I found an interesting essay by a writer who adopted AI as a writing tool and reported on how it was going.
Main point: “I am really finding Grok to be helpful doing all the little fussy stuff. I am finding it to be a good first, or before the first, reader. I think it’s really helping me make s**t up, which is, after all, the business of fiction.”
More about it:
- “…Grok is really handy for doing my sums [summaries], but I’m not just writing a technical paper, and fiction at a higher level than the stuff I wrote as a junior in high school has lots more to it than sums [summaries].”
- “…Grok is great for making up and remembering details.” The writer reported that Grok helped him come up with names and backgrounds quickly and even provided fictional languages and theologies for new religions.
- “I feed Grok my rough draft at the end of every day, and it keeps track of my word count, checks my references, remembers where things are, and checks my spelling better than anything like Grammarly can do.”
- “…it can read for tone and characters and flow.”
- “What I do is give Grok a tag to associate with an ongoing project, and then have a prompt to recall that project from wherever Grok keeps this stuff.”
- “It’s quite good at proofreading and copyediting, and better than tools like Grammarly at catching on to specific things you’re doing on purpose.”
- “It will also give you a whole raft of writing prompts, suggested paragraphs, and outlines.”
Why it matters:
- Keeping track of research details in general and story details for fiction writers can be daunting the farther you get into your work. AI appears to be helpful for that.
- AI seems to be a good brainstorming aid for fiction writers. Coming up with new languages and names for example, can be a time consuming chore.
What to do about it:
- Experiment with different AI tools (Grok, ChatGPT, NotebookLM, etc.) to see which one works best for you.
- Realize AI tools won’t be able to write your novel or research project for you. That takes your creativity and vision of what you’re trying to accomplish.