by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Years ago I was walking along Sunset Boulevard on a sunny day in Los Angeles (no surprise there) when I ran into a gent in a hat, with a big smile, holding a plate of cookies. He asked if I’d like to have one.
Being a struggling actor at the time, I eagerly accepted. It was an oddly shaped chocolate chip cookie. Not uniform or perfectly round. Each one was unique. That’s because they didn’t come out of a machine. They were handmade, and each glop that was put on a cookie sheet differed slightly from the others.
What was the same was the taste! My buds broke out into The Hallelujah Chorus. The cookie was a perfect blend of dough, chocolate chips, and nuts. I immediately went into the little store and bought a whole bag.
These were, of course, Famous Amos Cookies, and the man was Wally Amos himself.
As I walked away I thanked him, and he said, “Have yourself a real brown day.”
Wally Amos died last week at the age of 88.
The Famous Amos cookie thrived for a time, became legendary in Los Angeles. But as with many an entrepreneur, Wally Amos got underwater and had to sell. The new business soon went wide, not with unique Amos-style cookies, but with machine-made roundies that tasted no different than Chips Ahoy, which only make my taste buds sing a dirge.
And so we lost a singular savor to a dull sameness.
Which brings me to the state of writing today. We’ve discussed AI several times here at TKZ. Developments continue apace. I wasn’t aware of how apace things were until I read the latest issue of Jane Friedman’s Hot Sheet (subscription required). Jane interviewed Elizabeth Ann West, co-founder of Future Fiction Academy. What jumped out at me was a question about whether Big 5 publishers are using AI not only to create new “brand names” but also to extend established ones. West thinks the latter may already be happening:
I can’t say for sure. But if you read the Look Inside for some recent releases, those of us who write with AI all the time, we see the tell-tale signs that they’re using AI, particularly New York Times bestsellers. There’s one in particular, the first paragraph is like 15 sentences about boats, boats, boats inside of New York harbor. And when you compare that to this author’s previous work, that doesn’t even match.
AI also has a tendency to put four ideas in one sentence. You will open up a book and it will say, “Susie Q walked down the path, chewing her gum, her phone rang, and the scent of jasmine was in the air.” Most humans write in threes. Another big tell is echolalia. In the dialogue, you’ll see, “Jane, how are you feeling today?” And Jane says, “I feel fine, Elizabeth.”
And this is not to mention the thousands (tens of thousands?) of indies using AI to publish dozens of novels and novellas in the time it usually takes an old-school author to write one book.
The question is, are all these AI-generated books like the generic cookies that followed the Famous Amos sell off?
Does that even matter?
Some time ago, one of the leading voices for indie publishing, Joe Konrath, wrote a cheeky blog post asking:
Why write longer? Why write better? What’s the benefit?
Readers will forgive me if I phone-in a book. Or four. Especially with a series. As long as my first 12 are solid, I could probably make the next 6 mediocre, or even shitty, and most of my fanbase will stick with me.
Now, I’m not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems, story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on, even though Maria [Joe’s wife] forgives authors for those indiscretions, and according to her they happen in about half the ebooks she reads.
I’m talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers, whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2.
Seems like a gigantic waste of time.
Yes, sure, if you want to put out product, lots of it, and fast, without laboring over it, you can. Especially with AI. You can even make money that way.
Now, I’m not claiming to be pure as the driven snow (I live in L.A., so the only snow I ever see is driven snow, meaning I have to drive to see it), but something in me makes me need to hand make my cookies, one by one, with some effort to make them as tasty as I can. I still think there are readers who appreciate that.
I don’t know the financial ramifications of writing with care versus pumping out mediocrities. It’s impossible to design an A/B test without a time machine.
But that’s my recipe and I’m sticking to it.
“Have yourself a real write day.”
Just thinking out loud today. Add your own thoughts in the comments about AI, mass production, care in writing—and does it even matter?
I don’t follow the AI thing as closely as many do, mainly because I’m appalled at society’s “Oh look! Shiny new object!” that comes without ANY regard for negative consequences and potential problems. Just for one example: if someone is training for a profession and uses AI to do the work for them, how can they truly be considered a knowledgeable professional in their field? Can you imagine the negative societal consequences down the road? I don’t care to think about it.
And honestly, I hadn’t considered the AI issue in light of using it to produce books because the concept of not putting in the work is so foreign to me I’d never considered it.
Bottom line, there’s no fun or sense of accomplishment in it if I’m not the driver behind the wheel of the creative process. Letting AI do the work for me is like just taking on another chore. I’ve got enough of those already.
One of the first uses of the bot was by a lawyer who had it write a brief for him…which turned out to have citations that didn’t exist. D’oh!
Not surprising really. There was a lawyer here who filed a brief in federal court which was largely word for word plagiarized, and he had the gall to overcharge the client.
What these idiots do not seem to be able to wrap their heads around is that judges have law clerks who love this stuff.
Ack!
For me, it matters a great deal. As authors, what we have to offer is our own individual, idiosyncratic imaginations and voices. Our own unique experiences and way of looking at the world. Our passions and our thoughts. Generative “A.I.” can’t think, and it can’t feel.
Being satisfied with mediocrity literally isn’t good enough. Writing isn’t about minimum viable product, it’s about doing our best with each book, always striving to improve, always striving to send the reader on a compelling emotional journey which may vary depending upon the genre.
I’m with you, Jim. Writing with care matters. It’s treating our readers, and ourselves, with respect.
Have yourself a “real write day” as well! 🙂
I like your use of the word “idiosyncratic” here, Dale. That’s a certain something (voice) you can sense in your favorite writers. It takes time and care to develop. Giving it up in favor ot the machine is a great waste.
There’s fun in writing a story. It’s HARD, but it’s fun. And as a reader, I’d much rather read a heartfelt, interesting, quirky, unique story than a boats, boats, boats, boats story.
You’re so right, Priscilla. The best “fun” comes fro a job well done.
My soul withers at the thought of the literary field giving over to AI schlock.
Our reading entertainment will become as manufactured as the majority of food found in a grocery store. Nutritionless and unappealing to the true foodie.
And because it happens so seamlessly, just like food, no-one will notice that fillers and salt and sugar-alternatives have taken the place of real ingredients. Only those who never bought into the idea of manufactured product in the first place will understand, and they’ll be ridicucled for fheir protests.
Like your Famous Amos cookies, the staggering difference in taste and quality will be unknown to the average consumer. And that consumer won’t understand why quality takes time. They’ll expect quantity, and turn eagerly for the schlock.
Soul withering is right, Cyn. A whole lot of that going on right now. Let’s provide the alternative!
When we read, want to be in touch with a real person. (I’m borrowing my wife’s thoughts here.) That person may be a Dostoevsky struggling with life’s big issues, in which case we can feel grateful to them for sharing their vision. Or the person may be a hack, spewing 70K words of cliches as they crank out a formula novel. In which case we can feel pissed off at them for not being serious. (I don’t me serious as opposite to humorous. A lot of humor is deadly serious. I mean serious as opposed to something like flippant or mendacious.)
The point is not whether we get to feel grateful or pissed off. Rather, it’s important to know when we’re interacting with another real person. Ultimately, story telling is central to how we try to understand life and existence. And a machine is never trying to understand life and existence. It’s inappropriate (or worse) to be grateful to or pissed off at a machine, let alone to think we’re getting a life lesson. (My habit of swearing at my computer and lawnmower notwithstanding.)
What think ye?
You’re a philosopher, Eric. And right on about the desire for human connection. What will become of us if such connections cease?
As far as understanding life, I note the Episcopal church is launching “Cathy” (“Churchy Answers That Help You”) where you type in your spiritual question and “Cathy” texts you the answer. Life’s mysteries solved in five seconds or less!
Aaaaargh!
Ack! (To quote on of our own…)
I really must re-think my antipathy toward Rome.
My conscience won’t let me crank out crap. As a believer in Jesus, I am encouraged/commanded/exhorted to excellence. As a reader, I am disappointed when I read a ‘best-selling’ author’s newest release that is ho-hum. It makes me cautious to purchase their next novel.
Jane, I reflected on your move from ‘faith in Jesus’ to ‘commanded to excellence.’
It struck me the move must come via the command to love our neighbors. So I tried to unpack that some. Love includes wanting good for our neighbor and respecting them.
So if one writes a crap novel, one is probably not respecting the neighbor because one is not offering something that is good for them. Offering dope rather than drama.
Does this fit with your thoughts?
Now this is a cool and contemplative turn, Jane and Eric. A whole lot of good thinking going on here at TKZ this morning.
Agreed! How can we live if we aren’t desiring the best for one another
This is something close to my heart. My priest once told me (when I expressed my frustration at not having much time to write yet not being able to give it up either) “Satan doesn’t want you to write. He knows how powerful you are. God gave you the talent. God wants you to write. That’s evident in your calling. Therefore you can’t give up writing or Satan wins. Don’t let Satan win.”
I don’t believe in God or Satan, but this speaks to me.
I believe in both. I also believe in Janet.
I’ve wondered about this a lot recently. My motivation for starting my current WIP was “get a book out so you can write off the travel expenses.” But it didn’t take long to realize I still had to produce the best possible book.
On the flip side, as Cyn points out above, does our audience know? How many glowing reviews for mediocre (and lower) books do readers post? A lot.
And, speaking of readers and what they bring to the table, my son and I have had a lot of discussions of this with respect to photography. Which gives me an idea for an upcoming blog post, so I won’t get into that here. 🙂
That is a good question to ponder about the audience, Terry. There is always a market for the mediocre in any endeavor. The question for writers is, do I contribute to it on purpose?
I won’t be alive in say 60 years when historians look back on this period of AI revolution and I wonder what they will say? I frown when I see an annual statement from a tech company that says they are putting more resources into AI. AI pushes us to have more insulated thinking as it makes us think that all voices are as mine. It also makes us lazy thinkers as you have to reach beyond your first AI interaction to find the nuances of any issue.
Still, I plan to use AI to create story bibles for the 24 books I’ve written. It’s been on my to-do lists for years and as I write more books, the problem only gets worse. Chat GPT will read my books in their entirety and spit out a bible for me. Of course my work will also be used to power AI if it hasn’t already.
I’m a pantser and my stories unfold in my mind as though I was a fly on the wall watching and recording the action on stage. I’d admit that I’ve tried using AI to generate an outline for my story (I have outliners envy), but it is so not my voice that my stage actors are silent. I simply can’t write using AI. I think that’s the conclusion of JSB’s words that yes AI can be used to imitate any of us, but it doesn’t get it right and the reader can tell. I don’t see this as a long term career move. I’ve stopped reading dozens of prolific authors when I haven’t liked the direction a series goes or if the most recent release sounds exactly like the previous 4 books.
Yes. Using AI to generate a story bible is a very different thing from using it to write a story.
Wow, Alec, I hadn’t even thought of that, the AI generated story bible. Yeesh, does that mean feeding entire books into the machine? I don’t know the first thing about how to do that, nor if I’d ever want to.
AI does have its uses. I use it primarily for spot research, but always double check the answer.
AI stuff just sounds weird. It doesn’t sound anything like real people. Sometimes I’ll read something where someone says “I wrote yhis with AI and nobody can tell the difference.” Some of us can.
My wife does real estate here in L.A., and has noticed a sameness emerging in the property descriptions agents supposedly write. Similar words and phrases, and the descriptions are longer than they used to be. Hmmm…..
AI scares me. I’m not afraid to admit it. I read something the other day that stated there’s an idea roaming around in some people’s heads that some day we’ll have romantic relationships with AI-generated “people”. Say what? How does that work??
This discussion reminds me of a quote from Jurassic Park, released way back in 1993.
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could they didn’t stop to think if they should. (Dr. Ian Malcolm)
Still true today.
Ray Bradbury used to say he didn’t write to predict the future; he wrote to prevent it.
👍👍
And, I might add, “yet here we are” on the cusp of that future.
😳
It occurred to me, reading about boat-boat-boat books, that they have been with us long before AI came to be. How many of us gave up on authors whose series grew stale — and this was back when they were written only by human brains. Won’t name famous names here, but there were more than a few authors I gave up on because their stories became rote and predictable. They were SAFE books. They are the kind of books readers ask for when they go into a bookstore and say, “Give me the latest by So-and-So” rather than venturing deep into the shadowed shelves to mine something a little more raw, a little more precious.
When you’re first starting out, your stories have an almost palpable FEAR to them because you, yourself, are standing on the edge of that cliff wondering “are there readers down there to catch me if I jump?”
Fear is probably not the right word, but it’s all that’s coming today. But for me, that “fear” is what makes the book alive. I can sense it every sentence. AI can never duplicate that.
You’re so right about giving up on a phoned-in series, Kris. Has happened to me a few times.
Interesting thought about palpable “fear.” I need to chew on that one, but somehow I do relate to what you’re saying!
There is a huge difference between an Elizabeth Ann West and a beginner using AI. If you have experience in producing marketable stories that sell well, you can translate that experience as she has.
Any long running series has a tendency to mediocrity whether Ai is used or not. What one person considers mediocre, another may think it’s great.
Plenty of mediocre books existed in my favorite pulp book genre. Plenty of B and C movies were made and at least recovered their costs. Some became beloved by viewers and readers. I’ve read quite a few Mack Bolan books and they drifted off that way but there are rabid fans of them.
I believe JSB had mentioned in his book about “How To Write Pulp Fiction” that a lot of authors churned out books so they could afford to eat. When you are in that position, you aren’t going to produce a lot of gems to put that food on the table and keep a roof over your head.
I also believe most people are OK with mediocre if it entertains them. Janet Evanovich has 26+ Stephanie Plum books out and the later ones fall partially in the meh category but I still enjoy them because I find the funny bits worth putting up with some of the same running plots. (Every book has Stephanie destroying one of Ranger’s cars – it’s gotten to be a sort of trademark now).
I just try to do the best I can at the point I’m at in my writing journey as we all do. Each of us can look back and cringe at our first efforts. I’ve come to accept that as long as I’m above 3 stars, it’s okay, my stories still sell and I get an occasional 5 star so it’s not that bad.
I’m glad you brought up pulp, Fred. I was going to write a separate comment riffing off of Mickey Spillane’s famous comeback to literary “snobs”, viz., that there are more salted peanuts sold than caviar.
Which isn’t about quality per se, but kind. Meaning genre fiction does not automatically mean mediocre. Chandler and Hammett and Spillane himself proved that. There’s a reason other than prolificity that made these authors stand out.
The challenge of keeping a long-running series fresh is real, but worth the effort, IMO. At least that’s what I’m going for.
Thanks for the provocative comment. Carpe Typem.
I’m astonished – astonished! – at how fast AI has become so mainstream so fast. It has become part of every industry now, particularly publishing.
Sometimes I’ll check out the writer job boards, and now many of the jobs are centered around AI. “AI this needed” or “AI that needed.” It’s really incredible how newspapers, magazines, and publishing in general have not only shrugged and said, “well, I guess we have to go along with it.” they’re jumping into it 100%, happily, excitedly (probably because publishing is in such dire straits now they’re desperate for any help, preferably quickly).
As for writing mediocre books: I think there’s a difference between writing lots of books fast yourself and having AI “help” you. I’m a big fan of the pulp writers of the 30s/40s/50s, and they cranked out a lot of books (they had to if they wanted to survive), and some of the books were sub-par or lacked glittery prose or maybe were “formulaic.” But they had great plots and characters and style (and “formulaic” gets a bad rap). I think some of these books would be called “mediocre” by some readers, but they were human-mediocre, not AI-mediocre!
We can talk about this now because there’s still a little separation between AI and the real. But what about in 5, 10, 30 years? I fear we’ll live in a world where words written by actual people and pictures taken by people. And who knows. Maybe future generations won’t care?
And searching for free images to use, I see “AI generated” on way too many!
and I CAN tell the difference, Deb.
Yep!! “Inhuman” comes to mind…
I agree with all you say here, Bob.
Mabye The Terminator wasn’t a sci-fi at all. Mabye it was a documentary.
It’s not just AI. When I worked at a bookstore about 10 years ago, the mega-names were starting to slide. They still sold more books than most of us can hope to sell, but readers were able to tell when the big names were phoning it in. I’ve quit buying several best-selling series for exactly that reason.
Right there with you, Elaine.
This is fascinating, Jim. When I think of writing, I come up with the word “creativity.” And harking back to Jane Daly’s comment, I believe the desire to create is given to us by God. When a writer draws on his/her own thoughts and experiences to fashion an excellent new story, they are giving a gift, a part of their own soul, to the world. AI doesn’t have a soul.
You are so right, Kay!
A gift, two ways. Yes!
It sounds like AI has what many writing teachers would label as on the nose dialogue.
Yep.
Amazon is in a bind over an avalanche of AI-generated books, sharpening their knives and training new robotic minions to detect at least the most blatant transgressors of original writing. They already have in place a procedure for verifying author identity by approved sources such as, get this, a snapshot of your driver’s license with head photo. Violators will have their accounts erased, no questions asked. It’s a severe overreach of privacy, but we shall see how far the perpetrators push them. I never thought I’d see this day, but there are so many soulless individuals out there that drastic measures like these may be forced on the rest of us. I would hope Amazon are out to pick the low-hanging fruit and will not disturb the mature producer possessing a clear track record over years of publishing.
Earlier this year I posted that I’d used ChatGPT to generate a snazzy book blurb from one I offered in its 20th iteration. The result was a great example of its ability to analyze, cull, and compile from archival success. I will use it because it is hardly different from reading dozens of blurbs for successful books in the same genre and hacking my own from the process. The AI is just faster and better at that kind of work.
But that’s as far as I’ll go. I love writing too much to hand it over to an algorithm whose synapses happen to fire faster than mine but cannot travel imaginary paths. Yet.
I know, Dan. Scary times. I believe Amazon’s new verification system is a good faith meant to weed out bad actors, and that the overwhelming majority of legit authors won’t be caught up in it. What I do worry about is that some algorithm will identify something as being written by AI when it wasn’t. That’ll be a fine pickle.
Quality matters to me as well, as a reader and a writer. If my name’s on the cover, you can be damn sure I labored over every sentence. Regardless of the future of AI, I will never use it to pump out my books. My readers deserve better than that.
Excellent musings, Jim. I can hear the disappointment in your (writing) voice. It’s discouraging to think about AI-written novels/novellas flooding the marketplace. Shame on the Big 5 for issuing a stamp of approval.
This new publishing landscape begs the question, how can one claim the title of “author” if AI plots, paces, and writes the book?
I know, right? All sorts of issues are popping up. I’m not going to ask Chat how to solve them.
Humans have an innate need to reveal their inner selves to other humans. This results in a huge variety of behaviors from Freudian slips to flashing, from self-projection to confession, from memoir to novel, from the Venus of Willendorf to the Venus de Milo, from sadism to psychotherapy, from vulgarity to verse. Art, with few exceptions up to the present, is self-revelation, sometimes great and often powerful exemplars of the unbound human spirit. If there were more than ten commandments, the eleventh would be: Thou shalt create.
Robotic rubbish (AKA AI) contains none of the transcendent elements of healthy human Art. It meets no human need, except possibly a few pieces of silver, the price of betrayal of our creative selves. Someday, allegedly prolific “writers” will look back upon all their robot-drivel books, realize that there is not even a shred of themselves therein, and build pyres of them for their dreams, if not themselves.
Well said, J. AI couldn’t have written this comment!
Thank you, JSB. You are an inspiration to all of us.