previously a painter would have to paint over or scrap the painting entirely, but they still have to create the image themselves. AI can create the painting on its own. It might not look as good, but as Brandon Sanderson said, eventually they could write books as well as any human. The word processor alone cannot write a book just as paint.exe cannot create an image on its own. So I feel like the comparison between word processors and AI does not work.
I use ai for research (but have to double check it, obviously)
It's really good at naming things. Like talking to Google translate
No ai simply takes other peoples work and changes it to fit the prompts you give it seen it in other art pieces won’t ever use it
I messed around with an AI writing tool a few months ago, just to see what would happen. I can attest to the fact that it must have been 'trained' using fan fiction because it did spit out random author's notes from time to time.
AI can’t catch up to my level of imagination. I already out weird AI dungeon. I also asked Instagram, Instagram’s AI to write a story about talking dogs and a post apocalyptic world. It only gave me a surface level story using dog names like Max, Duke, and Rosie
It’s a tool and like all tools it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Is there any difference in asking AI to generate something based on work it has in its database, and you rewriting Lord of the Rings yourself? Helping you with ideas, and pushing through writers block is one thing. Organising disparate thoughts seems fine as well. Getting it to write the whole thing for you….. too much.
Full disclosure I did play around with an AI writer a few months ago. I absolutely loved it until I realised I wasn’t writing, I was just clicking next over and over to see what was going to happen next. I was letting the AI do all the hard work for me. It was a lot of fun, and I did sometimes join in and nudge it in a direction, but ultimately there was very little creativity from my side. So I’ve gone cold turkey now, and have been trying to get back into organically writing. It has not been easy but I’m wary of slipping back into bad habits.
You had me for one day. See ya
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine.
Off topic, and someone probably asked you this before, but I just checked out some of the links in your RUclips bio. Cause I was curious about your books. I was suprised when I didn't find a bibliography. Is finding a publisher, or self publishing your works something you have been working towards or planning to? I heard getting published can take like 10 years. And a lot of luck.
That said, I do find a lot of your videos and community posts to have lots of sound advice that makes one think.
I was not suprised though to learn you are German. :D I was wondering about the accent for a while.
I'm glad to hear that you found some things in my videos valuable to you. In terms of books, I have never been a fan of traditional publishing personally, and thus never really aspired to go that route. With the evolution of self-publishing over the last years though, I do find this to be an interesting route, and thus also plan to publish the first novel of mine next year, yes :-)
@@TheTaleTinkerer ohh I see! Yes that is understandable! It's good that self publishing has been becoming more viable these days. Wishing you all the best with your first release!!
Perhaps it’s seen as a revolution for others, all the power to you then. But I will never touch it, not if my life depended on it.
Why would you use AI? it completely destroys creativity. Also people that created AI go completely against the beliefs of artists.
For the very same reason one would draw inspiration from other works of fiction or brainstorm with other creators.
Some here are reacting as though this tool is anathema. As someone who has thousands of pages of notes on hundreds of gemstones and plants, dictionaries of historical magical words and historical conlangs dissected radical roots, and so on, passing on a tool to assist in the organization of the objective data I've already gathered would be stupid.
Follow-up: Did a test run on the free version, using some notes I gathered on a specific material. I played around with it to figure out if it was any good.
Was not satisfied with the end result of the tinkering on my notes, but it was a test run of its ability to understand my prompts and queries. I was satisfied with its understanding of the prompts, and its ability to trim my notes down. Once a final format is decided, it's going to be great for laying things out to make writing the actual entries quick and easy. Once that's done, it's also going to make integrating my general notes into my story notes pretty quick and easy (I have them as separate scrivener archives due to volume).
NO! JUST NO! The more you use it less creative you will be. If you hit a wall YOU must find a way to break it. If not, you are just not a good writter. The more help you seek, less capable you are
Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is Immortal.
@@URKCEHinoSuu I hope you used AI to write that 😂😂😂
@@sullivanfachner1937nope, it clearly came from a mind 🤗
@@URKCEHinoSuuthe machine was made by imperfection. Therefore can never truly be trusted. Trust is impossible. Things fry out and hardwires break. The only person you can trust is yourself and even then, that’s only because you are in ur own head. AI is bad. It should be doing the things we don’t need to do like clean our homes and cook our meals at home. Not do our work for us. Nobody would care about diamonds if they were common. Glass is just as shiny, yet nobody bats an eye.
Your way sounds miserable. I’d rather be happy.
At best, Ai will just make your original works more generic. AI literally cannot create. It can only spit out chopped up bits of information from other people's works.
cant it help if you use your own work? i use a tool called obsidian for world building, if i just feed all those notes into ai, it can help generate ideas no?
@@anjaneytripathi6949 It cannot. See, one of the biggest problems is that AI cannot understand. It knows how to do things, but it doesn't know why. It knows that a character can die/fall in love/perform any action, but it doesn't know why. It's why AI art can't get fingers or windows right. It knows buildings have windows, but it doesn't know why we have them be even, or where they go on the building.
More importantly to your point, unless it has other data sources, then the ai hasn't created anything "new". It probably wouldn't have enough data to actually make anything beyond your notes. The only way it can actually "Create" something new is if it has other data points to draw on. In which case, it's still not original, but other people's works being chopped up and spat out.
Combine these two factors, and you end up with stories that either so basic you wouldn't have needed an Ai's help, or stories that don't make any sense, as Ai doesn't understand the context of the story or events within the story.
I am old enough to remember the time when many writers insisted that you could not write a good novel using word processing, only a typewriter. And then they died or retired, and their convictions with them.
I understand what you're talking about, but I think some of the examples you give I disagree with. I don't think walls in your writing should be fixed with AI. I think fact finding, fleshing out weak areas like masp building, conlangs, quick answers for words that rhym with and mesn x for example, maybe battle planning. These sorts of things, its just a helper like s thesaurus or a strategy book or a research tool. But something to deal with your blocks. Na I'm not sure. I get what your saying and it is a revolation that could well help you be the most creative and most productive but at some point you have to ask is this my story. Did I write it? If I am an excellent prose writer with no ability to make a plot centreded on a theme and I use AI for that, yes its helped me, but is it my story. Did I really write a book. Have i learned my craft truly? I sat down, i wrote the word, but thats not all that being an author is. And if you struggle with a part of it, learn.
“Do not repel the Machine, because you must understand the weakness of your Flesh”. - Technoscribe.
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me."
Great video! More examples and exercises please.
Glad that you found it valuable. Thank you for leaving the positive feedback.
:O